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"I don't want to try i3 or Vim. What's the point using less of the mouse? Such a waste of time!" That was me, 6 years ago. My colleagues were pushing me to try
by thanato0s 6y ago
"I don't want to try i3 or Vim. What's the point using less of the mouse? Such a waste of time!"
That was me, 6 years ago. My colleagues were pushing me to try the tools they were already using for years. They are very good developers, so at the end they convinced me to look at them.
I had to admit I was wrong.
I fell in love with these tools. From there, I built my system step by step, configured it as I wanted, according to my own needs. I had the feeling that I was more efficient with it, but more importantly I really enjoyed using it.
Fast-forward 2 years ago. An idea popped up in my mind: what about writing a book to pass on all the knowledge I had about this kind of mouseless development environment? What about enabling every developer to build their own system if they wanted to?
After shortening a trip in Asia beginning of 2020 because of Covid-19, I came back in Berlin without any job or even a flat, only some clothes and my old Lenovo x220. Fortunately, I found a temporary place to live where I decided to write this book.
I've spent hundreds of hours on it, and now I'm really proud to finally release Building Your Mouseless Development Environment, where I explain in detail how to build a similar system to the one I use every day. This system is based on Arch Linux, i3, Neovim, Zsh, and tmux.
The goal is not to impose a particular workflow; I tried to explain every single shell command and piece of configuration for the readers to be able to shape their systems to their own needs.
If you're curious, you can read the first 30 pages of the book, including the whole table of content there: https://matthieucneude.com/building_mouseless_environment_sample.pdf https://matthieucneude.com/building_mouseless_environment_sa....
If you want to know how this system looks, I've made a short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67lbLKTm91U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67lbLKTm91U) describing the one we build in the book.
Last thing: If you already know and use all these tools, you won't learn much from the book I'm afraid.
Any feedback, positive or negative, is welcome!
- ryan-duve 6y ago> If you already know and use all these tools, you won't learn much from the book I'm afraid. Hah! If I kept count of every time I heard that about Vim, and then went ahead and read the article and learned yet another new thing about Vim, well, I'd be getting pretty good at Vim... Don't sell yourself short. Even just seeing how others use the same software you use can be eye opening. I'm going through the linked PDF now. One question: what did you use to make the book itself? I noticed the links in the chapter don't work, at least in Firefox's PDF reader, so if that is unexpected it might be a point to improve.
- thanato0s 6y agoI used Pandoc for the PDF; the links don't work because it's a sample. They work in the real book. About selling myself short: you're probably right. I'm struggling with imposter syndrome, like many, so I've a tendency to do that. At the same time, I'm trying to be honest and I don't want to deceive people.
- throwaway888abc 6y agoLooks great and helpful! Will read the sample more over weekend. Just sidenote: You should put some sort of newsletter box there. Send some tips and occasional promotions -> more sales.
- thanato0s 6y agoThanks! I had a newsletter, and my subscribers were super helpful. Seriously, without them, I wouldn't have finish the book. I thought about keeping the newsletter, but I already had one for my blog. So I simply asked them to switch from one newsletter to the other. I'm not sure it was a wise decision, but maintaining two newsletter, a blog, and a book was a bit too much for me. I'm still thinking launching a newsletter about mouseless tools though, with tips and tricks; maybe later.
- madhadron 6y agoI was fully mouseless with a tiling window manager (larswm) back in the 1990's. It was very nice, but these days I am very happy with my mouse and graphical tools. Maybe it's senility.
- mssundaram 6y agoFor all my years as a developer I've used a dark terminal and vim theme, until last weekend I just couldn't focus with it anymore. Happy with a light theme for the first time in my life
- TimTheTinker 6y agoI think there really is something to switching things around every once in a while — color themes, lighting, even where I’m sitting and which way I’m facing. I think part of is is that varying my environment keeps me more conscious of what I’m doing and helps me avoid falling into ruts of behavior.
