I read a lot about vim and emacs and how they make you much more productive, but I didn't know which one to pick. Finally when I decided to teach myself common lisp, the decision was straight forward: everybody says that there's no better editor for common lisp, than emacs + slime. So I started with emacs tutorial and immediately I ran into something that seems very unproductive to me. I'm talking about key bindings for cursor keys:
forward/backward: Ctrl+f, Ctrl+b
up/down: Ctrl+p, Ctrl+n
I find these bindings very strange. I assume that fingers should be on their home rows (am I wrong here?), so to move cursor forward or backward I should use my left index finger and for up and down right pinky and right index fingers. When working with any of Windows IDEs and text editors to navigate text I usually place my right hand in a position so that my thumb is on the right ctrl and my index, ring and middle fingers are on the cursor keys. From this position it is very easy and comfortable to move cursor: I can do one-character moves with my 3 right fingers, or I can press ctrl with my right thumb and do word-moves instead. Also I can press shift with my left pinky and do single-character or word selections. Also it is a very comfortable position to reach PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, Delete and Backspace keys with my right hand. So I have even more navigation and selection possibilities. I understand that the decision not to use cursor keys is to allow one to use emacs to connect to remote terminal sessions, where these keys are not supported, but I still find the choice of cursor keys very unfortunate. Why not to use j, k, i, l instead? This way I could use my right hand without much finger stretching. So how is emacs more productive? What am I doing wrong?
