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Comment by ripe | Hacker News Reader

For people who ask, "why use text-only editors like vim or Emacs, when I can use a full GUI IDE?":

One of the reasons I haven't seen mentioned much is: I'm a touch typist, and I hate having to switch between mouse and keyboard! I have to take my attention off the screen. Slows me down. Disturbs my concentration.

With Emacs, I can work for hours without ever having to hunt for the mouse, or without even having a mouse plugged in. That's particularly nice for using my Ubuntu laptop on a lap desk, leaning back in my armchair. The best mouse is no mouse at all.

Yes, I know many IDEs have shortcut keys for some commands, but the basic assumption with GUI applications is that you have a mouse. Even if you learn the shortcuts, somehow you always end up having to use the mouse for some common task, e.g., to select a paragraph. That's why I never got to like a GUI IDE, despite having had to use Eclipse for years.

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I found I am unique, I never learned to touch type but at the same time reaching for a mouse really slows me down. I realized years into using Vim that the reason I love it so much is that I can do all my editing from the keyboard and because it is a deterministic state machine (modal) I can have a mental copy of the editor running in my head while I'm not looking at the screen. This is important to me because I look at my hands while typing. When I use GUI editors like VSCode it pops up all kinds of fancy bells and whistles that when I return my eyes to the screen it no longer matches the mental model I had in my head and I have to do a huge context switch to re-sync; just like how I have to context switch when I reach for the mouse. Am I the only one has this method of typing/editing? Praise the creators for Vim and Emacs editors.

When I was implementing a toy editor I read the neovim source code and to no one’s surprise the modes are just long switch statements - when in mode M and input key is K, do some action. It’s a simple program and your mental model is probably close to the vim source code!

For learning a lot of cool stuff about implementing my best book is The Craft Of Text Editing

http://www.finseth.com/craft/

I also find moving hand to mouse is a really frustrating context switch, so I ended up getting a roller mouse (https://www.contourdesign.com/product/rollermouse-red/) to use along with my main mouse. The idea is for lots of small things my hands stay at the keyboard but my thumbs can move the mouse so I don't incur a context switch.

All these friendly gooey things want to help you by popping up this kind of stuff. But luckily, some of them let you turn it off.

I've told IntelliJ and Eclipse and VSCode to please stop popping up suggestions, and let me type Ctrl+space to summon them.

Aaaah. Much better.

Drives me crazy that these types of programs always want to fill in the closing bracket for you. Like, as soon as you type an opening bracket, it sticks a closing bracket there. Completely interrupts my train of thought, why would I want the editor to assume it knows what I want and write things for me? Maddening. Especially something that messes with my internal thought process around the syntax "tree" that I'm trying to work out. I always disable it, but I have no idea how people put up with that. In Emacs on the other hand, it just highlights the matching bracket for you, so you easily know to type when you need it. Accomplishes the exact same goal without being so intrusive. I think there's a UX lesson to be learned there.

Very interesting. People are different. While I don't like this auto-complete popups, I do like the auto-pairing of quotes and parentheses and brackets of various kinds. Once you know that your editor does it, it's easy to predict and so I'm happy about having to type less.

(But getting out of the auto-paired thing could be improved. In IntelliJ, when entering Java code, I usually type cmd-shift-return to complete the statement, and that does what I want. It does different things in different situations, but it's easy to predict what it does.)

You are unique, but not in this respect. I write the same way, with a mental model of the editor state an integral part of the coding process.

Honestly stunned. Thanks for sharing.

I'm afraid you are the only one

I find it amazing how common it is for programmers to not be touch typists (I mean typing without looking at the keys). Like, isn't that something you pick up by the sheer amount of keyboard time?

Most people get by with pseudo-touch typing. They have most of the speed down, and look down at the keyboard occasionally, but they do not have the accuracy that is displayed in true touch-typing.

That describes me. I described it once as 'highly advanced hunt-and-peck'. I did learn to tough-type in school, but I didn't touch a computer until the following year and simply forgot it all. That was 40+ years ago. I get by well enough.

That sort of blows my mind. How can you not learn to touch type? It will take you a month at most and it greatly improves life at a keyboard.