- thanato0s 6y agoI think that's true. It's always good to explore new ways, especially the ones you don't agree with. Even if you still disagree at the end, I'm sure you'll learn something. I tried Ubuntu a couple of months ago, as well as other distros (elementaryOS, Linux Mint, and Manjaro). For Ubuntu, it's better than before. These distros had some interesting ideas, but I'm still very happy with my system :D
- thanato0s 6y agoChange is part of life, isn't it? That was deep, I know :D Seriously, maybe I'll write in 10 years "I was wrong: just install Ubuntu and you'll be happy". It will be a very short book though... but it's good to change and not staying in our little bubble.
- surajs 6y agohate to be the devil's advocate, but could you throw some numbers about how your productivity or skill set improved as a direct result of not using the mouse?
- thanato0s 6y agoI think it's good to be the devil's advocate. Different opinions are great to ask questions about our own. I don't have any number, that's true. But I know that I enjoy using this system way more than any other I tried (including many "easy-to-use" Linux distros, Windows, or macOS). As a result, when I discover this way of working, I began to participate way more in open source projects. In general, I didn't only like the result of what I was doing, I liked the way too. It changed everything for me. I don't think we should always focus on the tools but more what we're creating with them. But if you use tools you truly enjoy using, I'm sure your productivity will increase as well. This book is not to impose a system to anybody, it's more to dive into Linux and another way of working. That's why I explain everything in details: for anybody to shape their system and swap their tools as much as they want.
- the_svd_doctor 6y agoGreat read. I like the style. Looking forward to the complete version.
- thanato0s 6y agoThanks! The complete version is available :D
- serf 6y agoyour explanation as to why the book isn't 'free or open source' is an explanation that you need money to continue the endeavor while living life successfully. This makes one feel like a broken record, but this compels me to mention that there are major differences between 'gratis' and 'libre'.[0] Open-source/free and for-profit are not at odds with each other. They describe different ideas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre
- glangdale 6y agoThis gets explained a lot; what doesn't get explained as much is how folks can continue to make money for their work in the "libre" world. It's certainly possible - dual licensing, services, premium editions, physical books, etc., and it's not a bad thing. But my guess is that a "libre" version of this guy's book would rapidly turn into a "gratis" version of it too - a "good enough" PDF would get passed around and ultimately be the main way most people would see his stuff.
- glangdale 6y agoI might add that 90% of the situations where I've thought about this in a software context as well have been "libre" -> "gratis" more or less inevitably. Again, there are exceptions, but it's surprising how many people are happy to take something and run with it, no support, no "enhanced edition", no training, etc.
- hurflmurfl 6y agoI wouldn't say it's surprising at all.
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoDo we actually know this, for sure? Obviously, it seems like common sense, but there's a similar argument about piracy, and an opposing position that piracy never managed to kill the industries it was apparently a threat to — if anything (so the argument goes), it might have even boosted them. I've bought physical books in the past, even though they were open source. I might also spend money on a digital open source book for various reasons, some of which you mention. It's likely that an author won't make as much direct income from an open-sourced book, but they might make 'enough', even before you consider indirect income.
- mewse 6y agoI have used (and still use) pretty much this same mouseless setup on both my main dev machines; I love it. I just wanted to mention that a few years ago I swapped over to dwm from i3. If you haven't tried dwm before (it seems relatively little-known these days), then it might be worth spending an afternoon trying it out to see whether it suits your workflow as well as it does mine! It's a lot more opinionated than i3, but if its opinions happen to match yours then it requires even fewer keypresses to zip windows around!
- felixhummel 6y agoYour video was a little too long for my taste. You maybe could create a shorter video showing the full speed of productivity gained by getting rid of the mouse. I imagine some workflow every programmer does all the time: - read code - check docs - write code - test and look at logs I use the keyboard for 80% of my work and regularly people (including devs) are in awe of the speed of my movements. I would even go so far and say that it improves Flow (psychology) by reducing mental overhead (muscle memory). Best wishes! :)
- thanato0s 6y agoThanks for your wishes :) That's a good point. To me, the speed is not the first appeal for this kind of system, but more the flow as you say, and it's difficult to demonstrate that on a video :D but I'll think about that for sure.
- Multicomp 6y agoAny chance of having this uploaded to lulu or similar for print on demand copies?