A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar)

#101

Post by shermanyo » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

frusciante29 wrote: post #15

The Pro in Macbook Pro does not stand for "programmer". The device is not catering to the past. The world is not full of UNIX era programmers. Some future programmers are getting their first laptop during the coming holidays. If you think Esc then I is the future of programming tools, I don't know what to tell you.

> If you think Esc then I is the future of programming tools, I don't know what to tell you.

Of course text editing isn't the future of programming, but when I can create and run macros as fast as I can think through a formatting change, an IDEs regex find/replace and refactoring menu with a dozen options irrelevant to the task at hand feels clunky and limited.

This device is not catering to the past, sure, but its also not catering to a large group of users the previous device did. It also seemed to have caught a lot of them off guard.

Why didn't they make the touch bar an option rather than force it on all users? they could easily have added it above the previous keyboard configuration.

Re: A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar)

#102

Post by shermanyo » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 1:25 PM UTC

First they came for the ethernet port, and I did not speak out - because wireless is ubiquitous.

Then they came for the headphone port, and I did not speak out - because I could still plug into my external audio interface or mixer _when at home_.

Then they came for my keyboard, and NOW I CAN'T ESCAPE!

Re: A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar)

#103

Post by Peaker » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 3:41 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #46

Peaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popularity isn't really a good argument. It could either be because it's a good way to edit text, or because of inertia and extreme conservative nature of developers.

I made no claim about popularity. I did make a claim about productivity. Big difference.

> Why do you think so many IDEs come with vim emulation

I was referring to the claim that a popular choice amongst IDE makers meant it was a good idea.

Re: A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar)

#104

Post by sanbor » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 2:55 AM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #93

sanbor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ctrl-C is equivalent to pressing Esc in Vim and you don't have to move your hand so much.

Ctrl is one of the keys that vim specifically tries to avoid.

Certainly by having modes vim has great keyboard shortcuts and avoid having to press combination of keys. However, for redo you have to press Ctrl+R, so that would indicate that Ctrl is not forbidden in vim. In this particular case, I find more confortable to move a little my fingers to press Ctrl+C than having to move my whole hand to the upper top of the keyboard to press esc. Also, it is nice that this shortcut works everywhere without having to remap your Donglebook.