[beaumartinez]

To to keep your fingers on the home row, in order to have better access to all the other keys in your keyboard.

Having your fingers on the arrow keys mean your hand has to travel that much further to type the other keys—making you slower.

[AlexeyBrin]

I've always wondered if the "disable the arrow key" advice given to every VIM novice makes any sense for the user of a 11" - 13" laptop. It was probably a good advice for a classical keyboard, but I find the arrow keys quite handy when I work on a small laptop keyboard.

[Morgawr]

I started seriously using vim around the time I started coding on the go with a very old eeePC (the first model, the absurdly small one). This was around 5-6 years ago probably. Back then I had already used vim before but only as a "normal" text editor, just go into insert mode and move around with arrows.

I was forced to use vim because that old piece of crap PC (I still love it though) wasn't powerful enough to run anything, really, and the screen was super small. I noticed using arrows key was super uncomfortable because yes, they were closer to the actual home row but they were also smaller, clunkier and harder to press. So I decided to force myself to use hjkl and disable arrow keys. It was definitely one of the best decisions of my (coding) life. Just comfortably resting your hands on the home row (either laptop keyboard or normal one) simply makes your typing more relaxed and after the couple of weeks (months?) struggling with left/right (up and down was fairly easy) you really stop noticing it.

Funnily enough, I re-enabled arrow keys a year or so ago and I haven't really felt the temptation to use them anymore.

DISCLAIMER: This turned me into a super slow and awkward typist when I am trying to work on text in an editor that does not support vim mode (like google docs for example). I have several documents around with jjjkkjhjjhjjllljh unfortunately.

[Syssiphus]

It's not so much about speed. It's about comfort.