[bharrison]

True, Hackers hate changing settings.

Imagine if those precious keystrokes wasted on setting a keyboard layout could instead be utilized usefully. Say, to post some cloying, whiny critique of someone else's work, wherein one might go so far as invoking their diety in the hopes it might stem the tide of what, I guess, must be a massive recent influx of vi(m)-keybinding-based projects.

[Faark]

Having settings is nice, but I'm not gonna spend a lot of time configuring something that I'm not yet sure will even be useful to me. Power users of / users already invested in your product will use settings to great effect, sure. But defaults matter, if you target anyone else.

Actually, you probably understand that on a deeper level. Since we are not talking about a product where "you can configure vim bindings in the settings". Its just that you personally appear to like this default and seem offended by others preferring sth else.

[usrbinbash]

The problem with defaults is, someone won't like them anyway, so trying to make them likeable to everyone, isn't going to happen, no matter how hard we try.

Using ViM as an example, using the keys that are prevalent on a US keyboard, was a sensible approach when it was developed, and since remapping the keys is probably one of the easiest things to do, it's also not an issue. In fact, writing a simple remap into a text file is easier than remapping keys in most "modern" editors, where the option to do so usually lives behind 2 sub-menus hidden behind a hamburger-button, and forcing me to scroll down an endless list that may or may not have a search function. And good luck if I want to export/import my config, or, god forbid, check it into a repo.

> But defaults matter, if you target anyone else.

Products have to target an audience and cater to them. That's how we ended up with alot of the modern webapps sharing the same usability problems, because "being like everyone else because that's what the audience is familiar with" encourages stagnancy, not evolution.

FOSS Tools on the other hand, have the freedom to explore ideas. If people don't like these ideas, they don't have to use the tools.

[mattigames]

if Vim had the very same problem for US keyboard layouts it would have never become the standard choice for "hackers" (e.g. in a parallel universe where Vim was created by a Japanese for Japanese keyboards), so yeah, in general hackers hate when their tools don't work out of the box, hackers expect the very basics of any tool to work out of the box, changing settings should be a step to accommodate it to your liking, not to fix basic functionality.

[tourmalinetaco]

> if Vim had the very same problem for US keyboard layouts it would have never become the standard choice for "hackers"

Not necessarily, since it’d just be a matter of popularizing Vim + the community’s preferred shortcuts as a starter instead.

> in general hackers hate when their tools don't work out of the box

Indeed we do. However, we don’t give up on something if it doesn’t work. We simply hack at it until it works how we want ;)

[mattigames]

> Not necessarily, since it’d just be a matter of popularizing Vim + the community’s preferred shortcuts as a starter instead.

There isn't that many software dev tools were a small variation in key bindings (or some similar small change) became ubiquious and propelled the popularity by adapting it to the local needs of American developers/IT (keyboard layout in this case), it's a chicken and egg problem because if Vim wasn't that popular there wouldn't be much interest in creation preferred shortcuts, so I conclude that what you suggested is not what would have happened.

[pineaux]

I love the true scotsman arguments in this subthread. Defining "hackers" as this or that.