To be honest, in programming, the speed of writing on keyboard itself isn't the most limiting factor during development. I've forced myself to learn to touch type (not fully, I don't press spacebar with a thumb of opposing hand as last letter written, I also almost exclusively use left shift), but that doesn't make me a fastest programmer around. Development looks more like "I type two words, I look at the screen for 10 seconds, I type one symbol, I look at the screens for 5 seconds, I type one word". Touch typing helps with that, but IMHO isn't really that important.

On the other hand, code is often not the only output. Tickets, design docs, bug repros, emails, wikis, user docs, etc. Touch typing can remove one source of friction there.

I (well, at least try to ;) think way longer about the text than I need to type it.

Probably, because most of the time when coding, you think, and do not type. Also you can do so much other stuff in a whole month. It might not really be worth it to spend a month on something, that improves speed of an activity, which is a small fraction of what you do while coding (perhaps it is!). Sure, if you do not plan to improve on other things, then that month might be well spent learning how to type faster/better/more precisely.

I tried to write this without looking at the keyboard, while usually I look every now and then. Worked quite well. I guess it is about forcing the habbit of reassuring yourself of pressing the correct keys to stop. I made lots of typos, but removing and writing again, I could get rid of them.

It won't take you a whole month. A simple way is to just use blank keys, and you'll naturally pick it up during the time you normally spend in front of the computer.

Depends on what you mean by "touch-type". I can type without looking in three keyboard layouts, but that comes through a lot of keyboard time (and a lot of Police Quest I), so that I'm unable to use split keyboards because my right hand is overreaching to the left half of the keyboard. I also ignore home-row dancing, specific finger positions etc. I can type fast and blind, but I don't think I would qualify as a classical touch-typist.

This is very much how I type as well. A couple of other factors for me:

1) I learned to type as a kid at the same time that I was getting into programming. So my typing style tends to optimize for quickly hitting numbers, operators, random punctuation characters, and editor movement/selection/command sequences every bit as much as ordinary letters. (And therefore, I tend to find obsessively staying near the home-row less useful.) I find that I type a little slower at pure linear prose, but a little faster at code than many classical touch-typist.

2) Since I was a self-taught typist who learned to type on a computer keyboard, rather than learned a formal touch typing method that was originally designed for typewriters, I've been comfortable since the beginning with backspace being available. It always used to annoy me whenever I had to take a typing class in school where they emphasized accuracy and dinged my typing speed an arbitrary constant amount for each typo. I can usually sense immediately by feel when I've hit the wrong key, smoothly hit backspace, hit the correct character, and then continue with almost no interruption to the flow of my typing. I usually don't even consciously think about those sorts of corrections.

You and I have the same instinctual feel when we've hit the wrong key. I can even hit backspace (or just arrow over) when I'm typing on a slow remote session and have made a mistake three words back.

Because not everyone has time to dedicate to a skill with diminishing returns after a certain point, and on top of that many people do not at all care about the life of their keyboard.

I touch-type, but still occasionally struggle with some things eg. using the right shift key instead of always preferring the left. I don't see much benefit in addressing this, since my typing speed is never the blocker with regard to my programming output.

I'm eternally grateful for Mrs. Walker's 2nd grade class, where they shoved us in a room full of Apple 2e's and made us play a typing game (and if you finished, you got to play Oregon Trail). I'm a bit surprised/disappointed that touch typing isn't universally taught in school.

Isn’t it distracting to have to look and visually think about the keyboard in the midst of working? Genuinely asking. I literally can’t imagine having to look at the keyboard. And how much of a commitment is it really?

It might be a bit distracting, depending on the person. Personally, I am still thinking about stuff and perhaps seeing the image on the screen or another one of some concept in my mind, when I check the keyboard. Sometimes it might even help to not look at that screen for a moment.

> It will take you a month at most

I always gave up after about a week, I've tried it twice or three times during the last 25 years. Like always, good (fast) enough beats perfection. And I'm a mathematician and programmer because I'm lazy :D

It’s just, I never considered so many people types this way and it’s one of those things that is hard to imagine doing when being used to something after 30 years (I’m 41, been typing since I was like 10 or 11), but I appreciate the logic in getting good enough.

