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Comment by eviks | Hacker News Reader

That would be true if you had universally great designers back then, which wasn't the case, thus the defaults are universally bad, so it's a bad heuristic to stick to them and force a waste in trying to understand them.

For example, why is the default vim cursor hjkl? Well, it's just that the arrows on the physical keyboard of one of the vim designers were drawn there. That's it. There is no deep thought in search of the best cursor position, and understanding the why is just learning a useless piece of trivia.

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That seems quite harsh. Just because the designers aren’t perfect doesn’t mean the design is universally bad.

To address your example: Why were the arrow keys on those particular keys? Who put them there? hjkl are on the home row, and touch typists end up having the movement keys under their right hand’s resting fingers. That’s suddenly quite convenient.

> and touch typists end up having the movement keys under their right hand’s resting fingers.

This is false, h isn't in the resting place. So go back and spend more time trying to explain that historic tidbid of design before trying to defend it (I'd also be curious to know why they shifted left instead of using resting places)!

Or don't and use this obvious principle directly and change keybinds to jkl;

Or go with the muscle memory of inverted T and use ijkl

But whatever you do, prioritizing the original design is a common bad heuristic because there is no reason to think that the original designer was great (not perfect!, don't twist it), so trying to understand the original reasons is a waste of "productivity" time (but if you're curious, it's not a waste of regular time)

As pointed out, this is wrong. What touch-typists want is jkl;, because the right home key is j. This is an absolutely necessary config change in vanilla vim, unfortunately.

For me personally is the J/K direction still feels swapped and I always have to remind myself they are in fact the other way round. Even (especially) for touch typists, I would really expect [k] to point down and [j] up. In our writing system from the top left to bottom right my intuition would really be to stick ↑ with ← together and vice versa ↓ with →.

    ← ↓ ↑ →

makes a little sense to me.

    ← ↑ ↓ →

would be way better, IMO.

Not only because the most used used direction (↓) would be closer to my "neutral" finger position, but mainly because the the keys for progressing "back" and keys for progressing "forwards would be grouped together.

Honestly, I wouldn't even mind having them spread across two rows, like U I J K

    ↑  ↓
    ←  →

or something. (Personally, I have global WASD-like arrow mapping bound to IJKL through capslock combo in AutoHotkey, since sometimes cursor keys are really inconveniently far away when typing.)

I think the current system is the way it is in order so that the most used direction (down) uses your strongest finger, the index finger.

I don't know what your mean by "Not only because the most used used direction (↓) would be closer to my "neutral" finger position" - what is your neutral finger position?

I also got lost in the sentence about "back" and "forwards" - what is back and forwards?

> what is back and forwards?

Sorry, I didn't realise that was unclear. By "back" and "forwards", I mean movement through the flow of text relative to the cursor position. Given any reference point in linear text, all surrounding content either precedes or follows that point. Moving through preceding content is "going back", and moving through following content is "going forwards". When we move to the preceding line (↑) or preceding character (←), we're going "back". When we move to the following line (↓) or following character (→), we're moving "forwards". My point was that ← ↓ ↑ → effectively represents "back one character — forward one line — back one line — forward one character", which feels counter-intuitive to me.

> strongest finger, the index finger.

Interesting. As far as I now, middle finger is usually considered stronger than the index finger. Index finger might be more dextrous, though (?). Personally, I also slightly prefer the middle finger for rapid pressing over the index finger, but cannot see strong definitive advantage of either one. (I guess most of us use the middle finger for regular ↑↓ keys, as well as W/S in WASD bindings in games/project just fine, and using index finger in that context instead would feel odd.)

> what is your neutral finger position?

Mostly index finger on "K". (So I guess I'd prefer having "down" (being the most frequently used when VIM binding is involved) on "L", where my middle finger usually dwells, and "K" for moving up, if I had to invent it from scratch.)

I like the bindings, because I move vertically more than I move, so I want my strongest (other than the thumb) there. And I move to the right more than I do to the left. So I don’t mind moving my finger to do the latter.

It may be different based for others based on hand anatomy, but at least for me the index finger is so much stronger than the little finger, that it feels more comfortable moving it one space to the left, especially on keyboards with heavy keys (like model M).

I will admit that I had never considered things like this (there's a couple of you making a similar point). It's a decent argument. Maybe I'll revert to the default and see if I can handle the change.

As a touch typist that learned decades before learning vi, with Emacs in the middle, I can definitively say your blanket statement is false. And as a recovering Emacs user, I can also say the little finger thing for a repetitive key is a dangerous proposition with real potential health drawbacks.

> Why were the arrow keys on those particular keys? Who put them there?

They were placed on those particular keys by Lear Siegler who made the ADM-3A terminal Bill Joy was using at the time he made vi. End of story.

The fact that the tools have survived and are still used today is at least somewhat indicative of their quality though. A lot of worse designs have likely been selected away due to nobody even bothering to use them.

