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Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportun

by skohan 7y ago

Some things seem unnecessarily unintuitive to me about the shortcuts. For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. Every video game ever came to the conclusion that the inverse-T layout is ideal for this task.

saagarjha 7y ago
I mean, putting all they keys in the home row is admirable but the up/down placement seems so counter-intuitive! Almost everywhere I see arrow keys put in a line up comes first…
- fsckboy 7y ago
  ^H in ASCII is backspace (move carriage to the left), and ^J is linefeed (move carriage down), so h-j were completely intuitive to people who already knew ASCII (i.e. everybody) and then it just makes sense to continue the row of other cursor movements. "intuitive" doesn't mean "I was born knowing it"
lordfoom 7y ago
> For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.
- skohan 7y ago
  I don't know, I mean I believe you can learn anything and it will seem intuitive after a while, but I feel like more video-game speed runners and e-sport athletes would map their movement controls to the home row if this was really an advantage.
lozf 7y ago
vi was written long before any video game ever, and the arrow keys on the ADM-3A terminal that Bill Joy used in 1976 were actually on the hjkl keys, so it made sense at the time. https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
- skohan 7y ago
  Interesting! I can imagine it would be quite a bit more intuitive with the arrows written there. It almost makes it seem like the touted benefit of having these keys on the home row is essentially ad-hoc reasoning, and maybe this 35-year-old design decision should be re-visited since even keyboard manufacturers realized this was not the best system decades ago.
zanellato19 7y ago
Just don't use h and l, really. There are a lot of ways to travel horizontally in vim. The fact that up/down are besides each other is really awesome, since that is the movement you will be doing most of the time.

by skohan 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

I mean, putting all they keys in the home row is admirable but the up/down placement seems so counter-intuitive! Almost everywhere I see arrow keys put in a line up comes first…

fsckboy 7y ago
^H in ASCII is backspace (move carriage to the left), and ^J is linefeed (move carriage down), so h-j were completely intuitive to people who already knew ASCII (i.e. everybody) and then it just makes sense to continue the row of other cursor movements. "intuitive" doesn't mean "I was born knowing it"

lordfoom 7y ago

> For instance, using 4 in-line keys for navigating a 2D space seems like a wasted opportunity. It's actually awesome because your fingers are all on one row. It feels extremely intuitive after a while.

skohan 7y ago
I don't know, I mean I believe you can learn anything and it will seem intuitive after a while, but I feel like more video-game speed runners and e-sport athletes would map their movement controls to the home row if this was really an advantage.

lozf 7y ago

vi was written long before any video game ever, and the arrow keys on the ADM-3A terminal that Bill Joy used in 1976 were actually on the hjkl keys, so it made sense at the time. https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys

skohan 7y ago
Interesting! I can imagine it would be quite a bit more intuitive with the arrows written there. It almost makes it seem like the touted benefit of having these keys on the home row is essentially ad-hoc reasoning, and maybe this 35-year-old design decision should be re-visited since even keyboard manufacturers realized this was not the best system decades ago.

zanellato19 7y ago

Just don't use h and l, really. There are a lot of ways to travel horizontally in vim. The fact that up/down are besides each other is really awesome, since that is the movement you will be doing most of the time.