IRC chatrooms got me much more comfortable with touch-typing than programming. There is too much time spent thinking when programming to feel slowed down by looking at the keyboard. IRC chats mean you have to be fast if you don't want the conversation to have moved on before you finish your message.

I don't touch type in the sense that I don't hold my fingers on the home row the way I was taught back in school. My home position for my right hand is shifted by one column, and I never use the little finger for typing. My hands move around the kit more than what a touch typist would be do.

However, I still type easily without looking at the keyboard, and I'm about as fast as the average typist, perhaps faster.

Could I speed up more? Possibly, but I don't feel that I'm slowed down by typing speed, and I find my way to type better when one uses a lot of special characters, as is common when doing programming and accessing Emacs keys.

I can type without looking but I still have trouble placing my fingers over the keyboard in the right initial place so I’ll often start a little off and I type so fast that I’ll type half a dozen characters before I realize and have to correct.

Most keyboards have a little raised bump on the F and J keys ;)

I once subscribed to a magazine and received the subscription at my address, but with a strange name. I took me a minute to realize that it had been touch typed, but with the right hand displaced to the right by one position.

That’s so cool! Not only you touch type, you also do not need to look at the screen!

Well, apparently they do need to look at the screen :)

The MUD I was playing had the command "snuke". It was like "smile", but for when you positioned your right hand incorrectly

scbrg snukes happily.

I'm not that old (30's) but we were forced into learning how to touch-type throughout grade-school. Pretty much any white-collar work requires it. Getting through university basically requires it (even humanities courses; good luck writing long essays without it). It's shocking that anyone who went through school in a developed country can't touch-type.

Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing?

I have never, ever heard about it.

Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters.

I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second people are taught touch typings, it's a skill that requires consistent training.

> Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing?

Mine did (Europe). Junior high. Around the age of 13, I think. It's been a while. But only as part of a particular course, which I didn't take - I had picked another one. I don't remember which one included the touch typing, but apparently it was one which a lot of students attended.

I learned touch typing at home when I was 14 or 15, my mother changed careers and had to learn touch typing, so she borrowed a Scheidegger typewriter (those with the coloured keys) and a course book, and I thought "Why not?" and did about 15 minutes every day. I tried to be consistent and do it "right", and after three weeks I had it pat down (I should add that those who followed the school course were for the most part a bit sloppy, and most didn't really learn it even though they had the course for the whole semester).

Then when I did my mandatory military service we had to go through a touch type course as well. It wasn't even half as good as the Scheidegger course, but in any case I could touch type already so I didn't care.

For me it helped greatly to be able to touch type when I started working in programming - my mind would fly and I could keep up with my typing. I cringed when I watched over the shoulder of (equally young) colleagues who constantly had to break their concentration to hunt for keys to press, one at the time (of course as years went by those people got much faster, with the same method, and those particular problems disappeared for them).

And in my job I've always had to write a lot of documents, and of course touch typing helps greatly there.

Well I grew up in Canada. We had generic 'computer lab' classes (don't remember which subject it was associated with for most of those years) from kindergarten to grade 12. Touch typing was definitely drilled into our brains throughout.

And of course it's not a 'course'. 'Reading' and 'writing' weren't courses, but you learn them regardless. It's too basic to be a course. It's just stuff we learned.

Edit - the format for schooling here is for the first 6/7 years you have a single teacher all day long. That teacher teaches you every subject. And that included several trips to the computer lab per week. The next 6 years of schooling had 'courses' split up by teacher and time slots, but again, computer lab time in some of those courses. There was also a required course called 'CALM' (Career and life management I think) which included a very strong computer lab component. There were also CS-ish electives (equivalent to shop classes) where you learned CS, albeit at a very basic level. And this was during an era where most people didn't have computers at home... So computer labs were always open after school hours.

Edit 2 - Anyhow, a lil random. But being able to touch-type at a specific speed on a test program was required to pass CALM and it was required for high-school graduation. Some kids could pass and then forget it all, but in general the entire schooling system here involves computers enough that most people can touch-type.

Edit 3 - My partner had a similar educational upbringing, despite being born under communism. Hell, she can touch-type multiple keyboard layouts (for other languages) on a US keyboard despite not being technically inclined...

