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Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#101

Post by egypturnash »

It’s not programming, but I use Karabiner to remap my Mac’s caps lock to command-opt-shift, and fn to command-alt. If I had another meta key over there I’d map it to command-shift, and be able to hit all the shortcuts I’ve assigned to menu items in Illustrator with one hand.

My right hand stays on my Wacom stylus, whose two barrel buttons are set to double-click and right-click. Except when I’m in a browser, where command-click to open in new tab is much more useful than double-click.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#102

Post by peterkos »

Logitech G602, six buttons on the side. Going clockwise from top-left:

- Cmd+Delete (delete file)

- Ctrl+Right (go right 1 virtual desktop)

- Ctrl+Left (go left 1 virtual desktop)

- App Exposé (show all windows only of the active app)

- Back

- Forward

I find these to be the stuff I need to do a lot a lot. Really handy!

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#104

Post by egypturnash »

grzm wrote: post #59
cjbprime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an Electron Huge?

I suspect they're referring to the Elecom HUGE trackball: https://www.elecom.co.jp.e.gj.hp.transer.com/products/M-HT1D...

“Chastity ball beyond imagination!”

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#105

Post by dhosek »

peterkos wrote: post #102

Logitech G602, six buttons on the side. Going clockwise from top-left: - Cmd+Delete (delete file) - Ctrl+Right (go right 1 virtual desktop) - Ctrl+Left (go left 1 virtual desktop) - App Exposé (show all windows only of the active app) - Back - Forward I find these to be the stuff I need to do a lot a lot. Really handy!

I get all of these except cmd-delete from gestures on the trackpad with my MacBook. Learning the Mac trackbook gestures was a great productivity hack (and occasionally seemed like black magic to pairing partners). I can't use a mouse anymore because I'm so trained in those gestures.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#107

Post by dhosek »

chabes wrote: post #93

I’ve recently used a footswitch for the first time, and I like it. Was using it for simple “cut” and “paste” kind of stuff.

Back when I used to teach LaTeX classes, I'd use emacs as the editor when we were guest users on some University's Unix system (the students were largely math department secretaries and emacs has a more natural interface than vi, especially if you're used to word processors). I remember one student observing all the different modifiers and I joked that in the future you'd use foot pedals to use emacs.

The future is now.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#108

Post by dhosek »

screye wrote: post #42

Along the same lines: 1. How often do people use 'home' and 'end' keys ? I don't, but I know quite a lot who swear by them. Do they actually increase productivity ? 2. Should caps lock be removed as a large button in the most valuable real-estate-area on the keyboard ? I literally never use it. Even when typing long ALL-CAPS sequences. I just use 'shift' instead. 3. Do you use space bars with both hands ? I only use…

1. Never. It doesn't help that they're hidden behind fn-← and fn-→ on my laptop. Years of Emacs usage acclimated me to using ctrl-a/ctrl-e and on the handful of programs that don't support it (like Word), my first step is to make them new shortcuts for that app.

2. Yes, but what should go there? One of my first steps on a new Mac is to go to keyboard/modifier keys and disable caps lock.

3. Yes, although I'm noticing that I favor my left thumb for spacebar usage. I think it's wide because of the variety of ways people use it.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use keyboard/mouse extra buttons for coding?

#109

Post by magicalhippo »

screye wrote: post #87
magicalhippo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. How often do people use 'home' and 'end' keys ? I don't I'd say, what are you coding where you don't benefit from home and end? I use both a lot while coding, usually in conjunction with ctrl+left or ctrl+right for quickly positioning the cursor where I want it, or ctrl+home or ctrl+end to quickly go to the top or bottom respectively. > 3. Do you use space bars with both hands ? Yes, not often while programming,…

> what are you coding where you don't benefit from home and end? The kind where my typing speed does not affect my output. Also, the type who doesn't use command line text editors. I work in ML and mostly use python. Very rarely do I need to be efficient in how I navigate my documents/code, because it is rarely the bottle neck. Lastly, all my laptops have both end/home positioned awkwardly, so I never found it quite…

I guess I picked it up in the back command line era, though code editors haven't changed that much since Turbo Pascal. I use them just as much when writing Python as anything else.

But yeah, laptop, I guess that explains it. I don't use home/end any where close to as much when on a laptop. Fortunately I seldom need to use them.

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