In Vim, why are the navigation keys HJKL and not JKL;? [closed]

Question

How does this not bother anyone? I used to rebind it but recently I've been trying the standard layout just to see what I'm missing. Isn't it easier to not move your finger to H and then back again to J?

And I know VIM has some ancestor(s) that had the same four keys, but that's not really the reason. VIM didn't have to use those keys.

Answer 1

30 years ago, Vim's author created it because he couldn't run vi on his amiga for licensing reasons. The whole point of the existence of Vim was to provide a convincing vi clone so it uses hjkl, just like the original. Vim evolved quite a lot over time but that primary goal didn't go away. If you don't like hjkl map them to something that makes more sense to you.

It may come as a shock to you, but Vi's (and thus Vim's) use of hjkl for cursor movement has literally nothing to do with touch-typing at all.

For reference:

• Vim uses hjkl because vi did.
• Vi used hjkl because its creator's keyboard didn't have physical cursor keys. Instead, the arrows were printed on the hjkl keys.
• The arrow keys were printed on hjkl because the corresponding control codes all moved the cursor in directions roughly similar to the cursor keys: ^H for "backspace, ^J for "line feed", ^K for "upline", and ^L for "forward space".