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Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

So what? How does saving a few seconds or even minutes per hour while writing code really make an impact at the end of the day? I spend way more time reading code than I do writing. As a vim user who uses hjkl sometimes and the arrow keys other times I am still well employed, my boss has never complained I waste a fraction of a second reaching for a key. If you work an environment where every second matters to that degree I feel sorry for you son. We're programmers, not elite athletes. A tenth of second doesn't matter here IMHO.

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Using vim is not at all about the number of milliseconds saved, it's about lack of interruptions. An expert vim user can get into a flow state and be moving and jumping around the file, adding and deleting text, without stopping to think about how to do a command in their editor or worse, having to reach for the mouse and figure out where the cursor was left last time.

For some people, having your flow state disrupted can cause a very long delay as you have to figure out what you were doing all over again.

I should count my lucky stars that my flow state is not interrupted by having to move a mouse an average of once a minute.

I'm all for people using the tools they want, and I can see the appeal of a highly customized environment you know well, but I struggle with this logic I always hear treating the mouse like some sort of world ending interruption to text input.

At that point does a sneeze interrupt your flow state?

"At that point does a sneeze interrupt your flow state?"

Given that it is an involuntary spasm, then yes, it does.

I mean I can usually tell if I'm about to sneeze, it doesn't just sneak up on me like a seizure... I even cover my nose in anticipation subconsciously, I don't think a normal sneeze has ever interrupted my conscious thought...

But alright, just sounds dreadful I guess, to be unable to stay in flow due to the most minute actions or occurrences.

Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a claw) hand shape probably contributed to the rise in RSI.

When I started my career, it was the tail end of the era of the Typing Pool in large companies... when a room full of clerical people would be hammering away on electric typewriters for a full working day, but not dropping like flies with cases of RSI. So perhaps staying near the home row perhaps has other advantages.

I try and use Vim keymaps whenever possible with the dev tools available to me, and to keep hands on the keyboard whenever possible. I certainly notice less fatigue than the old days when I used to type, mouse, type, mouse.

I suspect that’s better addressed by looking at the ergonomics of your setup.

Typing can also cause RSI, and in fact if you look at the risk factors for RSI, way more boxes are ticked by keeping a mostly static position on a keyboard than with occasional movements of a mouse (especially the parts about leaving pressure on part of the body)

I’d also imagine typewriters are very different from normal keyboards in usage, and typists were very focused on ergonomics

There’s also the fact that RSI probably wasn’t as commonly diagnosed as it is today.

> Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a claw) hand shape probably contributed to the rise in RSI.

On the other hand, I always thought the opposite.

My hands fly around everywhere. My right hand goes from the main keys area to the home/end/arrow keys and the mouse pretty frequently. I keep my forearms perfectly parallel to the ground with close to 0 resistance, then I mostly use my shoulder and elbow to move my forearms, which leads to my hands being in a different spot.

I also never strain to reach any combo because I just move my hands instead of trying to break my wrist to press something like tilde + g with my ring / pinky and pointer fingers.

Been doing this for 20+ years and I have no arm, wrist, hand or finger pain and this is with years of gaming abuse where I was clicking and doing repeated key presses for 12+ hours for entire summers back in the day.

But if you ask me to type with my hands on the home row, I feel a very unnatural strain on the top of my hand when I move my fingers. After a minute it's painful. I dunno how anyone can do that without injuring themselves.

When making code changes feels quick and effortless, I think you become more willing to try out different things and experiment, which ultimately enables you to learn your languages and frameworks faster and make better choices. When code changes feel arduous and time-consuming, you're less inclined to experiment and more inclined to tolerate unknowns and best-guesses. I think vim helps push things towards the former scenario.

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