We had a touch typing class in the mid nineties in South Africa.

I told my teacher I don't need to touch type (I could already use a keyboard from tons of programming) so she said if I could beat her I could sit it out. I beat her and she kept up her end of the bargain.

However years later I wish I had just sucked up my pride and learnt it because I had to eventually anyway. It wasn't so useful for programming, but it's great for text (emails, etc.).

I find it interesting that in your view most people aren't touch typist. My experience (now in Australia) is that most people touch type. Although, there does seem to be a spectrum of purity. e.g. my fingers always remain on the home rows, but I use left shift for all capitals except Q, A, Z (when I'm using QWERTY).

How old are you? so I'm 35, USAian, and I had typing as a specific bit of course work (can't remember the program names) in elementary school (so 92-95ish?) and there was a class when I was a freshman in highschool (2000) that was 50% typing (different program, also don't remember the name) and 50% word/excel.

I'd absolutely believe that a lot of us on HN grew up in the narrow slice of time when computers were novel enough that people thought they should teach typing specifically, before that time: too niche; after that time: it's assumed we already know

It was included as part of the curriculum in certain classes I had in middle school.

As with most things in my education, most people including myself just put in minimal effort, to get the grade (which touch typing didn’t really effect, as it was not part of any homework, quizzes, tests, etc.) and after a few years you never had to see it again.

I’m 50, and I took a typewriter course in high school because it seemed obvious that keyboarding skills would be useful, although computers themselves were still somewhat niche.

It was called “computer class” but most of it was touch typing (you had to type with a cardboard box over your hands).

I learned touch typing as an exchange student in an US high school in the late '90s.

> Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters.

Yes, we were taught that all throughout school... Is the US school system really that shit? I'm curious where your scepticism is coming from?

Like really, I didn't know a single kid in university who couldn't consistently type 60 wpm. 40 wpm was literally required to pass high school, pretty slow, but not something you can do staring at the keyboard punching keys one by one. The kids who were really good at it were touching 100wpm. I could get highs of 80-90.

I can count on one hand the amount of people I've met who can't touch-type...

You're assuming that most of the writing is done on computers - but depending on the discipline - it isn't : computers aren't nowhere nearly good enough to compete with paper / chalk (/ even whiteboard !) when it comes to mathematics-heavy domains.

Pure maths is a pretty small niche. The vast majority of while collar work, university students, etc..., definitely type and use computers constantly.

I meant most STEM students plus some others (economics). While we do use computers constantly, it's not comparable to how much more is directly written / drawn on paper. (Well, pre-Covid at least.)

I suppose it depends on your definition of touch typing. Back in the early 70s, before many people had heard of personal computers, I was planning a career in journalism. I had to learn my way around a keyboard, so I took a quarter of high school typing. It didn’t teach me to “touch type” in the sense of achieving 100 word per minute or whatever, but it was the solid foundation I needed for typing in college, in my (too brief) journalism career, in office work and systems admin work. I’m reasonably fast, and I don’t always look at the keyboard, and no one has ever complained about it.

I can type at warp 9, but never in my 30+ years with various computers and keyboards have I felt lack of typing speed or lack of laser focus on screen would be a drag on peogramming 'speed' or abilities even. However, it is a bit odd for someone spending few years behind keyboard not to pick up touch typing.. prime example being MDs.

I'm a touch typist, but emacs chords always bothered me. I feel much more content switching to mouse or track pad for things like switching tabs, picking files from a file tree to copy / paste or duplicate or whatever, etc.

That said, being a programmer and not touch typing definitely sounds odd to me as well

emacs chords always bothered me

I got carpal tunnels a few years back from emacs, which forced me to try https://ergoemacs.github.io/ . I like it a lot, it's more sensibly designed. I've found it a pain to install though...

Spacemacs has saved me.

unfortunately I can only really work for long stretches on a kinesis split keyboard - with the modifiers all the on the thumb. if they would finally make a bluetooth one maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

I just got an email about a 20% off sale they're having, and I was tempted. Still expensive, though, seeing as how there's so many new ergonomic designs available from smaller companies.

I had a split keyboard and pretty quickly moved on.

