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Comment by tony-allan | Hacker News Reader

I know that most developers prefer keyboard shortcuts when developing software but I prefer using the mouse mostly because I cannot remember all of the shortcuts in a range of different environments.

Given my preference it would be interesting to explore a more tactile interface.

  - a series of physical knobs to skip back and forward by function, variable reference, etc
  - a separate touch screen with haptic feedback for common functions and jump to predefined functions in my code
  - a macro-pad with real buttons to do the above

Other thoughts

When watching videos physical buttons and knobs would be good. I know professional video and audio engineers already use these technologies but i've never tried them myself.

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> I prefer using the mouse mostly because I cannot remember all of the shortcuts in a range of different environments.

This is why one of the greatest changes in power user tooling in recent years is the "find anywhere" hotkey, which is now available almost everywhere.

Mouse interaction is slow and hardly a panacea for finding features buried in menus. "Find anywhere" type interactions with fuzzy search allow you to use they keyboard and highly mnemonic abbreviations to turn up what you're looking for. With a few exceptions, I tend to lean on them even for things that I use regularly, because it's easier to learn which few keystrokes will turn up the option I'm looking for than it is to rebind a fresh hotkey in each environment or, as you say, memorize the built-in one.

> one of the greatest changes in power user tooling in recent years

Alt+x in Emacs was here for ages. Even the command prompt in vim follows the same pattern. And while it's useful, I still prefers to bind commonly use commands to keybinding, especially if there can be prefix.

There's a reason I didn't say "innovation"—I knew that people would immediately point out it's been around forever. What's new is that it's in mainstream tooling.

> "find anywhere" hotkey, which is now available almost everywhere

Almost everywhere? I'd love to see a list of other examples.

The only place I can name is the vscode Ctrl-Shift-P thing, and in that case it's a wholesale replacement for an explorable/discoverable UI (i.e. traditional menu bar).

Sure there are search boxes in other places, but usually that's literally for finding things, not for performing application domain commands/actions/manipulations, which is what I understood the parent to be describing.

I wish the 'find anywhere' instead expanded and highlighted the correct place of that command in the menu. In that way, it would teach me gradually a mental map of the shape and set of commands I have available, ie I imagine it would let me notice 'neighbour commands'. I realise this is not the most efficient way to do this, but it would be 'incremental on the job learning'.

macOS does this when searching for a command in the Help menu - it will open up the context menu and highlight the place where the command is so you know where it is next time.

Fun anectada. Was launching Remote desktop app which was unsurprisingly called:

"Microsoft Remote Desktop"

by just typing "Remo" in to a spotlight. Then one day it stoped working. I thought i was going crazy, because i dont remember that i uninstalled it. Spotlight was returning no results. Then i found out that someone at microsoft thought that it was a great idea to rename the app to ...

"Windows App".

What the hell were they smoking?

And what is the "find anywhere" hotkey that works everywhere?

OP is talking about the "Cmd + P" aka "Run command" command. Ideally it should list the shortcuts of the commands you run so next time you can do that directly.

The MacOS-wide equivalent is Cmd+Shift+/, which searches all menu items. KDE has a similar idea built into the global menu.

If OSes were optimized like RTS games, maybe the mouse could be plenty fast. Something like https://charmstone.app/ but for many actions.

I use the mouse a lot, even for (typing) coding.

I'm pretty "fluent" with navigation shortcuts, things like Ctrl/Alt/Shift combined with arrow keys, PgUp/PgDn/Home/End etc. and I do use them extensively. And yeah, constantly switching between the keyboard and mouse with my right hand is a bit annoying.

But still, in many cases, using the mouse is just faster. For example, jumping to a specific position in a source code file, scrolling and clicking gets me there much quicker than navigating with the keyboard alone.

(This is also one thing I really hate about using terminals: you can't just click to move the cursor quickly! Editing part of a long string without spaces is a pain in the ass, and it's something I have to do surprisingly often.)

When it comes to shortcuts, I prefer one- or two-key combinations whenever possible. Three-key shortcuts, however, depend on their layout: many just aren’t that convenient. Sometimes I’ll just click through the menu manually, even if I know the shortcut.

> For example, jumping to a specific position in a source code file, scrolling and clicking gets me there much quicker than navigating with the keyboard alone

I say this with the intention of providing context, not to say the way you do things is bad. It's all user preference in the end and there is no wrong way.

Lots of folks consider your "fast" example with a mouse as their "slow" example that forced them into learning more advanced features of their editor. For example. Most Vim users can get to any character or partial string, or parameter, or line, or paragraph, or function start or what you have within three quick keys on their home row. They do this quickly, and can immediately start doing other things right after because their hands never moved.

The mouse is fast because people don't need to memorize things. The keyboard is fast because the keyboard is fast.

It's like the old joke from the movie Heist. "What do you mean you don't like money? That's why they call it money".

No offence taken; there's always room to learn. Just curious, since I never use Vim, how exactly one navigates to (and/or selects) "aaa" part in the following string with just three keys in Vim?

    url = "https://example.com/keyword=aaa&name=john"

So many ways!

fa;

(f)find (a) (;)repeat

That would be the generic vim way. I could mash on semicolon to get to each instance of "a" in the line. Here's another.

2fa

2 (2nd instance) f (find) (a)

Most people use a plugin called easy motion instead.

You type some two character key command to start it. For me it's "ff".

After ff, i type any two characters. It will then highlight each place in the document that start with those two characters (think an inline table of contents) that I can then select.

https://github.com/easymotion/vim-easymotion

I write all this knowing it looks and sounds like madness, so again, don't take this as anything other than someone explaining their madness, but once you learn all this stuff (it takes about a month) you realize your mouse is actually the slowest way to do it.

I'd do `/aaa<enter>cw<replacement text>`

if you are above, move there with three keys: t&b

select: t&vb

if you see below you'd do F&b, F&vb

> I really hate about using terminals: you can't just click to move the cursor quickly!

alt-click?

Doesn't seem to work for any emulators I have (cmd, Windows Terminal, Git Bash, etc.) :(

Use a different terminal and/or editor. Mouse support is absolutely a common feature and has been for a while. xterm, konsole, tmux, emacs, GNU screen, etc., etc. all let you do a variety of things with the mouse.

For instance I use helix and can move the cursor with the mouse just fine in WezTerm, iTerm, and Apple's Terminal.app. tmux has a mouse mode where you can select and scroll with the mouse.

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