P(old thing being good | old thing still being used after N years) is pretty high. Certainly higher than the base rate of P(new design fad being good).

> defaults in old software are almost always there for a reason

Keeping your fingers on the home row is great design for keyboard-first navigation.

All software design is historically contingent so you do have a point but assuming that old design = bad design is just wrong. Some things haven't changed.

> Keeping your fingers on the home row is great design for keyboard-first navigation.

Except you've just made that reason up since vim's defaults don't follow this logic. For example, the most frequent commands of going back/forward by word are not on the home row, they follow a different principle of name-based mnemonics.

Strictly speaking, this isn't even true for hjkl, that was due to the fact that arrows were drawn there, not because the designer followed some good design principles (granted, at least the physical arrows were likely driven by that principle, though there is still a mistery of moving off resting/home keys, which might be related to the fact that cutoff ASCII H code is backspace https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3684763).

> Some things haven't changed.

Indeed, and that universal fundamental thing that hasn't changed is that a few random people doing design blindly can't universally create a world of good design!

Lets go one level deeper: What's the reason that the vim disgners keyboards had hjkl as arrow keys? Because it made sense for it to be the home row. I still use arrow keys though

Yes, they are not in the resting position on the home row, but they are close enough for a command you will be executing often. Crating a key-map is an optimization problem between memorability and ergonomics.

Vim command layout is not perfect, the worst offender in my opinion is $ (move cursor to the end of the line), which is commonly needed, but somewhat hard to reach.

HOWEVER - when you start to use an surviving piece of still used old software, a bit of humility goes a long way. Not because software or designers were necessarily better in the past, but the reason that the software is still in use is probably because there are some benefits to it. So learn the defaults first, modify later when you understand them.

> they are close enough for a command you will be executing often

Right, just like w/b are "close enough" outside the home row completely

> but the reason that the software is still in use is probably because there are some benefits to it.

You forgot to connect this principle to this discussion. How does it make the defaults good to support your faulty conclusion that you need to learn them first?

> Right, just like w/b are "close enough" outside the home row completely

Yes, they are close enough, and w/b are executed often.

> How does it make the defaults good to support your faulty conclusion that you need to learn them first?

You need to at least study them because assuming a priori that they are either good or "universally bad" is a faulty conclusion - and some stuff doesn't become obvious until you use them for some time.

When you start learning VIM, you will be faster with arrow keys, because you are used to them from other programs. When you get enough muscle memory, you may discover that there is some value in having somewhere near where your fingers rest on the keyboard - or maybe you will still find that you are faster with arrow keys - whatever the conclusion, it can not be made objectively before you have enough proficiency with both.

That is absolutely not a faulty conclusion in any objective sense!

Now, you get to say it is faulty, and when one thinks about it for a minute, that idea packs a whole lot less punch.

Just want to dilute some unnecessary implied authority out of this otherwise interesting discussion.

Frankly, I always learn the defaults for the high value idea of reducing my overall configuration and maintenance workload!

Secondly, when I communicate workload to others, I don't have to do as much because the defaults are in place and useful.

These days, I tend to run defaults everywhere I can. Doing this means I do not have to a ton of configuration when setting up new environments.

I have also found those defaults do make a lot of sense. Maybe not the absolute peak sense, but more than enough.

I end up able to move and do a lot very reasonably quickly.

I also find my skills do not need to refresh as often too.

In any case there is plenty of room to disagree here, sans the idea of someone's conclusion being " faulty.

> and when one thinks about it for a minute

... one still can't correct the fault. You haven't answered the question of the original disconnect in arguments.

Your new arguments aren't relevant either since they're also NOT connected to the original re. bad defaults. You can have bad defaults that aren't there for any good reason and still think that reducing maintenance is more valuable! Fine, but that's a different argument!

I am not sure we are always talking about bad defaults.

That needs evaluation, and that need to be done in context.

In many cases, the defaults are not bad. One finds that out by working with them.

Really, I just don't feel "faulty" makes any sense.

If anything, it is more establishing a baseline.

Whether someone bothers with defeats first is debatable. I am on the work with them first side for what should be obvious reasons.

Passersby can arrive at their own conclusions and life carries on.

Re: still think reducing config and maintenance...

Yup. I have shown it many times. This also depends on context. For most of my career, no brainer.

and then we have C-n C-p of emacs. it should come with a health hazard warning.

Haha, yeah, that's way more atrocious, the ergonomic reaper of bad mnemonics of next/previous line sweeping again...

I don’t mind it, because I don’t use it that much. And when I do, I move my whole hand to use the index fingers. I mostly use isearch and imenu.

which even then is horrendous ergonomics.

It makes a lot of sense as they are on the home row... Via this argument you could suggest moving it to `jkl;` in order to minimise movement further.

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