The reason should have been rather intuitive, had I considered it. Splitting the keyboard allows a more natural position, but it still needs to be relatively static. Unfortunately, at half the weight, each side had less resistance to moving, especially with the inner stands kicked up at an angle. That meant more frequent fiddling to readjust the positioning, and lots of time wasted trying to decide if it was in the wrong spot, or if I hadnt yet adjusted properly.

also - they aren't really that great I hate to say. after a couple decades of using them I still get the firmware confused by excessive modifier usage and have to jam on all the keys to get it back again (spend a while with a support engineer trying to make it reproducible. they did try, that was something)

the keys don't actually last all that long. they will sell you a new flex/key assembly for the left or the right side though - which is nice...oh yeah, and the function keys stop working pretty quick if you actually use them.

but its so much more comfortable and speedy

remapping caps lock to control helped me with emacs chords

It is simple, really: There are also many piano players who cannot make confident and accurate movements on the keyboard without looking at their hands! My process learning how to type on a computer keyboard without looking was very much like the process I experienced while working on my piano skills over the years: You graduate from fumbling with your hands and exhausting switching between looking at your hands and the sheet music to sight reading to playing with your eyes closed (if you want to). Though a lot of advanced players can and do play without sheet music and sight reading at all, interestingly, a lot of those players then keep looking at their hands instead! because the music progression is strictly following their mental model of the piece.

Yes, but I often work with different keyboards. The place I live has a couple of different stupid local variations, and then if I have an Anglosphere keyboard it's 50-50 between UK and US. Sometimes I change the "layout" and type as if I'm on a different keyboard, but usually the keys don't even physically match up. Then there are different types of keyboard, from super-compact to full numpad monsters and from chiclet to hefty mechanical, and then there's my shitty touchscreen phone.

I'd love to be able to type from muscle memory, but the keyboards keep changing!

Touch typing isn't about writing without looking at the keys, that's something that pretty much every dev I know does. It's about writing in an efficient way that minimizes finger travel, and zeroes palm and writ movement.

There's a reason F and J have bumps on them, or why we have two shifts, etc.

For anyone interested into relearning how to type efficiently I want to recommend this free website full of tutorials and exercises: https://www.typingclub.com/

> There's a reason F and J have bumps on them

Actually that’s a regression. At one point some keyboards (Apple IIRC) put the bumps on D and K, which made it much easier to notice when your hands were misplaced.

It’s easier to notice that the wrong finger has the bump than noticing that no finger has the bump beneath it.

to operate and use a tui like emacs with confidence and start typing at the speed of thought:

consider putting a photo of your keyboard next to your screen and painting the keyboard a nice uniform black.

your body-mind's intelligence will swiftly learn to position your hands and coordinate your/its fingers without adding things to unlearn later.

the photo of your keyboard near where you are focusing when looking at the screen makes a huge difference, one could start with just that.

I literally trained the correct technique as a child because I was so into computers. I'd argue children today are far less exposed to keyboards than people (well, nerds) my age were.

Maybe but I’ve typing since I was a kid on a Windows 95 and I still only know the gist of the keyboard and have to look down and correct myself every minute or so, so I don’t that’s they only reason. I actually think that typing without looking isn’t as important as people used to say it was for speed.

Just memorising the order of the keys from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and reciting it, was enough for me never to have to look down. I have no idea why or how; I assume it's something to do with dreaming.

It would be an interesting experiment to have one group do that before teaching both groups to touch type. Then measure the speed and accuracy of both groups.

I was programming since 80s and had never managed to learn touch typing. I am a vegetable in this department. My fingers do remember some key sequences so when I press first key I could usually master the rest of the sequence without looking but then I have to look again.

I could probably put a gun to my head spend a month and learn it but I do not really feel it slowing down my programming (I spend more time thinking and drawing some skeletons) so I've never bothered.

I actually like it being a touch typist? Using the mouse gives me more movement and I like it. From my observation, there also seems to be a very high correlation between touch typing and carpel tunnel as well.

It's worth mentioning that Emacs is not a text-only editor, but is able to function in a text only environment if configured to. I think many people never consider giving Emacs a shot because they think it's purely a terminal based program.

