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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

#191

Post by toast0 »

anthk wrote: post #171
toast0 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At my last job, there was a user group for joe. I joined it, and it became a users group. So there's at least two of us. I didn't stay in touch with that other user when I left that job though (although, I did make sure to send a farewell)

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

#192

Post by Leimi »

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.

It's not that it's such a boost in productivity, more a boost in comfort. You stop switching from mouse to keyboard all the time.

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

#193

Post by mraza007 »

thanato0s wrote: post #139
mraza007 wrote: post #35

Really interesting book, I love the idea of mouseless and i might get this book to challenge myself to use no mouse

Thanks for your kind words! You can look at the sample and the video I made for you to be sure you want to try what I'm describing in the book. In any way, I'm sure you'll learn some stuff about Linux-based systems. It's always useful I think.

I have been using linux for about three years and i3 for about two years and this book will help gain new knowledge.

I did take a look at the sample and I’ll definitely get this book

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

#194

Post by ska »

thanato0s wrote: post #93
ska wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about a mouse interface is that it's a lowest-common-denominator approach for a lot of things that works pretty ok. Certainly better for that than the text-only interfaces it's largely replaces. This is also why the web is so married to it, 'cause you can navigate around a bunch of semi-consistent information. The average confused user will probably do better randomly mousing around than trying to juggle ke…

I agree with most of what you're saying. Now, about the skills of the users, I think people are smart and can learn more easily than we think, if and only if they're taught right. It's what I tried to do. I don't know if I succeeded, but so far I had only positive return, so it's encouraging :) About the mix of both: I agree if I'm a long period on my keyboard or on my mouse, but not interleaving the use of both.

The point about skill is that an unskilled/inexperienced user is typically going to have more trouble navigating a keyboard based interface than a mouse based one - nothing about how easy or hard it is to gain that skill.

Agree context switching between both too much is a pain.

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

#195

Post by SilasX »

loa_in_ wrote: post #46
SilasX wrote: post #12

Definitely going to check this out! I got fascinated with mouseless interaction several years ago, even to the point that I registered tyrannyofthemouse.com: http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2012/02/ending-tyranny-of-... Unfortunately, I've had to give up on it for web browsing. Too many sites break the ability of my extensions to pick up clickable elements. I can probably find a long-term workaround, but I'll have…

In Firefox, by default, you can search for text of an element using forward slash. Then you hit escape and hit enter to activate it, or tab to navigate past it. That alone made 90% of websites practically mouseless for me

I just tried that, and while it does select the element, it still doesn't allow me to click on them as you suggested or any other way I could find[1]. (That is, it works in general, but only on links where my extension would be able to pick up the clickability already.)

[1] Example: clicking on a currency here [2] or a time window here [3].

[2] https://www.coinbase.com/

[3] https://www.coinbase.com/price/bitcoin

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

#196

Post by thanato0s »

z5h wrote: post #183

Help me understand. I’ve always felt the limiting factor for me was the speed of thought, not typing or other text manipulation. My IDEs (Jetbrains stuff) with their defaults makes it so I spend more time thinking than typing. Often times my best work occurs in the shower, or on a walk and has nothing to do with keyboards or mice. On occasion, I need to do something highly repetitive in which case I’ll do something o…

I'm not itching to type faster either, so we might be both weirdo :D

I'm using these tools to stop switching between my mouse and my keyboard all the time. It might not bothering you, and it wasn't bothering me either before I tried to spend most of my time on the keyboard.

After that, like many things in development, it's a question of preferences; but you can try and see for yourself. You don't have to buy the book for that: I've many articles about mouseless tools on my blog for free for example, and there are even more on Internet :)

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

#197

Post by Multicomp »

thanato0s wrote: post #180
Multicomp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ok. I will check this post periodically, so if you do end up doing that I will order one.

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

#198

Post by fizixer »

z5h wrote: post #183

Help me understand. I’ve always felt the limiting factor for me was the speed of thought, not typing or other text manipulation. My IDEs (Jetbrains stuff) with their defaults makes it so I spend more time thinking than typing. Often times my best work occurs in the shower, or on a walk and has nothing to do with keyboards or mice. On occasion, I need to do something highly repetitive in which case I’ll do something o…

You don't touch type I assume?

Touch typing is not only about typing faster. It gives you this other ability of "running your control panel" out of the home keys only (four fings on each hand resting on a,s,d,f and j,k,l,;). When you have to lift one of the hands off the home keys and move it to the mouse to do anything, and I mean anything, it's super annoying and frustrating.

Those who never learned to touch type are not likely to grok the appeal of mouseless work.

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

#199

Post by AlchemistCamp »

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…

Are you familiar with the book, Grokking Bitcoin?

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

#200

Post by brudgers »

haswell wrote: post #69
brudgers wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I am getting at is the vitality of book recommendations not technical merits. There’s nothing wrong with Arch, but I hesitate to recommend it without knowing someone pretty well. The same with Zsh over bash and neovim over Vim. As personal choices backed by experience it’s a different context than a tutorial for others. That’s what I am saying.

If someone is diving down this rabbit hole, they most likely have some level of tech savvy going in. Given that, they likely can decide if the book is for them by doing some very light research on Linux distributions. With a cursory set of results in hand (which will tell me that Ubuntu is easy and Arch is a bit more advanced but not quite as advanced as Gentoo or LFS), I can decide if a very practical book that says…

It doesn’t need to be a rabbit hole. Or at least no more of a rabbit hole than essential.
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