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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

#171

Post by anthk »

toast0 wrote: post #117
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…

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 doc…

So you are the single user left with jstar :D

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

#172

Post by glangdale »

glangdale wrote: post #147
serf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your explanation as to why the book isn't 'free or open source' is an explanation that you need money to continue the endeavor while living life successfully. This makes one feel like a broken record, but this compels me to mention that there are major differences between 'gratis' and 'libre'.[0] Open-source/free and for-profit are not at odds with each other. They describe different ideas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.…

This gets explained a lot; what doesn't get explained as much is how folks can continue to make money for their work in the "libre" world. It's certainly possible - dual licensing, services, premium editions, physical books, etc., and it's not a bad thing. But my guess is that a "libre" version of this guy's book would rapidly turn into a "gratis" version of it too - a "good enough" PDF would get passed around and ul…

I might add that 90% of the situations where I've thought about this in a software context as well have been "libre" -> "gratis" more or less inevitably. Again, there are exceptions, but it's surprising how many people are happy to take something and run with it, no support, no "enhanced edition", no training, etc.

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

#173

Post by Funes- »

ttt0 wrote: post #110
richardpetersen wrote: post #97

How are you meant to use Stack Overflow?

I can bet there are command line tools that allow you to browse SO from the terminal.

Yes. You've got a couple of options, even:

[1] SoCli (Python): https://github.com/gautamkrishnar/socli

[2] so (Rust): https://github.com/samtay/so

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

#174

Post by paulryanrogers »

blunte wrote: post #153
paulryanrogers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While all true IME the ever growing stack of libraries, frameworks, languages, and infra tools one must learn leaves little breathing room for modest gains in text wrangling. Most of my time isn't spent slicing and dicing snippets or juggling windows. Rather it's thinking, planning, a bit of experimentation, reading, repeat. And powerful, built-in auto complete with visual IDEs like IntelliJ or PyCharm make them hard…

Even still, cmd-opt-b when your caret is on a name jumps you to the code where that thing is implemented. A few shortcuts like that make navigating so effortless that you are free to focus on the code and libraries.

Sorry if I was unclear. That's one of my favorite shortcuts actually. And I write my own Bash aliases and scripts to reduce terminal fatigue.

I just don't devote much time to mastering text editors. In fact I've had to change editors so often that mastery may have been unrealistic anyway.

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

#175

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

glangdale wrote: post #147
serf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your explanation as to why the book isn't 'free or open source' is an explanation that you need money to continue the endeavor while living life successfully. This makes one feel like a broken record, but this compels me to mention that there are major differences between 'gratis' and 'libre'.[0] Open-source/free and for-profit are not at odds with each other. They describe different ideas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.…

This gets explained a lot; what doesn't get explained as much is how folks can continue to make money for their work in the "libre" world. It's certainly possible - dual licensing, services, premium editions, physical books, etc., and it's not a bad thing. But my guess is that a "libre" version of this guy's book would rapidly turn into a "gratis" version of it too - a "good enough" PDF would get passed around and ul…

Do we actually know this, for sure? Obviously, it seems like common sense, but there's a similar argument about piracy, and an opposing position that piracy never managed to kill the industries it was apparently a threat to — if anything (so the argument goes), it might have even boosted them. I've bought physical books in the past, even though they were open source. I might also spend money on a digital open source book for various reasons, some of which you mention. It's likely that an author won't make as much direct income from an open-sourced book, but they might make 'enough', even before you consider indirect income.

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

#177

Post by Multicomp »

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…

Any chance of having this uploaded to lulu or similar for print on demand copies?

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

#178

Post by ijoni »

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.

Fighting your tools interrupts thought. A keyboard is a discrete mechanism: you can make mistakes using hotkeys, but the overall state space is infinitely smaller than the continuous state space of a mouse. That makes precision easier, which leads to a closer mapping between intent and action, which makes it easier to enter and maintain a flow state.

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

#180

Post by thanato0s »

Multicomp wrote: post #177
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…

Any chance of having this uploaded to lulu or similar for print on demand copies?

You're already the second person asking me for a print copy. I'm willing to look at it if more people are interested.
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