Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van

Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van (thisismodest.com)

2026-07-01 Wed | 43 points by marcusmichaels | original

[−]bitwize · 2026-07-01 Wed 19:56 UTC · link

Can I go to the place where the Mu-Mu mate and the children still cry "Mine's a 99!"?

[−]JdeBP · 2026-07-01 Wed 21:25 UTC · link

Yes, hjkl navigation is certainly one of the things that should learn about a vi clone. But are novices well served, in the 2020s, by that being the primary thing that they learn before anything else?

This is not a criticism of this WWW site specifically. The VIM doco has the same priorities, teaching hjkl navigation before arrow keys. (So do nvi2 and NeoVIM.) The problem is that the received wisdom, that arrow keys are some newfangled idea that might not have reached your terminal manufacturer yet, is massively out of date.

Even if one does not teach the arrow keys first, the BS SPC SO (Control+N) DLE (Control+P) set is surely worth teaching early on. One cannot make any reasonable argument that terminals might not have spacebars. (-:

[−]tokamak-teapot · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:33 UTC · link

The reasons I still use vi-style editing in editors are:

1. Efficiency, so I can be fast

2. Minimal stretching and whole-hand movement, so I don't get painful wrists and so I can be accurate.

Using a keyboard's arrow keys doesn't fit with 2.

[−]eska · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:40 UTC · link

Sorry to be blunt, but if you don’t want to spend effort on touch typing (and therefore avoid arrow keys), learning vim motions is rather pointless and you might as well not bother.

[−]johncoltrane · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:42 UTC · link

hjkl are more of a cult/status thing anyway because they are not _that_ touch-typing-friendly to begin with, and they suck just as much as the cursor keys for moving the cursor around.

Insisting so much on hjkl is silly. No one is using an ADM-3A in 2026, so the official documentation should let users use the more intuitive cursor keys and downgrade hjkl to what they have always been since vi: __ham-fisted alternatives to the cursor keys__.

[−]nehal3m · 2026-07-02 Thu 05:35 UTC · link

Beautiful project. Vim controls really found their way into my muscle memory through Tridactyl and Vimium, browser extensions that let you drive web pages and the browser itself with Vim keybinds.

[−]anthk · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:32 UTC · link

Every roguelike player has these bolted in. Just play Nethack/Slashem/DCSS/Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights...