I do agree that "we need to make special efforts at understanding non-programmer users." But this isn't a good example since Vim is a specialized editor mostly

I do agree that "we need to make special efforts at understanding non-programmer users." But this isn't a good example since Vim is a specialized editor mostly recommended for programers. If the general-purpose text editors (and word processors) required you to use HJKL, you might have a point. (EDIT: I misunderstood stcredzero's argument. See stcredzero's comment below.) It's also true that functions can be mapped to arbitrary inputs and systems. But I think there's value in learning HJKL rather than remapping them: 1. They're on the home row, giving a slight speed benefit for these commonly used actions. 2. You get used to the movement keys that will be the default in any copy of Vi/m and quite a few other tools. (HJKL, along with WASD and dedicated arrow keys, is probably the most common mapping of left, right, up, and down to keys on a keyboard.)