Dvorak hotkey remapping in vim, worth it?
I was a Dvorak + Vim user for many years and ... remapping the keys just isn't worth it. I had them remapped for some time.
The issue I ran into was that I became dependent on the remappings. As anyone who's ever tried to switch layouts knows, typing is muscle memory. Effectively my brain was trying to wire three kinds of cursor movement modes:
Dvorak Vim with remappings (when I'm on my own machine)
Dvorak Vim with no remappings (when I'm on someone else's machine and have the keyboard remapped)
Qwerty Vim (when I'm on someone else's machine and don't have the keyboard remapped)
This is, simply, too much. Your life as a programmer is hard enough without you having to learn three different spatial layouts for text editing commands.
I just didn't do any remappings, and used the existing keys as they were defined by default, and basically re-learnt all the combinations, and navigation with dvorak layout. And i found that it works just as good, and have had no issues. But then, I've been using dvorak since 2000, and learnt all the navigations in dvorak as I was learning all the command line tools in college.
I agree with ldigas.
I was a Dvorak and ViM user for almost a year. I type on qwerty between 100-120 WPM. I had 'carpal tunnel'. Even after a year on Dvorak, I was nowhere near the speed on regular typing, and I was purely touch typing. Any effects on my pain level were simply because I was taking longer breaks in not using the keys, or being slower on typing.
No matter what you do, ViM was not meant for Dvorak. It just isn't quite the same. I don't remember specific examples, but I was always looking for a way to kludge it together to make it 'feel' correct.
Also, dvorak layout for programming is even more difficult to get used to. I got used to it, but the symbol key placement for programming in qwerty is nicer than it was in Dvorak.
I know you aren't asking for this advice. I'm sure there are people successfully using dvorak and progrmaming out there. But as a programmer who has to work on code, other peoples computers (people will NOT like you switching their keyboard layout), it just isn't worth the time and effort.
They didn't intentionally cripple the typewriter to slow people down.