I've certainly found this the case when creating new key bindings for Emacs. Of course, this now means that other people have a little bit of trouble using my Emacs because some of the basic key bindings don't work any more and some of them do something new :).
I'm now using this strategy whenever I want to change something like a common command or key binding--essentially anything that is a habit I don't have to think about.
Another thing to note is that it really helps if you come up with the alias or new key combination yourself. I find it takes almost no effort to memorize a key binding I choose myself as opposed to remembering a new one that comes with the tool itself.
Yeah, that's the advice I'd give to people starting out in Emacs too. I didn't use it but somehow got the hang of navigating around with the keyboard anyhow. It's probably because I personally did not use the arrow keys before switching to Emacs--I usually used the mouse.
A bunch of people I know do use the arrow keys to move around, and it's quite a loss. You don't gain that much just by being on the home row, of course, but there is some gain. However, the real win comes when you start using higher-level movement commands and moving by word/line/paragraph/expression/whatever. People used to the arrow keys will not be able to take advantage of these nice commands nearly as easily.
I'm now using this strategy whenever I want to change something like a common command or key binding--essentially anything that is a habit I don't have to think about.
Another thing to note is that it really helps if you come up with the alias or new key combination yourself. I find it takes almost no effort to memorize a key binding I choose myself as opposed to remembering a new one that comes with the tool itself.