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There's a difference between "more efficient" and "easier to learn". You're advocating the latter. This is not a good thing. For example, moving around by usin
by tikhonj 14y ago
There's a difference between "more efficient" and "easier to learn". You're advocating the latter. This is not a good thing.
For example, moving around by using the search feature (at least a well-designed incremental search like Vim or Emacs) is more efficient for longer distance moves (e.g. more than a couple of lines)--it's faster and, more importantly, takes less thought and context switching.
When you have to move to a distinct part of your text file, chances are you know what the content there is. With a command like /, you directly turn that knowledge into efficient movement. With the arrow keys, you have to leave the home row and do a bunch of movements to get where you're going. You have to figure out how to turn the word you want to go to into a bunch of arrow actions. It's even more difficult of your target is off-screen.
Ultimately, a rich set of movement commands you can access without moving your hand is going to be more efficient than using the standard arrow keys. This is particularly true for somewhat semantic commands like moving by block or expression or moving to a word (the command in question here).
Ideally, you want to move around faster with less context switching. Keyboard-oriented editors like Vim and Emacs are much better at this than any other editor I've seen, as long as you learned how to use them properly. This really makes the learning curve more than with it.
- lutusp 14y ago> There's a difference between "more efficient" and "easier to learn". You're advocating the latter. This is not a good thing. You've posed a false dichotomy. Modern editors are both more efficient and easier to learn. > Ideally, you want to move around faster with less context switching. Keyboard-oriented editors like Vim and Emacs are much better at this than any other editor I've seen, as long as you learned how to use them properly. Pico is a keyboard-only editor, and it's easier to navigate, and to use in general. So is every other editor that exists, written after about 1980. None of them require the user to switch modes, an idea that died with vi -- I mean, if only vi had died. As soon as keyboards included arrow keys, the handwriting was on the wall.
- nsmartt 14y agoHow is a mouse more efficient than an ability to move to a phrase with a bit of typing, skip words ahead with a single letter instead of ctrl + shift, move to a new line and a specific place on that line with a couple of button presses, etc?
- lutusp 14y ago> How is a mouse more efficient than an ability to move to a phrase with a bit of typing, skip words ahead with a single letter instead of ctrl + shift, move to a new line and a specific place on that line with a couple of button presses, etc? I can't improve on your explanation as the answer to your own question. Obviously using a mouse to cut/copy and paste, within the same document or between independent documents, is more efficient than what you just described.
- nsmartt 14y agoMoving my hand over to the mouse, moving the mouse cursor to wherever I need, selecting that text and dragging while my editor slowly scrolls with my cursor when I could use a few key sequences with no context switch is the opposite of efficient. edit: wording
- lutusp 14y agoPro tip: don't downvote a correspondent from whom you also expect a reply.
- nsmartt 14y agoIf you check my profile, you'll see that I have less than 500 karma and therefore could not have downvoted you. edit: wording/lower verbosity edit: typo
- snogglethorpe 14y agoAlso HN doesn't allow downvoting of direct replies...
- marssaxman 14y agoVi people look at me like I have a mental disability when I say this, but I've written tens of thousands of lines of code in pico; it is a completely serviceable programmer's editor.
- Shorel 14y agoSublimeText incremental search equivalent: Ctrl-F Much easier to use and learn than Vim. Just as fast. SublimeText also has vim keybindings that I never bothered to use, and never will.
- jodrellblank 14y agoFor example, moving around by using the search feature (at least a well-designed incremental search like Vim or Emacs) is more efficient for longer distance moves (e.g. more than a couple of lines)--it's faster and, more importantly, takes less thought and context switching. I'm no longer sure I agree with any of this. When I move in Vim and the whole screen jumps, I have to reorient myself, and convince myself that I have jumped to the right place, and not a similar-looking-place by mistake. I have to take mental energy away from thinking about the content to think about the editor and look for a good jump command, where arrow keys are so basic that they aren't a distraction at all.