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Learning to type is easily his best suggestion here. Not just type, but touch type including the symbols. If you ever wondered why vi is modal and uses normal

Learning to type is easily his best suggestion here. Not just type, but touch type including the symbols. If you ever wondered why vi is modal and uses normal keys for navigation rather than cursor keys you won't wonder any more after you learn to touch type. It doesn't require that much practise either, a month of solid practise, 30 minutes a day will get you over the hump easily. I would recommend getting a full size keyboard for this instead of the cramped, flat garbage of a laptop. Decent keyboards can be had at charity shops for a dollar.

maxekman 5y ago
Switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty layout is really effective. It’s way more punishing to look down at the wrong keys than to not look down. Not for the impatient though!
- HowardStark 5y ago
  Cannot agree with this enough. All the dumb keyboard layout cargo culting aside, this is why I recommend people learn Dvorak. It has been hugely successful for everyone I’ve gotten to make the transition.
notapenny 5y ago
Keybr.com is great for this. I've been touch typing all my life, but when I started programming, I noticed that typing brackets, parens and a bunch of other symbols really slowed me down. Great to practice those as well.
skohan 5y ago
Vi uses normal keys rather than cursor keys because the keyboard it was developed on had arrows printed on those keys, and no cursor keys. People continually want to attribute this to some rational design consideration, but it’s just post-hoc reasoning. If vin were authored 10 years later it would use arrow keys and there’s no reason to stick with this terrible UX.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  I think it's more of a lucky accident. There really is something to be said for hjkl scrolling. I enable it in as many apps as I can because I find it genuinely more comfortable than arrow keys. And that's not because I'm some unreformed grognard, I was introduced to vim only a few years ago.
  - skohan 5y ago
    I just have trouble buying it. Competitive gamers earn their living navigating directionally using a keyboard. If placing the navigation keys in a line on the home row were really so much better they would all be doing it by now.
    - agent327 5y ago
      Competitive gamers aren't constantly switching between navigation mode and typing mode, and they use only a small fraction of all the keys on the keyboard. Also, if their experience is supposed to be indicative, HJKL should be replaced by WASD which is apparently much more efficient.
      - skohan 5y ago
        Yeah I agree, wasd would be an improvement, or ijkl. hjkl is an anachronism and makes no sense.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      Gamers use WASD for navigation because their right hand is on the mouse. Programmers try to minimize mouse usage. It's a different set of constraints.
      - skohan 5y ago
        But if the linear key layout is better, why isn't it asdf?
    - eska 5y ago

maxekman 5y ago

Switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty layout is really effective. It’s way more punishing to look down at the wrong keys than to not look down. Not for the impatient though!

HowardStark 5y ago
Cannot agree with this enough. All the dumb keyboard layout cargo culting aside, this is why I recommend people learn Dvorak. It has been hugely successful for everyone I’ve gotten to make the transition.

notapenny 5y ago

Keybr.com is great for this. I've been touch typing all my life, but when I started programming, I noticed that typing brackets, parens and a bunch of other symbols really slowed me down. Great to practice those as well.

skohan 5y ago

Vi uses normal keys rather than cursor keys because the keyboard it was developed on had arrows printed on those keys, and no cursor keys. People continually want to attribute this to some rational design consideration, but it’s just post-hoc reasoning. If vin were authored 10 years later it would use arrow keys and there’s no reason to stick with this terrible UX.

_dain_ 5y ago
I think it's more of a lucky accident. There really is something to be said for hjkl scrolling. I enable it in as many apps as I can because I find it genuinely more comfortable than arrow keys. And that's not because I'm some unreformed grognard, I was introduced to vim only a few years ago.
- skohan 5y ago
  I just have trouble buying it. Competitive gamers earn their living navigating directionally using a keyboard. If placing the navigation keys in a line on the home row were really so much better they would all be doing it by now.
  - agent327 5y ago
    Competitive gamers aren't constantly switching between navigation mode and typing mode, and they use only a small fraction of all the keys on the keyboard. Also, if their experience is supposed to be indicative, HJKL should be replaced by WASD which is apparently much more efficient.
    - skohan 5y ago
      Yeah I agree, wasd would be an improvement, or ijkl. hjkl is an anachronism and makes no sense.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    Gamers use WASD for navigation because their right hand is on the mouse. Programmers try to minimize mouse usage. It's a different set of constraints.
    - skohan 5y ago
      But if the linear key layout is better, why isn't it asdf?
  - eska 5y ago