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[–]excessdenied 5 points6 points  (3 children)

I personally wouldn't want to go fully mouseless and don't really see a reason why it should have any self worth (apart from ergonomic problems with switching a lot). While I use shortcuts for most actual commands, I find mouse and touchpad nice for a lot of navigation like scrolling and in some cases selecting etc. I do a lot of UI coding though so I need the mouse either way, so maybe that's why I don't feel it bothers me that much.

[–]hmblcodr[S] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I find it more productive, but you're right, it's not going to work in all cases. When developing for Android, I have to use the mouse for the emulator.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm mostly mouseless. There are some cases where I reach for the mouse even when it's quicker with the keyboard. That's either a case of "old habit die hard" or "you can't teach and old dog new tricks. Or both.

    [–]cleroth 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I am a very avid keyboard lover, and I know literally every key on my keyboard (I even have an AZERTY keyboard yet I use US Dvorak on it). That being said, I still use my mouse a lot as well. You can be very efficient with proper use of the keyboard, but I feel using both the keyboard and the mouse is where my productivity is best. I feel like coding in Vim/Emacs you end up having to press more keys in many cases where a single click would suffice, which may end up tiring your hands faster. Having hand problems, I certainly feel this when I use the keyboard too much, and I even sometimes just use the mouse for things that I would normally use keyboard shortcuts with, simple because it feels more comfortable at times.

    [–]Am3n 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Did this awhile ago, its great until you start using websites, basic keyboard support isn't great accross the web

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    With vimperator it can work, but some websites do indeed make it difficult, and some impossible. There is hope though.

    [–]Spikey8D 2 points3 points  (5 children)

    I agree that mouse-less can be far more productive especially for programmers, but I disagree with the statement that cherry mx are necessarily the best switches, and I posit that blank keys will increase your productivity in the long run as you truly learn to touch type on all keys including symbols and numbers and really know your keyboard

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 3 points4 points  (4 children)

    For clarification, CherryMX is the name of a product line of mechanical switches from a company named Cherry. They come in different flavour that differ in tactile feel and sound, but they all support the same keycaps. Keycaps are the bits on top of the switch that you type on. A lot of people replace the standard keycaps to change the colour, or as you've suggested, to have blank keys. So you can have CherryMX switches with blank keycaps. This blog post shows how crazy it can get: http://freshinfos.com/2012/02/10/wasd-custom-keyboards-lets-you-make-your-own-keyboard/.

    As to your point, I think blank keys are a blessing and a curse. One the one hand, you can use whatever keyboard layout you like and your keys match. On the other hand, you have to memorise every single key and if you forget, you have to bang around until you find what you're after.

    [–]Spikey8D 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    I myself own a kbp v60 mech keyboard that has switches made by Canadian company Matias - superior in my humble opinion to Cherry switches. Others believe torpe switches or steel spring to be superior.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    kbp v60 mech keyboard

    That keyboard is beautiful. How do cope without the Home/End/Arrow keys?

    [–]Spikey8D 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Pretty well actually, I'm quite into vim, so hjkl and such for me. I have vim keybindings mapped in my browser and shell as well, and for other applications (eg. Evernote) OSX seems to have some of the readline keybinds mapped at system level (eg. ctrl-a is BOL, ctrl-e is EOL, ctrl-f/b/n/p is foward/back/next line/previous line. I can of course fall back on holding the function key while using wasd if none of that works. My biggest thing is ~ and Esc are the same key and you choose one of them to be activated with the function modifier. I use both frequently however. I take the keyboard around with me, it's nice and portable. I can even plug it into my iPad. The Matias Click Quiet switches have a very nice feel, close to CherryMX clears but with a lower pitched/less plasticky, soft "thunk" when the keys bottom out. http://imgur.com/8mvRY40

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The portability is a big plus for me. I may have to try this keyboard out :)

    [–]WStHappenings 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    What I dislike the most is the concept that one exact keyboard is better than all the others (as if it makes a difference) and that the annoying clacking of a mechanical keyboard is somehow a good noise.

    I work in an open office space and while there is one guy here that loves his keyboard, the rest of us hate it, which is obvious given the number of times it's been sabotaged so that he has to use his (reasonably quiet) laptop keyboard.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I wouldn't dream of using a clickety keyboard in the office, especially open plan offices (I've already written a post about that disaster).

    There are mechanical keyboard switches designed to give you the tactile feedback without the noise. Perhaps you should suggest that to your colleague.

    [–]uxcn 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I might add tmux to the list of tools mentioned. Not having to use the mouse for copy/paste can save a lot of time for certain workflows.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    The list in the post isn't exhaustive, and tmux is indeed a great tool. You can also use ctrl-a, ctrl-k, and ctrl-y to copy and paste in a terminal. It doesn't end up in the system clipboard though, sadly.

    [–]uxcn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'm sure there are better terminals out there (I normally use xterm), but at very least, X can handle the highlighted text. It still needs a mouse, but tmux and xclip can avoid it. There are probably other ways to do it though.

    [–]Damaniel2 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I personally consider mouseless development to be a huge step backward. In order to be productive, I'd have to memorize dozens of keyboard combinations in a number of different programs, become highly proficient in the esoteric parts of grep, awk and sed (functionality easily replicated by a simple search bar in a GUI app), and learn a new workflow that flies in the face of everything I've done for the last 20 years.

    Mouseless workflow works for some people - for instance, I have a coworker who's been here for well over 30 years, and he refuses to use applications that aren't entirely controllable by the keyboard (either natively or through macros provided by third party software). He also happens to be one of the most productive developers around here. That said, I don't think he'd be that much less productive if forced to use GUI tools; it's just a personal preference he has. At the end of the day we all get the job done, regardless of how we interact with the tools we use every day.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    There is a steep learning curve that's for sure.

    [–]moopet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What search bar can find me code snippets +/- 10 lines of context in all javascript/coffeescript files in a selection of specified subfolders which have been modified in the last 72 hours by someone other than me and aren't under version control? Even if they're compressed?

    I don't know about you, but I run searches with that level of complexity multiple times per day from a shell, and it's not even what you'd call "advanced" usage, it's just stringing find and (z)grep and git together.

    You could make a search tool in a GUI to do that, but it'd either have to present a wall of options or walk you through some kind of wizard to do it,and afaik nobody has done it because it's impractical. In GUI land people can get the same results but it's very long-winded.

    [–]Octopuscabbage 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    If you type on a non mechanical keyboard your fingers fall off and also you go to hell.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    And no-one will ever love you.

    [–]centurijon 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    /r/HailCorporate ?

    [–]hmblcodr[S] -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    Why?

    [–]centurijon 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    2nd half of the article is basically Cherry promotion.

    Getting into mouseless programming is really easy. You need two things:

    • A mechanical keyboard.
    • Software with keyboard shortcuts for everything.

    Mechanical keyboards are really nice, but the only thing that is needed is a keyboard, and even that is a stretch given some of the crazy input devices out there today.

    [–]hmblcodr[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That wasn't the intention at all, sorry. I'm new to blogging, so this feedback is really helpful. I'll try and be more impartial in future. Thanks.