[codingdave]

That is a really biased way to spin things. Of course virtual keyboards are the worst of both worlds. And lining up a mouse on multiple axes is just an odd way to look at it -- on a keyboard you need to line up your fingertip on three axes for every keystroke, if you are wanting to go to that level of detail.

[dartos]

I don’t think it’s very biased.

When using a mouse you need to completely move your hand to another device, and aim that device at an arbitrary position.

With a keyboard the positions you move your fingers are fixed and because of that, you can develop muscle memory and type very quickly without thinking about where to move your fingers. It’s called “touch typing.”

There’s no such thing for using a mouse since the target position of the mouse movement can vary wildly from website to website and can vary based on the position of a given window.

[codingdave]

Using a mouse is completely natural if you do it often. So is using a pen on a tablet. Whatever you use, you get so used to it that is it an extension of your own hands or whatever you use to control input. Your own bias is showing in the assumption that you can develop muscle memory for keys but not other input devices, or that because links are in different places, the mouse becomes cumbersome.

[dartos]

You can’t develop muscle memory when your target movement isn’t the same.

Using a mouse is natural as in intuitive. You don’t need to really tech someone to use a mouse. It’s easy in that way.

But that’s not the same as muscle memory. Using my hands is very natural, but when learning guitar, I still need to be conscious of what position my hand is going to be in. After a while, since my hand is constantly going to the exact same position, I develop muscle memory and no longer need to be conscious of where my hand is going.

I feel like I shouldn’t need to explain muscle memory with analogy.

[jorvi]

Touchpads exist.

A mouse (or rather, a floating cursor) is often a much more efficient way to get your cursor in position than slamming your arrow or hjkl keys multiple dozens of times.

[dartos]

Touchpads don’t solve for muscle memory for the same reasons mouses don’t.

And yeah, of course. Most people who use keyboard based workflows dont just use hjkl to move a cursor around. In vim, for example, there are many more text-centric ways of moving around a document.

Using a keyboard is generally much faster. Try using your daily code editor without any hot keys at all. No F5, no Ctrl-s, none of that.

[jorvi]

> Touchpads don’t solve for muscle memory for the same reasons mouses don’t.

Uh, what? I have my touchpad tuned so that one swipe from top left to bottom right is exactly equal to going from the top left to bottom right of my display. And aside from that, how do you think people play FPS games, that they think about every mouse movement and then do it?

> Most people who use keyboard based workflows dont just use hjkl to move a cursor around.

> Try using your daily code editor

One of the few usecases where you can do that, and in general is extremely heavily biased towards keyboard use.

Having a touchpad or mouse is great because it is adaptable and versatile. It doesn’t require the application developer to have accommodated every step a keyboard user wants to optimize for. Not to mention there is no “quickly” using your keyboard with one hand if you constantly need to hold modifier keys :)

> Using a keyboard is generally much faster.

That was my point, it is until it isn’t. On any application without Vim or EMacs bindings I’ll happily be leaping over hundreds of lines of text with one or two swipes whilst you are sitting there, going taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap with horrid inefficiency.

[skydhash]

> I’ll happily be leaping over hundreds of lines of text with one or two swipes whilst you are sitting there

I’d be doing search and land exactly where I need to be. For each important operation, there’s always a more efficient operations as shortcuts are composable in a way pointing is not.

[dartos]

> Uh, what? I have my touchpad tuned so that one swipe from top left to bottom right is exactly equal to going from the top left to bottom right of my display. And aside from that, how do you think people play FPS games, that they think about every mouse movement and then do it?

I think that FPS players are conscious of where they are aiming. They don’t just automatically move their mouse in the exact same way to hit every enemy on screen.

There may be some specific movements, like swiping or turning 180 degrees which have a specific motion (or gesture) related to it, but that isn’t the same as aiming, which you can’t memorize as where you aim is different every time depending on your targets position and movement.

> Not to mention there is no “quickly” using your keyboard with one hand if you constantly need to hold modifier keys :)

Yes there is :)

> On any application without Vim or EMacs bindings I’ll happily be leaping over hundreds of lines of text with one or two swipes whilst you are sitting there.

I’m sorry, but this is a bad argument. Obviously is software isn’t made to support keyboard centric use, it will not be great to use it only with a keyboard.

Imagine if you were writing a book, but your software wasn’t made with keyboard support. You’d need to use the mouse to click every letter. Or one where each clickable button is buried in >3 layers of dropdown menus. That would be equally terrible.

If you have an application optimized for keyboard interaction, it will be faster (tho less intuitive) to interact with it than one which is optimized for mouse movements.

There is a good compromise between speed of use and intuitive usability which is mouse-centric with hot keys.

But to interact as quickly as possible, you’d want to stick with one consistent input device, and motion based input devices don’t cut it.

I mean use what you want though. If you like using a mouse, use it.