[hunogo]

Thank you for explaining - as a consequence of illness and disability, I can understand the need.

But why someone would intentionally make things more difficult for themselves as a preference, I don't get. It would be like walking around in crutches when you have two perfectly healthy legs.

[_dain_]

I like to keep both hands on the keyboard. Every mouse movement incurs the cost of reaching the right hand for the mouse, then moving the right hand back and re-finding my place on the keyboard. I don't like that constant back-and-forth movement. It breaks my flow and it can make my arm ache.

[MontyCarloHall]

If implemented well (as [0] is), it can actually be much faster than using the mouse for certain tasks. For example, when browsing Google results, it’s a lot quicker to navigate to a result by pressing the first letter or two of its link text than dragging the mouse to click the link.

As a more common example, I only launch applications by opening a prompt (e.g. Spotlight on Mac) and typing the first couple letters of the program I’m starting. This is much faster than navigating using the mouse to the applications folder/menu/dock/taskbar etc. and clicking an icon.

I agree keyboard-based navigation is not faster for everything. Luckily, tools like this don’t prevent you from also using a mouse!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33222384

[wruza]

Reminds me of the times when every clickable element had an unde&rlined key and could be activated by alt-r. Then some designheads decided that it is non-beatiful and killed it.

[linsomniac]

If taken to the logical conclusion, your question extends to "why do we have keyboard shortcuts when you can just mouse there?" Taken to the illogical conclusion: "Why even have a keyboard when you can just use a mouse?"

There are times when a mouse is good, there are times when I don't want to take my hands off the keyboard and mouse for something.

[qu4z-2]

> intentionally make things more difficult for themselves as a preference

No-one would do that, that would be crazy. People intentionally make things easier for themselves as a preference, and different people find different things easy or hard.

[forgotmypw17]

Because once you learn how to use it, the keyboard is much faster and more capable than a pointing device.

So it's less like crutches and more like rollerblades.

[alchemist1e9]

Seems unlikely you are a serious software developer, software engineer, or sysadmin. It’s well known mouse use slows you down and causes ergonomic issues.

[vehemenz]

Why would you use a mouse when you have a perfectly good keyboard with 68+ keys and God knows how many viable input combinations?