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That's a weak response because unlike answering a question from a coworker, "moving off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is," the

That's a weak response because unlike answering a question from a coworker, "moving off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is," then moving the cursor are all "perceptual" tasks that most people can do without disturbing the "cognitive" tasks involved in programming or communication. But (zooming out now) many users of Emacs use the mouse a lot and do not make any attempt to keep their hands on the keyboard: in a survey of Emacs users, 80% responded that they use graphical Emacs (Emacs not running in or communicating with a terminal), one of the main advantages of which is that the mouse behaves much like it does in a typical GUI app. I use graphical Emacs exclusively (the code I've written to extend Emacs does not even work right in terminal-based Emacs) and I make extensive use of the mouse, the menu bar and a pop-up menu on my right mouse button. Are you surprised that 80% of Emacs users use graphical Emacs? That is probably because for some unknown reason, users (Emacs users and user in general) who like to always keep their hands on the keyboard are much more vocal than users who alternate frequently between keyboard and a pointing device. One consequence of this is that although VSCode has the majority of the usage share according to all the surveys, there are many more HN comments extolling the benefits of Vim or Emacs than there are pro-VSCode comments.

bachmeier 2y ago
> unlike answering a question from a coworker, "moving off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is," then moving the cursor are all "perceptual" tasks that most people can do without disturbing the "cognitive" tasks involved in programming or communication I explained why $50 million spent measuring how long it takes to do a task isn't measuring the right thing, and therefore doesn't support the claim that users are wrong. You're telling me your opinion, which of course you're entitled to have, but that doesn't fix the flawed claims of the research. > Are you surprised that 80% of Emacs users use graphical Emacs? No. > users who like to always keep their hands on the keyboard are much more vocal than users who alternate frequently between keyboard and a pointing device This has no relevance to my comment, which is that the research didn't measure what it needed to measure, and therefore one should not conclude that users have been proven wrong.

bachmeier 2y ago

> unlike answering a question from a coworker, "moving off the keyboard, grabbing the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is," then moving the cursor are all "perceptual" tasks that most people can do without disturbing the "cognitive" tasks involved in programming or communication I explained why $50 million spent measuring how long it takes to do a task isn't measuring the right thing, and therefore doesn't support the claim that users are wrong. You're telling me your opinion, which of course you're entitled to have, but that doesn't fix the flawed claims of the research. > Are you surprised that 80% of Emacs users use graphical Emacs? No. > users who like to always keep their hands on the keyboard are much more vocal than users who alternate frequently between keyboard and a pointing device This has no relevance to my comment, which is that the research didn't measure what it needed to measure, and therefore one should not conclude that users have been proven wrong.