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Comment by allknowingfrog | Hacker News Reader

I switched to Dvorak a couple of years before I learned VIM. I made the decision not to remap anything in VIM, because it seemed like every key already had a job, and I was afraid of upsetting the balance. I'm still a Dvorak/VIM user 10 years later. My directional navigation keys are in strange places, but it's just muscle memory at this point.

If I had learned VIM first, I'm not sure how the switch to Dvorak would have gone. My fear of breaking an unfamiliar editor may have accidentally steered me into success.

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VIM is a fun one, in this regard. True, the arrow keys are no longer on the home row. For the most part, you can just use the arrow keys, of course. Keeping your hand exactly at home position is largely over sold on that regard, and physically grounding your hand between the arrows and home is easy to flip between.

The nice thing, though, is most of the other key choices are mnemonic. "C" for change, etc. Such that you really can keep moving fairly well by sticking with the conversation you are having with VIM.

> Keeping your hand exactly at home position is largely over sold on that regard...

It's a marginal benefit, but it's still a benefit.

The more significant factor than "qwerty vs colemak" is that the thumbs aren't able to achieve much with the hands rested on home row. They can hit spacebar; and to be useful for anything else, the hands have to move.

Whereas, with keyboards like the Moonlander, the thumbs can reach 2-3 keys each.

Albeit, regarding vim's 'hjkl', vim makes it very easy to quickly move around a single line, so h/l shouldn't be very common. For rapid vertical movement, 'easy motion'-style stuff is neat.

My keyboard has a split spacebar, that I think is intended to let you do two different things with the thumb...

I just don't see it being that beneficial. Is like thinking you could be a better pianist if only the keyboard was arranged in a different way. Almost certainly true at a very technical level. Hard to think that is the actual limiting factor for most people, though. Even on the piano, I found that I am better with certain fingers than others, but that it just doesn't make too much sense to worry about that at the beginning.

For example, without having to move my hand, my thumbs can reach Esc, Tab, Backspace, and Enter as well as having to push space. That's a benefit from the thumbs being able to hit 2-3 keys each.

I think that's much nicer than having to move the hand or stretch with the pinky in order to hit backspace.

Whereas with the standard keyboard layout, you can't keep your hands rested on home row & reach those keys.

Certainly don't let some rando on the internet tell you that this isn't worth doing. I just also don't expect folks to believe that you get measurable gains from this. Outside of the joy it brings having set this up. Which is huge and not to be discarded.

Ah, I'm not necessarily arguing that "having a better keyboard will make you a more effective typist". I'm suggesting that "for keeping your hands on home row, it's much nicer if your thumbs are able to reach 2-3 keys each, than if your thumbs are only able to reach the spacebar".

Maybe "whether it's worth having such a keyboard" is down to personal preference or whatever, sure.

As a vim-first dvorak-second person, remapping vim is a mistake. You try it at first, then you realize it's a pointless battle. The defaults in dvorak are actually great.

11 year dvorak user.

I learned vim first then switched to Colemak and made the mistake of first trying a very heavily remapped vim layout. Eventually it was reminded to Vim's layout other than its directional keys is very heavily mnemonic and eventually I was convinced to use fewer to no remaps and the classic vim mnemonics. I probably could have used that advice sooner to avoid the years of a very custom map and the confusion that still sometimes accidentally triggers.

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