Modern Emacs can be (and mostly is) compiled with GTK support and features a GTK interface, but can be launched in text-mode with a command line argument. If you don't mind using bleeding edge versions, there is a branch called "PGTK" that allows the GTK interface to run natively on Wayland!

> If you don't mind using bleeding edge versions, there is a branch called "PGTK" that allows the GTK interface to run natively on Wayland!

The two biggest Linux distros (Ubuntu and Fedora) are Wayland by default now. And the 'standard' Emacs distribution you install through the Software 'store' in both is GTK (which of course works). Wayland support isn't really a big deal anymore. I haven't come across any apps that don't work on Wayland.

Yeah, it is GTK but not pure GTK! It uses X11 drawing calls for some elements so it needs XWayland on Wayland. Pure GTK might be coming with Emacs 28 by the way.

At least on Sway (with the scaling settings I use), fonts are a bit crap (blurry) on xwayland and perfect on native Wayland.

Also a keyboardist, and you can pry my emacs from my cold dead fingers, but I still think it would benefit from a bit more ability to incorporate platform-appropriate keyboard-driven GUI widgets/arbitrary drawing. For example, if the minibuffer could look like a regular GUI text field + a drop-down menu, or a floating command palette, I genuinely think it would be a nicer experience (and would make it "look more modern" which is not a terrible thing)¹. Similarly for the mode line and fringes. If some of the peripheral elements could be enabled to escape the "everything is a grid of characters" paradigm I think it would be a net positive.

¹I've tried mini-frame, and it's fine, but it's still just a utilitarian grid of text.

On your last point, in terms of absolute speed, pointing your mouse to the paragraph and dragging to highlight is usually faster than the fussiness of multiple key presses and/or chord combos needed from a full keyboard setup. That is, unless you've macro'd a custom single key shortcut for just that particular action

Emacs has a standard shortcut for moving around in terms of paragraphs, so you don't need to customize anything. It's these semantic(ish) movement commands that really let keyboard navigation shine—moving around in terms of paragraphs, code blocks, matching delimiters is not only productive but also combines well with other commands and keyboard macros, which makes a lot of repetitive things easy to automate in Emacs but difficult anywhere else.

I have no problem going keyboard to mouse, but mostly because I use a macbook with touchpad exclusively. Reaching my thumb down right below the space bar to use the mouse is really not a big deal.

+ and basically I would generalize this across to all the common actions people typically use that are often easier with a mouse. And can even be faster, even with the extra hand travel to the mouse.

Never mind being "touch typist" I completely suck at typing in general. I think my cat could do a better job.

Still I hardly ever use mouse when using IDE's like Visual Studio C++ coding for example. It has shortcuts for everything.

I just started using VS Code a lot last weekend and I didn't find myself using my trackpad much. The Vim plugin, whatever it's called, allowed me to do the same things I do in Vim itself. I can't speak to the Emacs emulation, though, now that I think about it.

IntelliJ has a M-x equivalent and IdeaVim covers text editing. I literally never touch my mouse when using the IDE. I really don't think this is a compelling argument.

To add to this: yes, full blown IDEs have shortcuts but they are hard to explore, counter-intuitive and hard to extend.

I think JetBrains has a great system to it.

cmd+shift+a opens a command palette with every possible command in the IDE. It matches as you type the name of an action, and every action has a keybinding shown to the right (if it exists).

Every relevant button generally has keyboard shortcuts right on them.

And pressing cmd+e opens a list of gui interactions you've made so you can repeat them (things like focusing buffers, clicking on a file in the project file tree, etc.)

Basically, if you know cmd+shift+a, you're golden for learning commands and key shortcuts.

In comparison, emacs/vim are pretty awful. I've done a few tutorials of each and while I could have spent more time learning them, JetBrains makes it stupid easy to start learning the editor.

Alt-x does the very same in Emacs. Every available command with tab completion and with the keyboard shortcut listed. I think showing the shortcut is new.

If you are not familiar what a particular command does you can use C-h f <function-name> to open the help page.

I think Emacs is really easy to learn after you get a handle of the navigation keys. Which you might already be familiar with from shell.

shift-shift brings up the same window, albeit with different prompts.

Shift shift is go to anywhere with fuzzy matching. But yeah, it's the same window, the command palette is in a tab on that.

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