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Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

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Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#51

Post by technomancy »

albemuth wrote: post #39
javert wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is research costs money, and people with money are more likely to be interested in average users. Nobody's going to do research on obsessive HN-reader-type users who are willing to go out of their way to memorize lots of Emacs commands in order to ensure their exocortex is fully optimized.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#52

Post by technomancy »

silentbicycle wrote: post #40
daten wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> If you already use screen and are happy with it, it's probably not worth switching

I switched from screen a few months ago and have been much happier, but I literally spend 80% of my day on multiuser terminal sessions. tmux is much nicer than screen for sharing a session.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#53

Post by dkarl »

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…

For me, the best part of a tiling window manager is immersion. It's no-nonsense. There's no eye candy to remind me of all the brain candy out there. When your whole screen is nothing but black-and-white text and ugly emacs-colorized source code, it's easy to forget that Facebook and Hacker News are just a few clicks away.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#54

Post by parbo »

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…

A mouse is faster for unfamiliar tasks, but when an action is committed to muscle memory, keyboarding becomes fast.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#55

Post by silentbicycle »

mcn wrote: post #49
silentbicycle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plan9's acme editor was based on Oberon, FWIW - you can probably find more info there. I have a lot of respect for the design, but have never gotten comfortable with it. (I've used Emacs for years, vi for several years before that.) Its "every word in every buffer is also a command if you click on it the right way" seems like the best mouse/keyboard UI synthesis I've seen, though, if you're doing actual work with com…

Another thing in favor of a tiling WM (and a keyboard centric setup in general) on a netbook is that it is often more convenient to use a netbook without a mouse. I am happy to reduce my track pad use in general, especially hold-button-and-drag operations.

No kidding! The trackpad on mine is too close to the spacebar, anyway. I just have it turned off (Fn-F7) most of the time. dwm + dmenu + emacs has me pretty much covered for mouseless usage.

I was skeptical about netbooks, but saw a great deal on craigslist and decided to try one. With dwm, Emacs, and terminus, I have two 80x45 buffers, which is quite adequate. (I also bike nearly everywhere, and it weighs so little that I don't hesitate to carry it with me all the time.)

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#56

Post by msie »

jkkramer wrote: post #41
silentbicycle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Sure, editing is one of the exceptions Tog mentions. (I'm an Emacs user, too.) My point was that just because you think or feel that something is faster doesn't mean that it is. Also, when it comes to programming, the biggest bottleneck for most people isn't typing -- it's thinking. P.S., there do exist mouse-heavy programming environments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language

Also, when it comes to programming, the biggest bottleneck for most people isn't typing -- it's thinking.

That's so true for me. I'm not pumping out code nonstop where the efficiency of keyboard vs mouse comes into play. Being more efficient with moving around a source file only matters if I actually knew what to do once I get to a particular spot of code and many times I don't. I struggle more often with the high-level design of a program than the details. And when the design is sorted out then everything else falls in place. That's when more efficient navigation may be more important to me.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#57

Post by cageface »

I gave up caffeine myself a few months ago. It was rough for the first two weeks but now I sleep better, have a more even energy level throughout the day, and find I'm more patient with both people and machines.

The only thing I miss is the smell of coffee and having something warm to drink on cool mornings.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#58

Post by silentbicycle »

msie wrote: post #56
jkkramer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, editing is one of the exceptions Tog mentions. (I'm an Emacs user, too.) My point was that just because you think or feel that something is faster doesn't mean that it is. Also, when it comes to programming, the biggest bottleneck for most people isn't typing -- it's thinking. P.S., there do exist mouse-heavy programming environments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language

Also, when it comes to programming, the biggest bottleneck for most people isn't typing -- it's thinking. That's so true for me. I'm not pumping out code nonstop where the efficiency of keyboard vs mouse comes into play. Being more efficient with moving around a source file only matters if I actually knew what to do once I get to a particular spot of code and many times I don't. I struggle more often with the high-le…

Mice are better for spatial navigation, but keyboards are potentially much better for structural navigation - whether you're moving by search (regexp find, or whatever) or language elements (navigating via tag stack, etc).

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#59

Post by Periodic »

> A means 'will loose significant value if not done today', B means 'important, but will not loose significant value if not done today', C means 'optional'.

I find that very often, 'optional' means 'will eventually cross off because it doesn't get done'. I hate having a to-do list that just piles up. Be honest about whether you're going to get something done or not.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#60

Post by adamilardi »

lutorm wrote: post #33
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.

I get insight from it also but I'm saying spending an hour a day on social news is not working.
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