[robomartin]

> Seems to be a lot of anger in there.

Today. Sure. Imagine my surprise when I see yet another bullshit vim article on HN, this one now saying "don't use the hjkl" keys. When will the madness stop?

Newbie programmers reading HN actually need to hear from someone who clearly sees that the emperor has no clothes. Some look at HN as the reference by which they ought to shape their learning and careers. There's a definite pro-vim bend here. And it's all bullshit.

If your goal is to be an entrepreneur, focus on the stuff that actually matters and is many orders of magnitude more signifiant than a ridiculous text editor from an era when keyboards had letters, numbers and three or four extra buttons.

If you want to be a fast data entry operator, definitely spend months getting good at vim.

Better yet, buy one of those single-hand chord-based text entry keypads and modify vim to work with it. You'll be able to type faster and with only one hand. Not sure if the work will have any quality at all or if it will be bug free or if you will be building anything anyone wants or if it will be profitable, but it will be awesome to behold.

[jodrellblank]

Single handed chording is not for speed, it's much quicker to alternate fingers of each hand because you can be moving one into position while pressing another. Chording is also slowed down by having to clearly release all the keys between keypresses, where normal keyboards can have some overlap as long as the sequence is still clear. Also reducing 10 possible inputs down to 5.

If you want to type significantly faster English text, stenography looks like the best approach by a long shot. Not so good for symbols though.

/ off topic.

[robomartin]

I play classical guitar and piano, you don't have to convince me of that. I was being a little (al lot?) sarcastic.