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UsesThis: Rob Pike

rob.pike.usesthis.com

91–100 of 192 posts

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#91
post #51

> When I left work and went home, I could pick up where I left off, pretty much. My dream setup would drop the "pretty much" qualification from that. For me, Dropbox has brought me that. I still use Github and the like, but my computers now share such a similar setup (all Linux, install Go, install Dropbox, install Sublime Text 2, done) that I can walk out of the office without doing anything special to my machine, g…

There is an important difference though. You are sharing your data, but you are not sharing your programs and their current setup. That is, if you forget to save your file, it won't be on Dropbox. Plan9 is way more persistent here, as it has a lot of tools which can be brought back to the state you left them in on one machine.

It is awfully nice to have a persistent environment. Dropbox is definitely partway towards that goal, but it doesn't hammer in the nail fully.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#92
post #90
post #67

I'm a bit surprised that he is happy with a Mac Book. His editor acme requires three mouse buttons and Apple is designed for one mouse button use. Does he use an external mouse all the time? And I'm a bit disappointed that he's not using Plan9. With the current ease of VMs there are no driver and installation issues and he could move the snapshot around.

You can use acme with a MacBook. First of all Cmd-x, Cmd-c and Cmd-v works. Second, Cmd and Option with the mousepad gives you clicks on buttons 2 and 3. Still I prefer to have a mouse when I am working on larger texts because it is so much easier to do text rearrangement with a mouse. A correctly set up acme on a mac is surprisingly effective.

You answered most of the question I came here to ask. How about chording though? I'm under the impression that there are actions that are triggered by all three mouse buttons simultaneously.

I'm hoping to give acme a serious try (I have it installed), but I need to be sure I won't have to start using a three button mouse rather than whatever is provided by my system.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#93
post #67

I'm a bit surprised that he is happy with a Mac Book. His editor acme requires three mouse buttons and Apple is designed for one mouse button use. Does he use an external mouse all the time? And I'm a bit disappointed that he's not using Plan9. With the current ease of VMs there are no driver and installation issues and he could move the snapshot around.

For acme chording, Rob carries around a tiny external 3-button mouse that he likes. I use the keyboard modifiers. Both approaches work fine.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#94
I clicked the link seeing the high point count and thinking I might find some gems of productivity I could pull into my own daily routine, but instead I found some discussion of clouds and terminals and other things that are philosophically interesting but tangibly well argued and discussed ad nauseam.

Of course, the article is tiny and talks abstractly about something that everyone has an opinion on, so of course it has up lots of votes.

I am disappoint.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use acme with a MacBook. First of all Cmd-x, Cmd-c and Cmd-v works. Second, Cmd and Option with the mousepad gives you clicks on buttons 2 and 3. Still I prefer to have a mouse when I am working on larger texts because it is so much easier to do text rearrangement with a mouse. A correctly set up acme on a mac is surprisingly effective.

You answered most of the question I came here to ask. How about chording though? I'm under the impression that there are actions that are triggered by all three mouse buttons simultaneously. I'm hoping to give acme a serious try (I have it installed), but I need to be sure I won't have to start using a three button mouse rather than whatever is provided by my system.

I think you will have an easier time learning the environment if you use a 3-button mouse, but it's not a requirement. I spend some entire days in acme on a MacBook Air, and the keyboard modifiers and %-C, %-V, %-X keyboard shortcuts on the Mac work well for me.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#97

ACME screencast is definitely worth looking. It is the "everything is text [streams]" and GUI concepts together in action.

I have to say, it is an amazing concept and very tempting, especially the way you create links in unstructured text. The only reason I am not trying it out right now is that it would require an X-server wherever I go in order to do proper editing and my current tmux set-up wouldn't work.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#98
post #6

He plants a couple of nice flags: "This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary." and "In summary, it used to be that phones worked without you having to carry them around, but computers only worked if you did carry one around with you. The solution to this inconsistency was to break the way phones worked rather than fix the way computers work."

"break the way phones worked"? oi?

You could only call, not get called unless you left precise descriptions of your whereabouts. Sometimes wait a lot until a phone was free. Having a phone on you all the time completely changed personal communication for the better. The idea that the way phones worked before mobile was better is so inane that I can't believe it's coming from a scientist.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#99
post #6

He plants a couple of nice flags: "This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary." and "In summary, it used to be that phones worked without you having to carry them around, but computers only worked if you did carry one around with you. The solution to this inconsistency was to break the way phones worked rather than fix the way computers work."

[deleted]

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#100
post #6

He plants a couple of nice flags: "This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary." and "In summary, it used to be that phones worked without you having to carry them around, but computers only worked if you did carry one around with you. The solution to this inconsistency was to break the way phones worked rather than fix the way computers work."

"break the way phones worked"? oi? You could only call, not get called unless you left precise descriptions of your whereabouts. Sometimes wait a lot until a phone was free. Having a phone on you all the time completely changed personal communication for the better. The idea that the way phones worked before mobile was better is so inane that I can't believe it's coming from a scientist.

What is better now with cellphones than before? Why is personal communication so much better now that we can be reached anywhere? I think it's a legitimate question.

In most cases, people indeed want to be reachable, but is it really a good thing? In the long run, does it make the society a better place, and people better people? How can we measure the impact of the cellphone on society?

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