5 ms·
they were designed around the constraints of slow teletype machines and slow 300 baud modems. they make no sense as a UI until you take into account how long yo
by ZenPsycho 9y ago
they were designed around the constraints of slow teletype machines and slow 300 baud modems. they make no sense as a UI until you take into account how long you used to need to wait for a computer to respond
- DennisP 9y agoA modal editor is not necessarily less efficient in keystrokes than one using control keys; modal just means you don't have to hold your control keys down while completing the command. Using keyboard commands is often faster than pointing with a mouse, if you take advantage of structures in the text; e.g. "select everything inside the parens." And if you're doing that all day, it becomes second nature to build macros on the fly.
- ZenPsycho 9y agoLess efficient in keystrokes? who said anything about that?
- DennisP 9y agoIf you use a keyboard-based editor, presumably one that takes fewer keystrokes is a better UI, other things being equal. (There's also learning curve to consider but everyone has their own tradeoff on that.) Of course there are also mouse-based editors, which my second paragraph addresses.