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Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

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Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#31

Post by loup-vaillant »

hippich wrote: post #28

So what about this NEO keyboard layout. Did anyone tried it? While I understand where from performance can come when you are typing email, I am not so sure about keyboard shortcuts. Anyone?

This layout is for Germans. If you don't write German, don't use it. Use either Dvorak or an optimized layout for your language (if one has been done). Personally, I use Bépo[1] a Dvorak-like layout optimized for French (same principles, different stats). It also happen to be far better than the Qwerty layout even for English.

[1]: http://bepo.fr

Ah, and most short-cuts are independent from the layout. But if you set up you software such that short-cuts are optimized as well (Alt + home-row-key for instance), then they'll become easier and faster too. That's probably what the guy did (he uses Emacs almost exclusively). A good place to start would be http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#32

Post by silentbicycle »

jkkramer wrote: post #17
_3ex7 wrote: post #10

In regards to number 7: >7. Use a tiling WM I recall reading a Plan 9 pdf on the Acme editor (sorry cant find it right now). A unique feature to that text editor is that it is heavily mouse-based. This is contrary to many peoples (myself, at the time, included) belief that both hands on the keyboard equals increased productivity. I used to be 100% dwm. The euphoria of navigating around with your home row was great (v…

I'm reminded of a tidbit from an old AskTog[1] article: "We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: * Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding." There are probably all sorts of caveats to this (and the research may have changed since…

Sure, a mouse is faster if all you're doing is pointing at stuff and pushing one of a few buttons. Studies will confirm this. That's pretty low-level, though.

A keyboard is faster if you want to, say, "jump to the head of the definition of the function body you're currently in and send it to be evaluated", because a mouse just doesn't have enough buttons. With a keyboard, you can name operations. And then name new operations, grouping those names... (Why yes, I do use Emacs.) If I was using a mouse-and-menus for that stuff, the menus would stretch to the moon.

The next time somebody argues that a mouse is faster than a keyboard for programming, I'm going suggest they make their case solely by pointing at things and clicking their tongue.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#33

Post by lutorm »

adamilardi wrote: post #7

1. Get around 7 hours of sleep every single night: 10+ is better 2. Avoid caffeine entirely (coffee & tea): Blasphemy. Please remove this item 3. Maintain your tools: 100% agreed 4. Dont be vain: Be vain when it counts. You don't want the perception of your work to suffer when it's among people who don't quite understand technology. 5. Avoid Social Networks: I hate to say it but avoid hackernews also. You can sink ho…

HN is mostly entertainment, but I read it for posts like this that give an insight into the tools that people use. If you find out about some awesome tool this way, it's time well spent.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#35

Post by lutorm »

daten wrote: post #20
geoffc wrote: post #8

coffee, vim and screen do it for me :-)

Another poster mentioned "tmux" in reply to this comment but they deleted their post before I could reply. I had not heard of tmux before. Apparently it's an alternative to "screen". I would have upvoted you for making me aware of it. http://tmux.sourceforge.net/

Another alternative I just heard about is "nx" (though it's commercial). It can resume entire remote desktop sessions as well as single windows. I've played with it a little, but I think I like tmux better.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#36

Post by flogic »

javert wrote: post #21
_3ex7 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use a terminal multiplexer or something similar? I only ask because my set up was exactly like what you just described. Once I buckled down and started using one, it negated the need for a lot of the tags I had with dwm.

I've never needed one, probably since a tiling WM allows you to accomplish something similar, as you point out. I know screen has some nifty features, but for the things I do, a tiling WM is a superset of the functionality screen would provide.

Screen's primary payoff is when your connection to another machine goes down a lot for whatever reason. A good wm can handle the multiplexing better but they don't restore context like screen.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#37

Post by silentbicycle »

_3ex7 wrote: post #16
javert wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the author, I use the Awesome window manager. I think you have a perfectly valid perspective, but just want to speak for the other side. The main benefit I get from Awesome is having 9 workspaces ("desktops"). I use my mod key (in my case CAPS but it can be Alt or anything) plus # to get to any workspace. I have web browser on one desktop, email on another, IM on another, terminals on another, programming on ano…

Do you use a terminal multiplexer or something similar? I only ask because my set up was exactly like what you just described. Once I buckled down and started using one, it negated the need for a lot of the tags I had with dwm.

I use dwm and tmux (rather than screen). My muscle memory knows that I keep a tmux session local to the computer I'm physically located at on #1, remote (if any) on #2, side tasks on #3-7, Emacs on #8, and a web browser on #9. (I use a slightly different setup on a dual-head station, but usually w/ two Emacs windows, etc.)

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#38

Post by silentbicycle »

bitwize wrote: post #18
_3ex7 wrote: post #10

In regards to number 7: >7. Use a tiling WM I recall reading a Plan 9 pdf on the Acme editor (sorry cant find it right now). A unique feature to that text editor is that it is heavily mouse-based. This is contrary to many peoples (myself, at the time, included) belief that both hands on the keyboard equals increased productivity. I used to be 100% dwm. The euphoria of navigating around with your home row was great (v…

Amen. When are people going to get it through their heads that using the mouse is faster than the keyboard? This has been determined by Apple's UI research and known for some decades now.

Faster for what, though? If you're doing something best served by pointing at things, sure. Web browsing, sure. Programming? I don't buy it.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#39

Post by albemuth »

javert wrote: post #24
bitwize wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. When are people going to get it through their heads that using the mouse is faster than the keyboard? This has been determined by Apple's UI research and known for some decades now.

How can this be? I'm just not convinced. The main thing I use my WM for is switching applications. Any application I want to switch to is modkey+number, and I know the numbers.

That's why you do research, because "It feels faster for me" usually doesn't lead to the best decision making.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#40

Post by silentbicycle »

daten wrote: post #20
geoffc wrote: post #8

coffee, vim and screen do it for me :-)

Another poster mentioned "tmux" in reply to this comment but they deleted their post before I could reply. I had not heard of tmux before. Apparently it's an alternative to "screen". I would have upvoted you for making me aware of it. http://tmux.sourceforge.net/

Tmux is fairly new, BSD-licensed, and has a much smaller/cleaner codebase than screen. It's quickly gotten features that people have been struggling to add to screen for years. (It comes with dwm/xmonad-style layouts out of the box, for one.)

If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth switching, but if you're starting new, I'd suggest learning tmux first. You might want to get a fairly recent version of the source, though - it's in the main OpenBSD tree now, and it has been improving pretty quickly.

If you use Unix & ssh at all, definitely learn one of them. Yesterday, if possible.

One of these days I really need to write about getting started with tmux...

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