The reason it’s so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that’s by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).
It’s much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.
Instead of using the arrow keys most vi & him users navigate the cursor around the doc by using letter keys. I do it so subcociously now I am not sure which direction is the j when I use my phone.
Vim has several modes. INSERT mode let’s you write text, NORMAL mode let’s you navigate (with h,j,k,l and others) and perform operations on the text with your keyboard, like “dw” to Delete Word or “A” to enter insert mode at the end of the line.
You can use arrow keys to navigate in insert mode. However I just press escape, which changes to normal, navigate to where I want to, then change to insert mode.
I may seem like this makes simple navigation complex, and it kinda does. But complex navigation becomes easier.
Vi (and vim and neovim)'s primary concern is viewing and editing code, writing is secondary (although it’s still an excellent experience)
Yes, (neo)vi(m) has different modes, in normal mode the characters are shortcuts, hjkl is used for navigation. However other methods are prefered, w, e, b - jumping words, f,t - jumping to a specific character etc. Its way faster. Also it can be combined d2w (d)eletes the next (2) (w)ord. Or more advanced di" (d)eletes the text (i)nside the “…”
Insert mode is what you except: it writes what you type. Can be accessed by i - (i)nsert before a - (a)append after. Going back to normal mode is ESC (or many configure tab)
Explain pls for us vimless noobs
Direction navigation in vim is hjkl.
I know I’m just a vim-less heathen, but using letters for navigation in a text editor seems kind stupid when arrows exist.
No, you’re 100% right. The only reason it’s this way is this: https://pikuma.com/blog/origins-of-vim-text-editor
These literally were the arrow keys on the machine that vim was originally developed on.
Why the hell didn’t they go with JIKL or something instead then, so the pattern at least resembles the direction it navigates?
Wasd was revolutionary at the time
This really just shows how fundamentally terrible product developers engineers are.
I remember going from using Z/X/C+mouse2 for left/backpedal/right+forward WASD was such an adjustment
so your finges dont have to leave the home row. Its acually peak when you used hjkl for some time
You should boycott vim. That’ll teach 'em.
The reason it’s so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that’s by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).
It’s much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.
moving my hand this much SUCKS
Instead of using the arrow keys most vi & him users navigate the cursor around the doc by using letter keys. I do it so subcociously now I am not sure which direction is the
jwhen I use my phone.But keyboards have arrow keys now?
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I’m one of the noobs. You use letter keys to navigate around text?
Vim has several modes. INSERT mode let’s you write text, NORMAL mode let’s you navigate (with h,j,k,l and others) and perform operations on the text with your keyboard, like “dw” to Delete Word or “A” to enter insert mode at the end of the line.
You can use arrow keys to navigate in insert mode. However I just press escape, which changes to normal, navigate to where I want to, then change to insert mode.
I may seem like this makes simple navigation complex, and it kinda does. But complex navigation becomes easier.
Vi (and vim and neovim)'s primary concern is viewing and editing code, writing is secondary (although it’s still an excellent experience)
Oh, I did not know of ‘A’ before. Hopefully I can train myself to use it.
I use ‘O’ the most. It inserts a newline at the end of the line and starts Insert Mode after the newline.
Awesome. After many years of vim-use I learned about CTRL+n as well. A game changer.
And while we’re at it, I also installed vim-nox to be able to use vim-snippets with utilsnips to TAB for even more joy of programming with vim. [=
Yes, (neo)vi(m) has different modes, in
normalmode the characters are shortcuts, hjkl is used for navigation. However other methods are prefered, w, e, b - jumping words, f,t - jumping to a specific character etc. Its way faster. Also it can be combinedd2w(d)eletes the next (2) (w)ord. Or more advanceddi"(d)eletes the text (i)nside the “…”Insertmode is what you except: it writes what you type. Can be accessed by i - (i)nsert before a - (a)append after. Going back to normal mode is ESC (or many configure tab)