So you’ve transferred the required hand move from the right hand to the left, and added extra required keystrokes to accomplish the same task. I don’t see how that isn’t worse.
No, it’s a key stroke, not hand move. I don’t have to reposition my hand to hit ESC. You do have to reposition your hand to use arrow keys.
Also, you usually move the cursor by more than just one character. It’s one extra keystroke to reposition the cursor, not to move it by one char. You have shortcuts to jump to end of file, specific line, end of line or even create and jump to bookmarks. All this with just standard keys, without repositioning your hands to use the mouse or arrow keys.
Your keyboard must be slightly different than the one I have in front of me right now. Home row to esc and home row to arrows is the same distance on mine.
First, as I said, I remapped ESC to TAB key. Tab is very close.
Second, it’s different to hit ESC ones than to use arrows keys to move around. To go back to home row after using arrow keys I have to feel around the keys trying to find “j” again. Or look at keyboard. I don’t have to do that after hitting ESC once.
I’m not bothering to talk about non default layouts. Remapping is a separate discussion, since I could just as easily say it’s better to remap wasd to the arrow function and have the FN key toggle it, since a much higher number of people already have that navigation method trained into muscle memory. This is a preference game no matter what, but it becomes an especially pointless discussion if you base it on custom layouts.
The reason it’s so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that’s by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).
It’s much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.
Direction navigation in vim is hjkl.
I know I’m just a vim-less heathen, but using letters for navigation in a text editor seems kind stupid when arrows exist.
No, you’re 100% right. The only reason it’s this way is this: https://pikuma.com/blog/origins-of-vim-text-editor
These literally were the arrow keys on the machine that vim was originally developed on.
Why the hell didn’t they go with JIKL or something instead then, so the pattern at least resembles the direction it navigates?
Wasd was revolutionary at the time
so your finges dont have to leave the home row. Its acually peak when you used hjkl for some time
Why would you move your hand to arrow keys when the letter are already under your fingers?
ESC, use-letter-to-navigate, i, type, ESC, navigate, i, type
Really simple. On my keyboard I re-mapped ESC to TAB so I don’t even have to move my hand to switch between navigate and insert modes.
I have it instead of CapsLock, tab is too useful to forego.
But yes, arrow keys are too far, and I avoid them everytime I can, including in Shell
So you’ve transferred the required hand move from the right hand to the left, and added extra required keystrokes to accomplish the same task. I don’t see how that isn’t worse.
No, it’s a key stroke, not hand move. I don’t have to reposition my hand to hit ESC. You do have to reposition your hand to use arrow keys.
Also, you usually move the cursor by more than just one character. It’s one extra keystroke to reposition the cursor, not to move it by one char. You have shortcuts to jump to end of file, specific line, end of line or even create and jump to bookmarks. All this with just standard keys, without repositioning your hands to use the mouse or arrow keys.
Your keyboard must be slightly different than the one I have in front of me right now. Home row to esc and home row to arrows is the same distance on mine.
First, as I said, I remapped ESC to TAB key. Tab is very close.
Second, it’s different to hit ESC ones than to use arrows keys to move around. To go back to home row after using arrow keys I have to feel around the keys trying to find “j” again. Or look at keyboard. I don’t have to do that after hitting ESC once.
I’m not bothering to talk about non default layouts. Remapping is a separate discussion, since I could just as easily say it’s better to remap wasd to the arrow function and have the FN key toggle it, since a much higher number of people already have that navigation method trained into muscle memory. This is a preference game no matter what, but it becomes an especially pointless discussion if you base it on custom layouts.
moving my hand this much SUCKS
The reason it’s so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that’s by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).
It’s much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.