5 ms·

There's a nice post by Jeff Atwood from 2008 that says this is crap for modern systems, but he does a nice job of putting it in historical context. There's jus

by gacba 15y ago

There's a nice post by Jeff Atwood from 2008 that says this is crap for modern systems, but he does a nice job of putting it in historical context. There's just no way going to the File menu, scrolling down to Print and then clicking is faster than "Ctrl-P" (or Cmd-P) with your left hand. Link: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/revisiting-keyboard-vs-the-mouse-pt-1.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/revisiting-keyboard...

CJefferson 15y ago
Possibly for print, but then again I don't press print very often. For scrolling down a couple of pages, copying 3 lines of code, moving back up, pasting, and then changing a couple of characters, I actually believe I am faster with a mouse than keyboard, after quite a bit of trying to master vim.
- seabee 15y ago
  m' "For scrolling down a couple of pages," CTRL-B and j several times (vs. scrollbar/scroll wheel) "copying 3 lines of code," 3yy (vs. select block, right-click -> 'Copy') "moving back up," '' (vs. scrolling) "pasting," p (vs. right-click > 'Paste') "and then changing a couple of characters," (depends on the text) "I actually believe I am faster with a mouse than keyboard, after quite a bit of trying to master vim." I would humbly suggest the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, especially the use of marks and (unmentioned here) macros or the '.' repeat command.
  - frelpen 15y ago
    "3yy (vs. select block, right-click -> 'Copy')" Yeah, but then you're stuck counting lines. Whereas with a mouse, you just click and drag exactly what you want. "p (vs. right-click > 'Paste')" This is more difficult if you've copied whole lines but want to paste inside a line or replace text with your paste. I love me some vim, but I do think it's easy to think we're faster than we are. I wonder if I recorded myself and then watched it if I'd think I was as fast as I feel that I am.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      V[movement]y
    - seabee 15y ago
      > Yeah, but then you're stuck counting lines. :set relativenumber > This is more difficult if you've copied whole lines but want to paste inside a line I agree, but the case where I want to copy multiple lines and have the first line start in the middle of a line is very rare in the languages I use. > or replace text with your paste That's what Visual mode is for. Personally, I find pressing Shift-V then j a few times is usually easier for line selection than acquiring the left line-selection margin or finding the end of the text. In these cases I wouldn't say it's faster as much as I would consistent and easier. I do find myself having to clean up slight mistakes more often with mousing than I do vim commands.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    As opposed to: point-click-drag, CMD-X, scroll, point-click, CMD-V Or for replacing a word at an arbitrary location with other text: scroll, point-double-click, type. Eschewing a tool for "purity's" sake is not a virtue.
- Tomis 15y ago
  Alt+Tab. Ctrl+F. Ctrl+Home/End. Page Up/page down. Ctrl + F5 (or whatever your build/execute key combo is). And so on.
- sltkr 15y ago
  Scrolling and selecting with the mouse I can see, but do you actually copy and paste with the mouse too (i.e. through the context menu, or with the copy/paste buttons on the toolbar, if there is one)? When I work with the mouse, I use my right hand (on the mouse) to select and my left hand (on the keyboard) to cut, copy and paste. A more reasonable example than using Ctrl-P to Print is Ctrl-S to Save, I think. It's so much easier to hit Ctrl-S when you already have your left hand on the keyboard than using the mouse, and frankly I see no reason to ever remove my left hand from the keyboard.
  - dexen 15y ago
