- Grad student
- Bad
jeffhykin
joined 2 years ago
I think my city has a bike rack for the bus, but honestly it seems like such a pain to mount and dismount it I wouldn't really ever consider using it. (I'm curious if anyone has had experience with it)
I get this, but
Why not say "I get this, and ..." ?
I don't think the idea of a learn-as-you-go editor goes against the idea of watching skilled devs with their favorite tool
Input speed is not "just" input speed.
Note: I'm not about to argue for or against modal editors, I just want to answer: why is input speed really really really important, when (we agree) its not a big percent of total time.
5min at 80mph over a bumpy dirt path is very very different than 5min of flat smooth straight driving. And not just because of effort.
A senior and junior dev could spend the same amount of time to rename a var across 15 files, move a function to a new file, comment out two blocks, comment one back in, etc. But. When I try to have a conversation while they do that, or when I change my mind and tell the junior to undo all that, its a massive emotional drain on the junior.
But effort isn't the whole picture either: speed is a big deal because pausing a conversation/mental thought for 5 seconds while you wait to finish some typing, is incredibly disruptive/jarring to the thought-process itself. That's how edge cases get forgotten, and business logic gets missed.
Slower input is not merely input time loss, it also creates time loss in the debugging/conceptualizing stages, and increases overall energy consumption.
If the input is already fast enough that there's no "pauses in the conversation" then I'd agree, there's not much benefit in increasing input speed further. BUT there's almost always some task, like converting all local vars (but not imported methods) in a project to camel case, that are big enough to choke the conversation, even for a senior dev. So there's not necessarily a "good enough" point because it's more like decreasing how often the conversation gets interrupted.
Don't Speculate
Go to Twitch/YouTube. Watch a senior Vim/Jetbrains/Emacs/VS Code/Helix dev churn out code for a hackathon/advent-of-code, and see what you are (or are not!) missing out on.
If you have "how the hell did they just do that" moments, figure out what that feature is, and STEAL IT. If its too hard to steal, then maybe you are being limited by your editor. Base your "fear of missing out" on what you see rather than random people tossing their opinions around. Only you can answer "how much is that feature worth to me and my workflows?"
- If you're going to try modal editors, sooner is exponentially better. Probably start with Vim bindings for VS Code.
- If you're not going to go modal, then make absolutely sure you don't bottom out. To be frank, Ctrl+D is the tip of the iceberg. Half the benefit of modal editors is, mastery is mandatory; they chase you around with a 10k volt taser until you've got 100 instinctual shortcuts. Hardly anyone mentions this but Go beyond/outside your editor: At the OS level, use spacebar as a modifier key, where holding spacebar converts your WASD into arrow keys. Then disable your normal arrow keys. Something like that will get you vim-like benefits, but in every app, and with a learning bump instead of a learning mountain. For VS Code, get cursor jumper extensions like Mario (block jumper), get cursor-alignment extensions, write boatloads of custom code snippets, get a macro record+replay extension, make a jump-to-next quote, jump to next bracket, install sequential number generator extension, a case change (camel case, snake case, etc) extension, sort lines, case-preserving rename. If you can avoid bottoming out, and keep learning, you'll likely never feel that you are missing out on whatever modal editor people are swearing by.
Once you're >25 this is just a flex
Glad I'm not alone on this
Yeah :/ it does appear that way. I looked into them a bit after reading the article, they've got a 61/100 score on the freedom house index (US is 83/100). From freedom of speech to freedom of religion, there seems to be a lot of not-as-advertised realities.
Oh! Yet another thing I didn't think of. I'll start trying that.
While I don't have choc (I wanted choc switches) I did take the time to print choc-like keycaps for MX switches, because apparently 3d printing and Etsy are the only way to get those (for some reason).
I don't know how people tolerate keycap profiles like DSA
this is really cool, I did not know about keymapDB!
The letters in between keys make sense to me (press both keys). I'd never thought of doing chords that way before.
I'm confused by the vertical in-between keys though. Like how are S and W pressed at the same time physically?
if you ever browse r/gradstudents its about as depressing as posts on this sub; and if society's most promising students are constantly forgetting they're enough, maybe you did too.
Nope, unfortunately