How hard is it to "go mouseless" with your personal computer?

boing
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I can’t believe I’ve been misquoting this line for the last 28 years…

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43

I really hope the prof didn’t teach numerical analysis.

“You’re missing an ampersand in row 20, column 9”

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44

Study after study says most users are not slower using a mouse.

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There should be studies about how annoyed users are with having to mouse all the time, regardless of productivity. It’s a workplace satisfaction issue.

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46

You are confused about the argument. The argument is not whether you should stop using emacs. The argument is whether other people who don’t know how to use emacs should use emacs.

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47

miss jay gif GIF

But… that might make computing… more approachable… /s

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48

The answer is obviously “yes”.

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Now there’s a name I haven’t seen in a long, long time. I’ll have to go check it out again when I have some cycles to spare.

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People who don’t know emacs should start using emacs even though there is significant learning curve and no efficiency gain because you personally find using a mouse irritating (or because Richard has been using it a long time and doesn’t want that to go to waste). Got it.

52

It was a joke. :neutral_face:

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53

And I’ve been thumb-typing for decades.

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Literally still using one every day.

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54

Yes it is, but I also use the Nyxt browser with it. It is the ultimate emacs-like mouse less Webbrowser

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55

Vimium for Firefox & Chrome have CHANGED MY LIFE. Vi(m) keybindings for a browser.

I’ve found it hard. I’m not totally mouseless. About 2 years ago I strained my neck and developed some mild carpal tunnel syndrome. As a sysadmin, much of my work was traditionally on the command line which is very keyboard friendly. As more and more systems move to web-based interfaces, my mousing has increased. Using Vimium has reduced my mouse usage and RSI symptoms dramatically.

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56

Replacing mouse movements with keystrokes wherever possible is an admirable goal, but I’m a little disappointed that we’re 55 comments in and nobody has mentioned a TrackPoint keyboard. Yep, the little eraser thingy you find on ThinkPads. Lenovo sells USB and Bluetooth versions of these keyboards, and having your mouse right in the middle of the home row is a game-changer.

Yes, there’s a learning curve, but the original poster seems open to learning new things. You can get fairly proficient in a couple of days. Worth it.

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57

I had a CS (adjunct) prof that believed that all assignments needed to be small enough to fit on a 5.25 disk - single sided. This was in 2001, when even 3.5 disks were on their way out.

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58

I take hw for some classes in Latex source; while I can read the source OK, I still usually compile for convenience. My students are pretty good about using pretty generic latex. The main problem with compiling other people’s latex is for full articles and books, where authors insist on using lots of custom environments. I edit a math journal, about half of all submissions contain code designed to subvert the official journal .cls file.

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59

I just spent most of the day building nice, robust keyboard navigability into a web navigation component in Vim :slight_smile:

I find Vim valuable for reasons other than snobbishness or keyboard-only nav. This might be something to do with me personally, but no other editor I’ve ever used distracts me less than Vim–to the degree that it was worth it to learn the :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: thing…

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60

What the fuck kind of CS assignment would involve writing more than 512k of source code?! Maybe if you’re being asked to provide your own source data for some processing code…

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61

I’m entirely willing to believe that’s true. I’m also willing to bet that the average participant in this thread and the average computer user have very, very different needs.

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