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Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

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Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#161

Post by thanato0s »

the_svd_doctor wrote: post #76
thanato0s wrote: post #2

"I don't want to try i3 or Vim. What's the point using less of the mouse? Such a waste of time!" That was me, 6 years ago. My colleagues were pushing me to try the tools they were already using for years. They are very good developers, so at the end they convinced me to look at them. I had to admit I was wrong. I fell in love with these tools. From there, I built my system step by step, configured it as I wanted, acc…

Great read. I like the style. Looking forward to the complete version.

Thanks! The complete version is available :D

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#162

Post by thanato0s »

haspok wrote: post #151
Grustaf wrote: post #150

I don't know about you, but when I'm programming I probably spend 95% of the time thinking, so making navigation faster won't affect my overall efficiency much. Come to think of it, I'm also thinking while typing and navigating so I'm not sure this would save any time at all. It might _feel_ faster though, which might increase the well-being of some developers.

^^^ this If you are constrained by the speed of your typing while "programming", you are not really a programmer, you are just a secretary with a typewriter.

I didn't write this book for everybody to type crazy fast, I wrote this book for people to try to stay on their keyboard.

You're switching a lot between documentation, your browser, your shell, your IDE, your debugger, and all your tools when you're coding. What I'm describing in the book can really help you not always moving your hand between the mouse and the keyboard.

You think it's not a problem? Well, you should still try to see if you're right. It won't cost you anything: I've many free articles on my blog, linking to other interesting resources too, so be my guest :) I'm sure you'll learn some stuff.

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#163

Post by thanato0s »

kamaal wrote: post #159
Grustaf wrote: post #150

I don't know about you, but when I'm programming I probably spend 95% of the time thinking, so making navigation faster won't affect my overall efficiency much. Come to think of it, I'm also thinking while typing and navigating so I'm not sure this would save any time at all. It might _feel_ faster though, which might increase the well-being of some developers.

The point is these things are wrong sold. The speed of writing code like you have already noted is already is not biggest bottleneck in software development. However what these kind of books/posts fail to sell is as much as software development is about building code to automate things, at some point in time one wonders if software development itself can be automated to a very large extent. The answer is writing code…

I think it's related to the mouse because the mouse is often used with some type of GUI, and a GUI doesn't allow you to automate the stuff you shouldn't care about very well. Especially when you deal with text all the time.

There are solution for that though, but I find them less convincing than the tools we have using our keyboard. So it's linked, but I agree that maybe this question of mouse / keyboard is not the central one.

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#164

Post by thanato0s »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #157
Grustaf wrote: post #150

I don't know about you, but when I'm programming I probably spend 95% of the time thinking, so making navigation faster won't affect my overall efficiency much. Come to think of it, I'm also thinking while typing and navigating so I'm not sure this would save any time at all. It might _feel_ faster though, which might increase the well-being of some developers.

I don't know about you, but for me thinking is almost impossible without writing, drawing, or interacting with some external medium. I can't just sit still and think deep thoughts. This only works for very shallow thoughts. I used to think this was a property of my aphantasia. However, in recent years, I've heard a lot of people claim that writing is thinking. In fact, most writing out there is an artifact of thought…

I'm writing for a long time and I agree with that. But I'll still continue to try producing the best thoughts / writing I can till I'm dead :D maybe I'll never write something good, but at least I tried.

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#165

Post by thanato0s »

deathanatos wrote: post #96
hartator wrote: post #13

I never got the hate of mouse in the dev community. Isn’t most of work browsing code and Googling things? Making a mouse a way to navigate way more efficient than a keyboard? It seems retrograde.

> I never got the hate of mouse in the dev community. Isn’t most of work browsing code and Googling things? So, for example, I use a plugin called Tridactyl in Firefox. It allows me to select any link, any button, or enter any text box in just a few keystrokes. I hit one key to tell it "I want to click something", essentially, at which point it highlights the links & assigns them letters; then I type the letters corr…

You should try qutebrowser :)

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#166

Post by thanato0s »

xupybd wrote: post #51

I attempted this. I didn't really find it more productive. It only really managed to annoy my boss at the time.

Your boss lacks patience.

I think it depends how you try it. You need to go step by step, not swapping your whole system from one day to another. That's why trying these tools on a virtual machine for example can be nice. You don't have to use them, but you can come back to them when you feel like to. Or use them only for modifying config files and not your whole codebase, for example.

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#167

Post by thanato0s »

diehunde wrote: post #53

Nice! Does the book provide instructions on how to install and configure Arch from scratch?

Yes. I tried to explain every single command as much as I could. The reference is still Arch Wiki though, and it's very good, but I find it difficult to follow if you never installed it before...

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#168

Post by the_duke »

brudgers wrote: post #6

For what it's worth, I think there is a lot of space between what you use and what might work for other people. It's not that there is anything wrong with Arch. Rather Ubuntu is probably easier for many people. The general idea here is Linux. Similarly, there are several tiling window managers. A neutral description of the options and links to resources might have broader appeal. Text editors are another place where…

One can't possibly write a coherent book and also cover every possible Linux setup there is.

The target audience obviously won't be a someone who already loves to tinker with a lot of different setups.

A book like this will be much better if it introduces an opinionated setup to follow.

Re: Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment

#169

Post by AnthonBerg »

Bravo!

To name other tools that can support an environment like this and speak to me personally more than the ones in the article, there are:

- NixOS / GuixSD (declarative OSes; may save typing and mousing :) )

- fish (shell. Very nimble and comfortable!)

- xmonad (x11 autotiling window manager)

- Amethyst (macOS autotiling window manager)

- macOS keyboard shortcut definitions (these are surprisingly deep)

- iTerm2 (macOS terminal emulator; Has nice tmux integration)

- Quicksilver (macOS launcher utility. Very configurable and has quite powerful keyboard shortcut definitions)

- spacemacs (Vim-on-Emacs)

- Jetbrains IntelliJ-based IDEs are very keyboard-friendly

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