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that arrow keys are some newfangled idea that might not have reached your terminal manufacturer yet, is massively out of date.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.
Touch typing essentially. It's such a comfortable way to work. Remapping mode switching to something like jk instead of Esc is vital to stay comfortably in the home row.
I always liked this site to grok some of those vim fundamentals [1] and the touch typing part was going to touch typing exercise webpages and getting pure practice.
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.
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__.
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that arrow keys are some newfangled idea that might not have reached your terminal manufacturer yet, is massively out of date.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. (-:
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.
I always liked this site to grok some of those vim fundamentals [1] and the touch typing part was going to touch typing exercise webpages and getting pure practice.
- [1] http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/
Obviously any classic control key assignments, like those of vi or those of emacs, are far from optimal on a non-standard keyboard layout.
The only decent solution is to remap all control keys in your text editor, to whichever positions you prefer.
Any good text editor allows that. Likewise, all programs with a good user interface allow the remapping of the keyboard shortcuts.
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__.