[dragandj]

Home row? I understand you completely: Ctrl+bbdd does what you asked for.

Vim's d2b actually moves far away from the home row (note the "2")!

Not wanting to do the finger acrobatics? I'm even more with you here: I remapped Ctrl and Alt to be just next to space, and space to serve both as space and shift.

And, to point out that vim absolutely requires pinky acrobatics all the time with its reliance on : and ESC, so IMHO it is even more demanding than emacs there.

[lunchboxsushi]

My fingers feel more comfortable by using numbers but also I should mention using relative number line is important to go up and down quickly (pinky on backspace is a bit far vs over 1 key for me to use unlike the distance to :) or holding down ctrl + pnfb. Caps is so close to 'a' that it really doesn't feel strained about 1-3cm movement at most to change modes. Everything is a learning process :) but to say it's more demanding as in quantity sure, however the work that's involved is much less than going a further distance.

and I do believe all the numbers are within home row distance not like <Esc> which way up in the Artic on most keyboards before being remapped.

[swift]

Esc is the bad one in my view, but I never press it at all while using vim. This comes down to two factors:

- I use "jk", typed quickly, to exit insert mode. Most vim users I know use either this or "jj".

- I have rebound Caps Lock to Ctrl, and in the few situations where I would otherwise hit Esc, I hit Ctrl-C, which causes much less strain. (This is technically different than Esc, but the difference doesn't usually matter; if it's necessary, Ctrl-[ functions exactly the same as Esc.)