TIL Vim uses hjkl keys for cursor movement because they doubled as arrows keys on Bill Joy's original keyboard.

catonmat.net

TIL Vim uses hjkl keys for cursor movement because they doubled as arrows keys on Bill Joy's original keyboard.

catonmat.net

Denys Nykula@piefed.social to

Today I Learned@lemmy.worldEnglish · 1 month ago

Here is why vim uses hjkl keys as arrow keys

catonmat.net

I was reading about vim the other day and found out why it used `hjkl` keys as arrow keys. When Bill Joy created the vi text editor he used the ADM-3A terminal, which had the arrows on hjkl keys. Naturally he reused the same keys and the rest is history. Here is how the `hjkl` keys looked. ADM-3A keyboard's hjkl keys...

And the home directory is aliased to ~ in UNIX-like systems because the tilde key doubled as the Home key.

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