Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
In OSX, are all dialogue boxes able to be accessed by the keyboard?
Yes, but you have to enable it. It's not on by default. System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts And change the radio at the bottom to "All controls" under Full Keyboard Access.
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#63Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#64Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#65If you want better shortcut muscle memory, just unplug your mouse for a couple days. Do this once a year or so. You can thank me later.
In OSX, are all dialogue boxes able to be accessed by the keyboard?
(as root)
# ps axo ucomm | grep -q SecurityAgent && osascript -e 'tell application "SecurityAgent" to activate'Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#66This is neat and promising. I agree with other commenters that the weakness is in telling the user what to do in the form of text like "Move cursor to beginning of line". Routing the muscle signals through text processing in the brain is slow and isn't what goes on when you actually use an editor. i.e., there's no text in a marquee in one's head telling one what one needs to do next. Since keyboard shortcuts are all…
One for Emacs would be fun
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#67This is neat and promising. I agree with other commenters that the weakness is in telling the user what to do in the form of text like "Move cursor to beginning of line". Routing the muscle signals through text processing in the brain is slow and isn't what goes on when you actually use an editor. i.e., there's no text in a marquee in one's head telling one what one needs to do next. Since keyboard shortcuts are all…
See http://vimgolf.com/ One for Emacs would be fun
Come to think of it, in Emacs I often do things inefficiently – in the sense of using many more commands than the technical minimum to do a task – because the basic commands are already "compiled" in my head. If I have to stop and grope for a less familiar command that could do the job more directly, that's like switching to interpreter mode, which is much slower. So in the short run, it can be more efficient in time to be less efficient with commands. This is the chicken-and-egg problem where one doesn't invest the effort to acquire new tricks because one's too busy doing one's job with the tricks one already knows.
The goal is to get more tricks into the compiled set (muscle memory) more easily. I suspect this is a "don't make me think" kind of challenge. One has a limited budget of thinking energy and typically needs to spend it on more important things, so one doesn't have anything left to invest in getting better at Emacs or whatever, even though one knows one "should". The challenge is how to move this kind of knowledge into muscle memory using some cheaper pool of energy.
This is probably a solvable problem because the commands we're talking about are so mechanical. They don't need to go through the most expensive cognitive process; our goal is to forget them on that level anyway. But I haven't seen any teaching tool with a low enough cost in this sense. The OP comes the closest, which is already impressive. And if you can learn editor commands this way, there probably are a lot of other useful things you can learn this way.
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#68This is neat and promising. I agree with other commenters that the weakness is in telling the user what to do in the form of text like "Move cursor to beginning of line". Routing the muscle signals through text processing in the brain is slow and isn't what goes on when you actually use an editor. i.e., there's no text in a marquee in one's head telling one what one needs to do next. Since keyboard shortcuts are all…
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#69Then, say for Sublime to cut a line it's ctrl+shift+k. It shows K.
So I try hitting ctrl then shift - nothing. I try typing ctrl then shift - wrong. I try entering a caret (^) for ctrl - wrong.
Just what are you supposed to do?
Re: Build muscle memory with your favorite editor
#70If you want better shortcut muscle memory, just unplug your mouse for a couple days. Do this once a year or so. You can thank me later.
In OSX, are all dialogue boxes able to be accessed by the keyboard?
Or just hit Control-F7.