I said "useless", but only because johncoltrane said "worthless" earlier :) But I understand it as "learn to be effective with other movement commands, don't concentrate on hjkl" - and that was my message too.
Anyway, I don't know whether arrows are faster or not. For me they most probably wouldn't, for some people they could be. However, for me right now, when I know and use other commands much more than arrows/hjkl, learning the former would be simply a case of diminishing returns.
I think that proficient use of vi-style keybinding means that movements by one letter are the rarest ones. I don't know, but I feel that I don't use them more that a few times per hour at most. I have macros, scripts and !programs to use, not to mention other movements. And besides, look - Emacs doesn't have hjkl, has wWetc. and is not slower than VIM! (except with startup).
Also I think that insisting on hjkl efficiency even without any proof is not the best thing to do to attract more users to VIM ;)
That's certainly fair. I wasn't trying to come off as a hjkl evangelist, I just thought that the terms 'worthless' and 'useless' were way too strong to support.
I guess I misunderstood the point you guys were making, because I certainly agree that someone learning Vim should learn to be effective with other movement commands, and not concentrate on hjkl. The value of Vim is not just being able to move around text with a standard one character up/down/left/right movement, hands on home row or not.
Anyway, I don't know whether arrows are faster or not. For me they most probably wouldn't, for some people they could be. However, for me right now, when I know and use other commands much more than arrows/hjkl, learning the former would be simply a case of diminishing returns.
I think that proficient use of vi-style keybinding means that movements by one letter are the rarest ones. I don't know, but I feel that I don't use them more that a few times per hour at most. I have macros, scripts and !programs to use, not to mention other movements. And besides, look - Emacs doesn't have hjkl, has wWetc. and is not slower than VIM! (except with startup).
Also I think that insisting on hjkl efficiency even without any proof is not the best thing to do to attract more users to VIM ;)