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Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

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Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#71

Post by javert »

flogic wrote: post #36
javert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know, and I usually work locally.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#72

Post by kenjackson »

Skroob wrote: post #69
sandis wrote: post #4

I agree with most of the article, but this – "But in the time he has booted to his Desktop I've already answered 3 emails [..] Vanity slows you down, whether its your choice of VM, OS (read: OSX or Windows) or anything else". – is hardly an argument when choosing desktop OS.. just put your PC to sleep and next day it will "boot up" instantly, especially OS X.

The implication that you can't really be productive, or at least as productive as him, without using Linux with emacs and a tiling WM really tainted the other, better advice in this article for me.

The good thing about product related blogs like this is that it reminds me of which products not to buy. I would have a hard time buying a product from someone who wrote a blog entry lacking as little content and exhibiting as much as ego as that one did.

To put another way, there was nothing in the article that didn't fall into one of three categories: 1) Are obvious to most developers. 2) His/her opinion, but not substantiated by any evidence, and probably disputed by as many as would support. 3) Look like possible outright lies.

Not a blog entry I'd consider writing, much less on my company's website.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#73

Post by aantix »

cageface wrote: post #57

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.

I think cycling the usage of caffeine holds promise.

The body quickly becomes use to caffeine so there's really no sense in ingesting it day after day. But if we could restrict it's usage to a couple of cups every three to four days, we could get the benefits of it maybe while not having to incur the cost of withdrawal symptoms.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#74

Post by Zev »

proee wrote: post #67
Zev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not coffee, but, I had a similar experience with Coca Cola a few years back. I went from drinking 1.5-2L a day[1] to none[2]. Of course, I dropped caffeine and picked up sugar instead (turns out, its really cheap to grab a Brita filter and a large jug of sugar flavored like Iced Tea to mix into water..). Now, its slightly more balanced. I try to only have sugar or caffeine when I'm not at home. 1. A glass when I came…

Interesting, I ran through the numbers and 2L of Coke is about the same caffeine as two cups of 12 oz coffee.

Huh. Didn't realize it was that much. I thought it was only equal to 1-1.5 cups of coffee/day. Thanks for doing the math!

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#75

Post by proee »

Zev wrote: post #74
proee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I ran through the numbers and 2L of Coke is about the same caffeine as two cups of 12 oz coffee.

Huh. Didn't realize it was that much. I thought it was only equal to 1-1.5 cups of coffee/day. Thanks for doing the math!

2 Liters of Coke has 300mg of caffeine. That's right about 4 shots of Starbucks espresso, one 16oz cup of Starbucks drip brew, or two regular coffee (non starbucks) drip brew.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#76

Post by ori_b »

_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 use awesome (a tiling wm) in a very mouse heavy way. Tiling does not mean you're stuck with using the keyboard. It does mean that you don't have to worry about managing screen real estate nearly as much.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#78

Post by mynameishere »

jbarham wrote: post #23
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.

Source: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html "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." This is the reason that the Plan 9 folks gave for making their UI mouse rather than…

It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press.

Why would you link to something so foolish?

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#79

Post by jrockway »

_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…

Something such as a unified desktop (OS X, Haiku, Gnome, KDE) will make you more productive rather than a window manager that optimizes for pixel real estate.

UNIX is my unified desktop. I only use the window manager to manage windows.

Re: Developer Productivity - The Red Pill

#80

Post by natep »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #29
jkkramer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interestingly, I don't feel faster with the keyboard. I do, however, feel more comfortable when I stick to one mode (keyboard-only or mouse-only). It's switching that feels awkward. I also don't use Xmonad out of pure Geekiness (though I started that way). I use it because I find it more comfortable. I work at the same time with OSX, and while moving windows with the mouse is probably just as fast, it annoys me. Now…

You seem to be describing vim's hjkl (left, down, up, right, IIRC)
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