> if Vim had the very same problem for US keyboard layouts it would have never become the standard choice for "hackers"

Not necessarily, since it’d just be a matter of popularizing Vim + the community’s preferred shortcuts as a starter instead.

> in general hackers hate when their tools don't work out of the box

Indeed we do. However, we don’t give up on something if it doesn’t work. We simply hack at it until it works how we want ;)