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Comment by eviks | Hacker News Reader

The mod swap tragedy is a subtle variation of a very common bug in keymap design: investing in superficial labels instead of real muscles

Like if the keymap were designed: "first key left of space" is our primary prefix since it's the most convenient (thumb) modifier, then the physical mod swap would've had no effect, and given the dynamic nature of the underlying language you could even have it be changed in a single variable to have an effect on all the keybinds and all the docs

(also yet another illustration how arbitrary bad defaults can stick forever, like vim using HJKL instead of fully going home keys JKL; just because some ancient keyboard had left arrow on H)

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I think HJKL is fine because I primarily move my cursor down and I primarily use my index finger for things as opposed to the other three (non-thumbs).

On the other hand (no pun intended), I have countless hours invested into WASD since the Quake days[1] in the 90s. There I press W most often and most definitely with my middle finger. So the middle finger can definitely be trained to a very high level!

[1]: I started my shooter "career" with Wolfenstein 3D but since there was no mouse involved, I was using the arrow keys. On the IBM layout one would press up and down with the middle finger (which I suppose is sort of your point).

With home key cursor you can still have JK as down/up keys.

Inverted T for arrow keys could also be used as an alternative by the "very strong muscle memory from games" crowd, that's a valid argument, but it's not some arbitrary arrows painted somewhere decades ago (the OP's keymap also uses inverted T in IJKL)

The first thing I do with a WASD keybinding is changing it to ESDF, so that I have a tactile feedback for my index, to make sure I'm on the right keys. That, of course, tends to mess up other predefined keybindings, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Not only does the superior ESDF have tactile feedback (because of the nub on the F key) but you also get an extra column of keys (QAZ) on the left!

I'm with you guys on ESDF because of the extra keys, but sometimes it do get tiring having to stretch my pinky all the way over to shift to sprint.

can rebind it to A, those extra keys should be put to use!

Huh, funny how it never occured to me to rebind it

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