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by bradwood 2448 days ago
Seeing how someone drives an editor, IDE or cli is often a strong indicator of how good they are... Watching people arrow around in vim often gives me all the information I need when interviewing...
2 comments

One of the top two or three developers I've ever known used arrows in vim.

Turns out that vim or any editor usage is only a (poor) signal and does not inform an observer on a candidate's product knowledge, arcane technical knowledge, past successful launches that a candidate has led, or helps glean any insight into the zounds of hard won battle scars in project design, system design, networking, concurrency, state management, etc.

Yeah how dare people use the keys specifically design to move around a text editor! Just use hjkl like they did on some machine decades ago because it had a limited keyboard.
The ADM-3A terminal on which Bill Joy developed vi had cursor control keys, ctrl+hjkl.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A

I agree that vi/vim mastery or choice of editor has nothing to do with programming skill.

“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid” — Han Solo, condemning Luke’s use of VI
I read this as "hotkey religions" which actually fits haha
Han Solo was killed by a hokey religion and an ancient weapon.
Oh I love that number pad. And the whole thing is pretty stylish.