    Acme uses three-button mouse for copy/cut/paste, selecting text, searching, following hyperlinks and executing commands. It has `steep learning curve', steeper than VIM anyway to become comfortable, but pays off handsomly in the end. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) Usage for cut/paste: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2658527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2658527
- ahi 15y ago
  2 years ago I had a class where the lecturer was working in a visual ide. I'm not that good with vim, but it was painful to follow along. Half my time was spent waiting and watching him click around. 1 year ago I was teaching a class and had to give up vim. It was too quick for people to follow.
  - underwater 15y ago
    Vim doesn't give many cues as to what commands are being issued. If (using the previous example) you yank three lines then passive observer has no idea that anything has happened. That would be confusing for anyone. I'm in my fourth week of vim after using Netbeans for years. I'm still waiting for these magical performance improvements. I think that good, consistent keyboard shortcuts are useful but completely ignoring the existence of modern GUIs and the mouse is just stubborn.
- pacala 15y ago
  shift + arrow works like a mouse, and you are not stuck in counting vim land.
  - jff 15y ago
    Then you just get stuck holding down shift and the arrow key while auto-repeat ticks out the desired region... when you could have clicked at the start, held the button down, and immediately moved the mouse cursor to the end of the block you want to select.
dexen 15y ago
If executing `Print' command is your top priority, you're a Federal Reserve employee, not an enterpreneur/programmer/tech enthusiast.</sarcasm> Thinking, reading & browsing, writting -- those should take the most time in front of the computer, in that order. If you write more than think, you're either Don Knuth (hi there, Professor!) or using some VisualBasic 1.0 Verbose Edition. If you write more than read, you're working on a three-file project that only calls a few stdlib functions. My point? That's not where the money is. What you want is to make software for an pre-existing ecosystem of other software. Re-use code, build upon ready-made libraries and services. You get to think of how to interact with them, you get to browse the docs, jump around code a bit, pinpoint the right place and then type. Just a little, because you're using a high-level language. Thinking? No idea how that interacts with the mouse. Except that being able to hold a snack or mug in the other hand helps sometimes ;-) Browsing? Sure there is Vimperator [1], but most of the time you want mouse to browse docs and code efficiently. You want to use it profficiently, and you want an editor that treats your code (and possibly data, like Adminer [2] does for SQL DBs) as hypertext. Occasional ^F, sure, but that doesn't dominate. You can search with mouse, it's faster. Programming? You work on various chunks of code or data. A block, a line, a word, a tag (if you are an XML person). All that's fast to indicate, search, select, copy, move etc. with mouse and proper editor [3] that doesn't force you to go through menus or toolbars. You want to click on the right FILE:LINE in compiler's error output and see it in editor, not keyboard through the output or manually input FILE:LINE it into editor when it's right there on your screen. Of course keyboarding feels like it's doing that faster, but see the original article about why appearances are misleading here. And yes, I've seen folks still using the old right-click, pop-up-menu, going all the way to `Cut' and then right-click, pop-up-menu, all the way to `Paste'. That's kind of backward and bloody sad, but not by itself a counter-argument against fast work with mouse. ---- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimperator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimperator [2] http://www.adminer.org/ http://www.adminer.org/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)

