<story><title>Show HN: Nomouse</title><url>https://github.com/brhs/nomouse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WesleyJohnson</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood the sentiment that using a mouse is bad. I see blog posts all the time about how a programmer&amp;#x27;s job is more thinking than writing code and&amp;#x2F;or writing good programs is also about taking out just as much code as you put in. So if writing programs is a deliberate and methodical process that - I&amp;#x27;d argue it&amp;#x27;s also slow. Why then is there antithesis that mice slow you down and you need keyboard shortcuts to be faster and more productive?&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just an old-schooler?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chipotle_coyote</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;suspect&lt;/i&gt; a lot more of it is perception than people imagine: keeping your hands on the keyboard all the time seems like it intuitively must be faster. Early research in human-computer interfaces suggests that this isn&amp;#x27;t actually the case, though. From 1989:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ve done a cool $50 million of R&amp;amp;D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts: (1) Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. (2) The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asktog.com&amp;#x2F;TOI&amp;#x2F;toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.asktog.com&amp;#x2F;TOI&amp;#x2F;toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very easy on HN to find the pro-keyboard arguments. The pro-mouse argument is, more or less, that the context switch that really costs you time isn&amp;#x27;t the one involving the mouse, but the one involving remembering and&amp;#x2F;or finding the keyboard shortcut or function key.&lt;p&gt;Vim and Emacs style movement commands are faster than the mouse in certain contexts, but I&amp;#x27;m dubious that&amp;#x27;s universally true. &amp;quot;I want to jump to line 123&amp;quot; is easy, but what about &amp;quot;I want to move the cursor to the open brace character right &lt;i&gt;there&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;? No matter how much of a seasoned pro you may be, you&amp;#x27;re going to have to think for a moment about how to do to that: &amp;quot;let me count the &amp;#x27;{&amp;#x27; characters between the current point and where I want it to be. Three, so &amp;#x27;3&amp;#x2F;{&amp;lt;cr&amp;gt;&amp;#x27;.&amp;quot; The mouse may make you move your hand, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t make you have to &lt;i&gt;stop and count.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(It&amp;#x27;s also worth remembering that while mouse selection may not be as rich as &amp;quot;select within brackets&amp;quot; type commands, nearly all editors &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have basic semantic mouse selection: double-click and drag to select by word, triple-click and drag to select by line. This can be a lot faster than you might think.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Nomouse</title><url>https://github.com/brhs/nomouse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WesleyJohnson</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood the sentiment that using a mouse is bad. I see blog posts all the time about how a programmer&amp;#x27;s job is more thinking than writing code and&amp;#x2F;or writing good programs is also about taking out just as much code as you put in. So if writing programs is a deliberate and methodical process that - I&amp;#x27;d argue it&amp;#x27;s also slow. Why then is there antithesis that mice slow you down and you need keyboard shortcuts to be faster and more productive?&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just an old-schooler?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hugodahl</author><text>For me, the difference between keyboard shortcuts, and command line interface for that matter is that the same operation can be done semi-autonomously with the emphasis being on the variation (filename, path, flags, etc.) for the task at hand (no pun intended?). Performing the same operation with the mouse, there must be proper &amp;quot;setup&amp;quot; (get windows visible, or at least open to Alt&amp;#x2F;Cmd+Tab between them), and deliberate, visually tracked, hand&amp;#x2F;eye coordinated operations to perform the same operation.&lt;p&gt;For example, I can very quickly run a &amp;quot;full build&amp;quot; by pressing Shift+F6 and simultaneously turn my attention to the build output. Doing the same with the mouse, I would need to move the mouse pointer to the &amp;quot;Build&amp;quot; menu, after possibly spending a few seconds awkwardly looking for the pointer across multiple screens which vary in resolution&amp;#x2F;scale, click, move again down to the &amp;quot;Rebuild Solution&amp;quot; and click. Then at some later point in time, possibly have to reach out and move the mouse for the sole reason of getting the pointer out of the way of my field of view.&lt;p&gt;True anecdote: more than once, doing the operation the &amp;quot;GUI&amp;quot; way in the past, while trying to find the right windows, has truly derailed my train of thought as to what my next operation was to be.&lt;p&gt;Also, I may just be an old-schooler as well, cutting my teeth on command line OSes and network environments (Netware v3.11 anyone?)</text></comment>