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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

#111

Post by thanato0s »

whatever1 wrote: post #23
blunte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who can type very quickly, every movement of the hand away from the keyboard (to the mouse) and back has a high cost in terms of lost typing opportunity. If speed and subconscious operation are the goal, then it's best to stick to as much keyboard only as possible, or alternately to learn to maximize the one hand keyboard + mouse approach (which can actually be very fast once you know your tools).

For most of us mortals, typing is not the bottleneck when we are writing code, an article or whatever. In any case, keyboard-only interfaces make the assumption that you know all of the shortcuts for each program you use. And boy they are inconsistent. They also offer zero discoverability for someone that did not read the manual (see the vim jokes). I like software that offers both good pointer UI + robust keyboard s…

It's not because you do jokes about a tool that this tool is not good.

> In any case, keyboard-only interfaces make the assumption that you know all of the shortcuts for each program you use

When I use Gimp, I need to know where are the different options I want to use. It took me time to learn where I can find the best tools for my own needs. It's the case for any interface, GUI or CLI.

But where some CLIs really shine: you can customize everything to create your own little world, to bring a consistency between all your tools. That's the real power: flexibility.

It has its drawbacks too, but I the benefits outweigh them big time.

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

#112

Post by thanato0s »

pca006132 wrote: post #58
whatever1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of us mortals, typing is not the bottleneck when we are writing code, an article or whatever. In any case, keyboard-only interfaces make the assumption that you know all of the shortcuts for each program you use. And boy they are inconsistent. They also offer zero discoverability for someone that did not read the manual (see the vim jokes). I like software that offers both good pointer UI + robust keyboard s…

I don't think vim could speedup your typing speed (unless you are using macro/`.`). I think the benefit of vim is mostly about code navigation, and this is the bottleneck (at least for me) when writing code: jumping around definitions, from and to different region, without having to reach the mouse and click on different buttons. Good pointer UI + robust keyboard shortcut is quite good, but sadly most of the GUI appl…

I totally agree with that. To me, flexibility is the way.

Something I hate for some GUIs: they sometimes change their interfaces without any reason. I think about the whole Confluence thingies (worst interfaces ever IMHO), or even intellij IDEs. When I was working with them, I saw the preference menu changing at least 4 or 5 times. Perfect to confuse me. That's why I accepted to try the tools my colleagues where using, the ones I still use today.

On top these tools allow us to have a configuration in plain text, which is so easy to manage because we have so many mature tools to deal with plain text (git is a great example of that).

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

#113

Post by thanato0s »

mcqueenjordan wrote: post #34
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.

A mouse is an interface best suited for continuous-shaped requirement, e.g. aiming a pointer in games, drawing, and other inherently 2-dimensional arbitrary precision input modalities. Textual interfaces (e.g. code), reading, navigating filesystems, etc. is inherently discrete (folders have files, files have words, words have letters). For discrete applications such as these, I (and many others) prefer mouseless mode…

Wow. That's a great and clear explanation. Thanks for that!

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

#114

Post by tuankiet65 »

torben-friis wrote: post #24
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'm somewhat skeptic regarding pro tools that take a lifetime to master (never got to like emacs for example, and I like MacOS dar more than customizing a Linux distro) but there are some mouseless skills that are such a game changer for me I almost can't use a pc without them, everything else becomes too frustrating. Vimium to browse the web is a Godsend for example. No need to learn for weeks, it's: -j/k for scroll…

I took a look at all of the shortcuts that Vimium offers, and beside the f/F to open the link, other shortcuts are already available natively in Chrome, like:

* arrow keys/PgUp/PgDn for scrolling

* Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn for switching tabs

* Home/End for top/bottom of page

* Ctrl-U for source

* Ctrl-L for switching to the omnibox

* etc

I guess some people might wince at the fact that they have to touch the arrow keys or Home/End/PgUp/PgDn, but my keyboard has those keys and I'm used to it.

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

#115

Post by thanato0s »

drngdds wrote: post #40
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.

Navigating code using Vim keyboard commands (in Vim itself or another editor with a Vim plugin, like VS Code) is actually efficient and comfy once you become fluent with it. I also use a Vim Firefox extension to minimize my mouse use browsing the internet. (That said, creating a fully mouseless Arch Linux desktop environment is way more hardcore than anything I want to do, especially considering the less-than-stellar…

I'm using Arch for 6 years now, I never saw it crashing. It's the most stable system I've ever seen.