by gacba 15y ago

CJefferson 15y ago

Possibly for print, but then again I don't press print very often. For scrolling down a couple of pages, copying 3 lines of code, moving back up, pasting, and then changing a couple of characters, I actually believe I am faster with a mouse than keyboard, after quite a bit of trying to master vim.

seabee 15y ago
m' "For scrolling down a couple of pages," CTRL-B and j several times (vs. scrollbar/scroll wheel) "copying 3 lines of code," 3yy (vs. select block, right-click -> 'Copy') "moving back up," '' (vs. scrolling) "pasting," p (vs. right-click > 'Paste') "and then changing a couple of characters," (depends on the text) "I actually believe I am faster with a mouse than keyboard, after quite a bit of trying to master vim." I would humbly suggest the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, especially the use of marks and (unmentioned here) macros or the '.' repeat command.
- frelpen 15y ago
  "3yy (vs. select block, right-click -> 'Copy')" Yeah, but then you're stuck counting lines. Whereas with a mouse, you just click and drag exactly what you want. "p (vs. right-click > 'Paste')" This is more difficult if you've copied whole lines but want to paste inside a line or replace text with your paste. I love me some vim, but I do think it's easy to think we're faster than we are. I wonder if I recorded myself and then watched it if I'd think I was as fast as I feel that I am.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    V[movement]y
  - seabee 15y ago
    > Yeah, but then you're stuck counting lines. :set relativenumber > This is more difficult if you've copied whole lines but want to paste inside a line I agree, but the case where I want to copy multiple lines and have the first line start in the middle of a line is very rare in the languages I use. > or replace text with your paste That's what Visual mode is for. Personally, I find pressing Shift-V then j a few times is usually easier for line selection than acquiring the left line-selection margin or finding the end of the text. In these cases I wouldn't say it's faster as much as I would consistent and easier. I do find myself having to clean up slight mistakes more often with mousing than I do vim commands.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  As opposed to: point-click-drag, CMD-X, scroll, point-click, CMD-V Or for replacing a word at an arbitrary location with other text: scroll, point-double-click, type. Eschewing a tool for "purity's" sake is not a virtue.
Tomis 15y ago
Alt+Tab. Ctrl+F. Ctrl+Home/End. Page Up/page down. Ctrl + F5 (or whatever your build/execute key combo is). And so on.
sltkr 15y ago
Scrolling and selecting with the mouse I can see, but do you actually copy and paste with the mouse too (i.e. through the context menu, or with the copy/paste buttons on the toolbar, if there is one)? When I work with the mouse, I use my right hand (on the mouse) to select and my left hand (on the keyboard) to cut, copy and paste. A more reasonable example than using Ctrl-P to Print is Ctrl-S to Save, I think. It's so much easier to hit Ctrl-S when you already have your left hand on the keyboard than using the mouse, and frankly I see no reason to ever remove my left hand from the keyboard.
- dexen 15y ago
  Acme uses three-button mouse for copy/cut/paste, selecting text, searching, following hyperlinks and executing commands. It has `steep learning curve', steeper than VIM anyway to become comfortable, but pays off handsomly in the end. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) Usage for cut/paste: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2658527 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2658527
ahi 15y ago
2 years ago I had a class where the lecturer was working in a visual ide. I'm not that good with vim, but it was painful to follow along. Half my time was spent waiting and watching him click around. 1 year ago I was teaching a class and had to give up vim. It was too quick for people to follow.
- underwater 15y ago
  Vim doesn't give many cues as to what commands are being issued. If (using the previous example) you yank three lines then passive observer has no idea that anything has happened. That would be confusing for anyone. I'm in my fourth week of vim after using Netbeans for years. I'm still waiting for these magical performance improvements. I think that good, consistent keyboard shortcuts are useful but completely ignoring the existence of modern GUIs and the mouse is just stubborn.
pacala 15y ago
shift + arrow works like a mouse, and you are not stuck in counting vim land.
- jff 15y ago
  Then you just get stuck holding down shift and the arrow key while auto-repeat ticks out the desired region... when you could have clicked at the start, held the button down, and immediately moved the mouse cursor to the end of the block you want to select.

dexen 15y ago

If executing `Print' command is your top priority, you're a Federal Reserve employee, not an enterpreneur/programmer/tech enthusiast.</sarcasm> Thinking, reading & browsing, writting -- those should take the most time in front of the computer, in that order. If you write more than think, you're either Don Knuth (hi there, Professor!) or using some VisualBasic 1.0 Verbose Edition. If you write more than read, you're working on a three-file project that only calls a few stdlib functions. My point? That's not where the money is. What you want is to make software for an pre-existing ecosystem of other software. Re-use code, build upon ready-made libraries and services. You get to think of how to interact with them, you get to browse the docs, jump around code a bit, pinpoint the right place and then type. Just a little, because you're using a high-level language. Thinking? No idea how that interacts with the mouse. Except that being able to hold a snack or mug in the other hand helps sometimes ;-) Browsing? Sure there is Vimperator [1], but most of the time you want mouse to browse docs and code efficiently. You want to use it profficiently, and you want an editor that treats your code (and possibly data, like Adminer [2] does for SQL DBs) as hypertext. Occasional ^F, sure, but that doesn't dominate. You can search with mouse, it's faster. Programming? You work on various chunks of code or data. A block, a line, a word, a tag (if you are an XML person). All that's fast to indicate, search, select, copy, move etc. with mouse and proper editor [3] that doesn't force you to go through menus or toolbars. You want to click on the right FILE:LINE in compiler's error output and see it in editor, not keyboard through the output or manually input FILE:LINE it into editor when it's right there on your screen. Of course keyboarding feels like it's doing that faster, but see the original article about why appearances are misleading here. And yes, I've seen folks still using the old right-click, pop-up-menu, going all the way to `Cut' and then right-click, pop-up-menu, all the way to `Paste'. That's kind of backward and bloody sad, but not by itself a counter-argument against fast work with mouse. ---- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimperator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimperator [2] http://www.adminer.org/ http://www.adminer.org/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)