>The cursor keys being on the home row is just because it happened to be that way on the terminal where vi was invented. We have long since standardized on sepa

>The cursor keys being on the home row is just because it happened to be that way on the terminal where vi was invented. We have long since standardized on separate cursor keys, which are more intuitive. Intuitive and convenient are two orthogonal things, I bet that the creators of that terminal put the cursor keys simply because it's convenient to have them on a home row, unlike the creators of the IBM PC keyboard who valued intuitiveness more. I don't see how the ergonomics of typing is outdated. Besides, after all these years HJKL is a common convention already, and can be even more intuitive for many people (not just programmers, but also e.g. roguelike players who usually have the diagonal movement keys around HJKL as well). But that's a bit of a red herring since vi's command language makes the entire single-character cursor movement "outdated" in a sense. The abbreviated commands are highly composable and let you navigate and edit any structured text with the speed of thought. That is the actual value of vi.