To me, "arch is unstable" is more an urban legend than anything else; the best is to try. And I can compare it to everything else I used for years: Win98 (oh my), winME (such a joke), win XP (way better), win 7 (really stable), Ubuntu (I had the impress to come back to win98 each time I was doing an upgrade), Debian (quite good), macOS (quite good because they don't allow you to do anything to crash the system, not nice when you have a problem). And so on.

And it's really not that difficult to install. I've one more chapter after the sample of the book I provide, and then it's done.

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

#116

Post by thanato0s »

hx2a wrote: post #45
drngdds wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating code using Vim keyboard commands (in Vim itself or another editor with a Vim plugin, like VS Code) is actually efficient and comfy once you become fluent with it. I also use a Vim Firefox extension to minimize my mouse use browsing the internet. (That said, creating a fully mouseless Arch Linux desktop environment is way more hardcore than anything I want to do, especially considering the less-than-stellar…

> I also use a Vim Firefox extension to minimize my mouse use browsing the internet. Which one? Vimium-FF? How well does it compare to Vimium in Chromium? I've been wanting to switch from Chromium to Firefox but can't live without Vimium. If it works well, I'll make the switch.

You should try to use qutebrowser. I quickly speak about mouseless ways to browse the internet in the book, I think qutebrowser is the best solution so far.

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

#117

Post by toast0 »

whatever1 wrote: post #23
blunte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who can type very quickly, every movement of the hand away from the keyboard (to the mouse) and back has a high cost in terms of lost typing opportunity. If speed and subconscious operation are the goal, then it's best to stick to as much keyboard only as possible, or alternately to learn to maximize the one hand keyboard + mouse approach (which can actually be very fast once you know your tools).

For most of us mortals, typing is not the bottleneck when we are writing code, an article or whatever. In any case, keyboard-only interfaces make the assumption that you know all of the shortcuts for each program you use. And boy they are inconsistent. They also offer zero discoverability for someone that did not read the manual (see the vim jokes). I like software that offers both good pointer UI + robust keyboard s…

The editor I use says CTRL-K H for help in the title/status bar, and if you push ctrl-k then h, it has a handy dandy help screen. It's not as nice as F1 for help that used to be universal in Windows, but the F keys in terminals never got traction that I saw (quite possibly because of lack of standard availability in the 80s; everyone had a CTRL key, so just use that).

UI gestures are pretty undiscoverable without documentation too; but there's no manuals anymore. Even the books like XYZ: The Missing Manual are few and far between. At least editors from the 80s and 90s have documentation, even if nobody wants to read it.

/rant (not directed at you)

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

#118

Post by torben-friis »

tuankiet65 wrote: post #114
torben-friis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm somewhat skeptic regarding pro tools that take a lifetime to master (never got to like emacs for example, and I like MacOS dar more than customizing a Linux distro) but there are some mouseless skills that are such a game changer for me I almost can't use a pc without them, everything else becomes too frustrating. Vimium to browse the web is a Godsend for example. No need to learn for weeks, it's: -j/k for scroll…

I took a look at all of the shortcuts that Vimium offers, and beside the f/F to open the link, other shortcuts are already available natively in Chrome, like: * arrow keys/PgUp/PgDn for scrolling * Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn for switching tabs * Home/End for top/bottom of page * Ctrl-U for source * Ctrl-L for switching to the omnibox * etc I guess some people might wince at the fact that they have to touch the arrow keys or Home…

Besides the fact that you leave the home row, I'm not sure why but scrolling is quite significantly better when using vimium, at least on macOS.

Using the arrow keys makes the page scroll jerkily, in a way that complicates reading while you move. Using j/k (or u/d for fast scrolling) produces a smooth result similar to scrolling with the touchpad or a phone/tablet scroll.

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

#119

Post by thanato0s »

BeetleB wrote: post #33
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.

> Isn’t most of work browsing code and Googling things? Browsing code is easy to do with a keyboard - not sure I see how a mouse would improve things. Browsing web: Firefox has since forever let you go to and open a link by typing a few characters in the link. I'll grant I don't always do it this way, but it is quite fast - unless the link is an image or something. Finally, if you're one of those people who've had er…

I see a problem here: I'm not obsessing not using the mouse. There are some very loud people out there who are dogmatic anti-mouse. As a result, everybody speaking about a keyboard-oriented system is considered as a dogmatic.

It's not my case. I just think that when you deal a lot with text, like a developer, letting your hands on the keyboard is way nicer, instead of switching all the time between keyboard / mouse.

But I love to use the mouse when I'm on Gimp, or when I do some music, or when I post process some photos. You should use the best tool depending on the task.

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

#120

Post by crucialfelix »

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…

Vimium on Chrome
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