[wanderful]

Many people here are creating a false dilemma out of mousing and keyboarding. The argument isn't even necessarily about mousing vs. keyboarding, it could be about GUI vs. command line/hotkey. GUIs provide a discoverable profile of all actions (with the most common tasks optimized visually, hopefully). Hotkeys package the common actions to save time.

In any interface, there is a learning curve. Some users never progress beyond the most basic stages, and each time they interact with the software it's as if they are starting over. Other users develop further along the learning curve to the point that using a hotkey becomes cheaper. Many users bring overlap from other interfaces (which is what makes an interface intuitive — it fits the user's expectations). As more hotkeys are defined they will be for less and less common actions, which fewer users will learn, remember, and use. People will also move up and down the curve depending on their frequency of use with the software.

A useful product should have both. The more complex a product gets, the more the user skill stratifies (from newbs to pros), the more necessary both a GUI and hotkey interface is. The GUI provides a scheme for organizing the myriad features and functions as a fallback interaction layer, while hotkeys allow the user to leap ahead.

HN users are overwhelmingly savvy, which is shown by the support of keyboard interactions.