3 ms·
Use more of your brain while programming by using less mouse
- gte910h 16y agoI remember in User Interface design (2002, Georgia Tech) the timing diagrams of menus vs hotkeys in many studies. Hotkeys took much less time in the perception of the users, but actually took more real time in measurements. Apparently time "stops" while the user attempts to recall the correct keys to press, however they notice the time that is required to move the mouse and operate the menus. That doesn't mean all hotkeys are bad, but it always makes me wonder how much is perception and how much is real speedup in these types of articles (I use gVim as an editor, even in XCode, don't portray me as a menu jocky in replies).
- _delirium 16y agoI can definitely buy that for occasional tasks. The times that menus really irk me are when I have to do something frequently, and I'm clicking through to the same damn dialog-popped-up-from-a-nested-menu several times an hour.
- AlexHung 16y agoAs I mentioned in the footnotes, the improvement one gets depend on his/her level in the Dreyfus Model. When I started off using keyboard shortcuts more, I definitely encountered the initial slow down in recalling which keys. But once I internalized a number of most frequently used shortcuts, the time saved are actual as I described in the post.
- gte910h 16y agoI'm sure for frequently used tasks keybinds win, and for very infrequent tasks, menus win. I'm just not sure how to time moderate tasks to learn which is truly faster without actually timing them (nor how to actually time them in a professional, non-labratory setting).