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I think it's not really the ability to type fast, or that you need to be typing all the time, but that when you're in a state of flow, where you have what you w

I think it's not really the ability to type fast, or that you need to be typing all the time, but that when you're in a state of flow, where you have what you want to accomplish and put down on paper/screen clearly in mind, a context switch, even as one as small as from keyboard to mouse, might be slightly hurtful to that state. When I'm in this state, I'm probably writing pseudo-code fairly close to the real language I'm working in, and not worrying too much about errors I'm not seeing, and just trying to quickly correct the errors I do see, such that I can express my intent on screen. Finding missed typos and other errors is for a second pass and with the help of a compiler/interpreter, for code I write in that manner. It may require some additional passes to tweak things that just don't work, as well, but that's fine. The point was to get what was very clearly in my mind transferred to another medium before something caused a corruption of my mental state. That's not to say that's the only way I write. I also often devote time to carefully pondering what's on the screen and how to best interact with it to change it in the way I want, or whether there is a better way to do it entirely and that code should be rewritten. But when I'm trying to get what's in my mind onto the screen, little things like auto-indent and being able to accomplish something while keeping my hands doing what they've been doing all add up to help in small ways.

anigbrowl 5y ago
That's a valuable reason to have strong keyboard bindings. But there are many circumstances in which it is helpful and valuable to be in a state of float, observing your environment while allowing it to operate upon you until the merit of one direction clearly predominates over others. This is how tiny bacteria with flagella operate; they whip their hairs furiously when they want to zoom towards or away from a particular stimulus, but tumble idly in intermediate zones. Having only one mode of operation isn't adaptive.
- kbenson 5y ago
  Definitely. There are advantages to both states, as they're optimized for different things. There are times for information gathering and eventually decision making, and there's times for acting on those decisions. While neither is generally a state of purely that type, there are reasons to believe that the optimal tools for one may not be the same as the optimal tools for another. In that respect it's not whether keyboard binding or mouse context menues are better, it's about providing tools to support both contexts, so the appropriate one can be chosen at the appropriate time.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  FWIW, UX research (perhaps in the 1980s) also suggested that while many people reported "feeling faster" with particular input/editing actions (compared to e.g. using a mouse), in some case the operations were no faster as observed, but they apparently involved enough cognitive load to produce a time blindness in the user.

anigbrowl 5y ago

That's a valuable reason to have strong keyboard bindings. But there are many circumstances in which it is helpful and valuable to be in a state of float, observing your environment while allowing it to operate upon you until the merit of one direction clearly predominates over others. This is how tiny bacteria with flagella operate; they whip their hairs furiously when they want to zoom towards or away from a particular stimulus, but tumble idly in intermediate zones. Having only one mode of operation isn't adaptive.

kbenson 5y ago
Definitely. There are advantages to both states, as they're optimized for different things. There are times for information gathering and eventually decision making, and there's times for acting on those decisions. While neither is generally a state of purely that type, there are reasons to believe that the optimal tools for one may not be the same as the optimal tools for another. In that respect it's not whether keyboard binding or mouse context menues are better, it's about providing tools to support both contexts, so the appropriate one can be chosen at the appropriate time.
a9h74j 5y ago
FWIW, UX research (perhaps in the 1980s) also suggested that while many people reported "feeling faster" with particular input/editing actions (compared to e.g. using a mouse), in some case the operations were no faster as observed, but they apparently involved enough cognitive load to produce a time blindness in the user.