Bill Joy used an ADM 3A[1] terminal, and looking at the keyboard layout explains vi's key mappings almost entirely.
There are arrow keys printed on HJKL (accessed via control), escape is left of Q, control is left of A, and colon has a dedicated key rather than being shift+semicolon.
Another tidbit is that the home key is also used for tilde, which explains its association with the home directory.
There are arrow keys printed on HJKL (accessed via control), escape is left of Q, control is left of A, and colon has a dedicated key rather than being shift+semicolon.
Another tidbit is that the home key is also used for tilde, which explains its association with the home directory.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#/media/File:KB_Terminal...