I haven't made the jump from arrows to hjkl. My cofounder's keyboard is arrowless, but my HHKB lite still has the arrows. Maybe in another 5 years I'll make the switch.
The hardware mod that made the most difference for me, typing-wise, was rearranging the tops of the keys. I'm not sure this is doable on modern laptop keyboards, but on desktop keyboards it's trivial, and I never realized just how much I looked at the keyboard until it would hurt, and the habit died quickly.
In addition, to deal with the issue that programs others than vi may require the use of arrow keys, I use Autohotkey on Windows to map Caps Lock + hjkl to the arrow keys! Thus, both in vi and outside(, in Word, say), I just use Caps Lock + hjkl to navigate. Thus, I never have to move my hand away from the "home" position to use the arrow keys.
I did that and it is actually incredibly easy to get used to (within a couple of hours). The bigger thing you have to get used to -- and which I suspect most will struggle with -- is not moving around when in insert mode.
hjkl may have started because the Joy was working on an ADM3A that had no home row, but the elegant and efficient consequence is that your hands fingers do not move from typing position.
you just have to map your tab key to escape to get the original layout back[1].
Not using the arrow keys was a no-brainer back in the day of slow dial-up connections. Sending ^[OA over the wire instead of just h was a really big deal and when your connection dropped a byte you ended up with garbage in your files if you used the arrow keys. Having that sort of pain associated with their use has stuck with me ever since.
Yeah, I let hjkl discipline slide for a long time, too; it's damn hard to interrupt a reflexive reach for the easier to align cluster whose labels actually correspond to what you want to do. Here's the part that finally pushed me over: arrow keys can supplement/mirror/tweak anything you find overly awkward, slow, or hard to remember in the "native" form. And you can remap them straight (no prefixes/modifiers) or build something arbitrarily deep and be certain you won't interfere with any other bindings.
See? the arrow key scan become four more user keys, and they have easy to remember direction/orientation if you need it. Having trouble navigating, swapping, and resizing, your layout (and accidentally hosing text with ^w in the wrong mode? I did, but 20 minutes after seeing someone else use a similar setup, I was using my own variant more comfortably than any console window management bindings I'd ever tried before.
tl;dr; Remap the arrow keys from movement to anything you struggle with normally, and be amazed how you survived before your four newest "user" keys were liberated!
(Also, if anyone wants me to, I'd be happy to post my re-binding config lines as a template/sample.)
Does this really make that much difference? I kind of view the hjkl vs arrow keys like I view the standard debate about motion commands vs. the mouse.
Lots of people say they are faster using motion commands, and I know I use search motions 85% of the time. But if I want to go somewhere that's visible on the screen, the mouse is almost always quicker. And I've used vi and derivatives for 20+ years now (although obviously they initially didn't have mouse support :-)).
Similar for hjkl, especially if you use single cell motion mixed with whole page motion (Fn-arrow on a macbook), I just don't see hjkl + ^D^U being quicker. It seems more like something that might be useful every once in a while, but not terribly useful 100% or even 50% of the time.
EDIT: And the book says this:
"type the number of characters or lines you want the cursor to move, followed by h, j, k, or l. This technique cannot be used with the arrow keys: left, right, up, and down."
For me the mouse is never quicker. I think that over time your brain kind of memorizes the number of lines (rows) and characters (columns) available in your screen and it certainly gets to a point where you don't really think about the science behind motions and you end up just using motions defined through past experiences. I amaze myself (and my coworkers) when I apply a seemingly random number to a motion and I end up exactly where I wanted to be. Last time a coworker asked me if I'm a math freak and I did the calculations in my head when doing a complex motion in a second, and even though I answer that I am (jokingly), I know that it's actually just a combination of muscle memory and past memories.
In any case, even though I don't agree with the school that says that to learn vi/vim you should forgo arrow keys and non vim (cmd + s to save, command + left arrow to go the left of the line, etc) key combinations, I think that a major point of inflection while learning the editor is choosing a trick/combination/command that you want to learn because it will increase your productivity and keep forcing it, even if it means not using the arrow keys or other combinations you're not used to, until it becomes second nature. And then do the next one and so on.
For me it's not about wall clock quicker, but perceived quicker. I use a couple of different keyboards throughout the day, and they all have the arrows in slightly different places (more variation than letter keys...) which makes it similar to the mouse...
Namely, the amount of concentration required to hit an arrow or get the mouse to do what I want feels slower because I have to pause my thoughts, rather than just queue up a nerve message to my fingers to "then go over there and...". Stopping the train of thought to manipulate the mouse - which requires a lot more visual feedback and focus than just knowing that the cursor will get there - makes me overall slower because I'm context switching.
It makes some difference. It is worth doing for some comfort and speed. But it isn't true that you can't get by without it. It's just much clumsier than it needs to be.
I'm late responding but I've been trying the arrow keys more because of your comment and many others who use them. In the older *nix and depending on the shell, it seemed they didn't always work. On Ubuntu though, they work great! I might switch to using them, thanks for the tip.
One quick way to change your behaviour is by remapping the arrow keys to a NOOP. Took be about two days of solid coding afterwords to completely change my habits and have been reaping the awards ever since!
