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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but that is so much less usable. Quick, which one is up?

Just look at your keyboard :-)

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#Legacy)

I always try to remember them by noting that the leftmost key moves left, the rightmost key moves right (not too hard), and that 'K climbs' (using alliteration to remember that). That leaves 'J' for cursor down.

In practice, though, I use the cursor keys. Luckily, they work on the editors/systems I work on nowadays. Side effect is that I am very bad at remembering those mnemonics.

I stole the following from a colleagues `.vimrc` which finally allowed me to learn `hjkl`. Now I forget I have this set, and when I do accidentally use an arrow key it makes me laugh.

    map <Left> :echo 'damnit!'<cr>
    map <Right> :echo 'you suck!'<cr>
    map <Up> :echo 'this is why you fail'<cr>
    map <Down> :echo 'nooooo!'<cr>

Off-topic: I love your username. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12068116

> K climbs

Lower-case 'k' has an ascender, lower-case 'j' has a descender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascender_(typography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descender

The point is, they are no longer in symbolic memory. At this point they are muscle memory. Quick, which muscle do you use to move your right thumb in? Does it matter?

Exactly: muscle memory. In your car, do you move the turn signal lever up or down to indicate a right turn? It actually takes longer to answer this question than to do the action in real life.

Another example: There are several passwords that I can type instantly, but I wouldn't be able to recite them.

> In your car, do you move the turn signal lever up or down to indicate a right turn?

You rotate it the same direction you're about to rotate the wheel. The vi navigation keys have no such convenient correspondence.

The J kinda looks like an arrow pointing down. If you squint.

I also like what Someone (literally their username, lol) pointed out on another comment, that you can think of K as "klimb" to move up.

h is left because it is on the left of the movement keys, l is right because it is on the right of the movement keys... a fairly convenient correspondence.

Just have to imagine the motion. I remember left/right by literally right clicking & feeling my middle finger be to the right of my index. I got a little mixed up when I switched my mouse to my left hand

I use hjkl consistently in vim and in the shell. Just think about how long it takes you to move your fingers to the cursor keys. You should spend some effort getting used to it, as using hjkl means you can keep your hands in the middle of the keyboard. I have also never had any problems with strain, and I suspect this is part of the reason.

How do you use them in the shell?

    set -o vi           # bash
    bindkey -v          # zsh
    set editing-mode vi # ~/.inputrc i.e readline

"k", as "k" glyph reaches higher from the two. And conversely, "j" reaches lower, so it moves down.

You're right, that is much more usable than having an up button in the up position with an up arrow on it...

Erm... what? I didn't claim it's more usable (though it is for me). I just provided mnemonics I saw once which I liked, for a question "which k/j moves up and which moves down?".

The leftmost one is left, the rightmost one is right. Of the two that remain, the one that looks vaguely like an arrow pointing downward, that one goes down. There's one key remaining, and that one goes up, k?

As everyone says, it doesn't take a lot of practice before you know it well enough that you'll never forget. Unbind the arrow keys, or go play some nethack (no-keypad), or whatever.

Middle finger goes up ;) (K), index down, stretch left to go left (H) or right to go right (L).

I know k is up, because I constantly <ESC> k in bash, bit the point of using hjkl is exactly not to know which one is what. You set your finger on the keyboard in home position, now your muscle memory does the rest.

>I know k is up, because I constantly <ESC> k in bash

What is ESC-k supposed to do in Bash?

The poster probably changed his bash to use vi editing mode with set -o vi. In this mode, <ESC>k would put the text of the last command entered back on the prompt.

I do switch deadline to vi mode, since that's the editor I use the most.

I'm always surprised by people who are on the vi/vim side of vi/emacs debates but then use the defaults emacs mode in deadline!

The one under my middle finger on my right hand.

I don't even have to think, it's automatic. Likewise with the other directions.

'k' is up, because the author is typing quite a few of it in the screencast before going up. :)

k of course. Having said that, experienced vi/vim users rarely use jk to get around. Instead we use { } / f etc.

I have no idea is a muscle memory thing :-)

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