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by miyoji 22 days ago
I think this is unhealthy self-handicapping. Your "flow" is just habits, things you've taught yourself to do. You weren't born with the ability to use either a keyboard or a mouse, there is no "natural" or "intuitive" way to operate a computer. It's all 100% learned behaviors that can be altered.
2 comments

>Your "flow" is just habits, things you've taught yourself to do

By this logic a person who were comfortable with mouse should never grow to like VIM.

> there is no "natural" or "intuitive" way to operate a computer.

Fundamentally a computer is something that execute instructions. It is pretty poor interface to pick instructions from 100 options using a mouse as opposed to type it using a keyboard. A mouse hides the power of the computer behind a set of fixed clickable options. That is a pretty poor interface.

> By this logic a person who were comfortable with mouse should never grow to like VIM.

Quite the opposite, my argument is that habits are changeable.

> Fundamentally a computer is something that execute instructions. It is pretty poor interface to pick instructions from 100 options using a mouse as opposed to type it using a keyboard. A mouse hides the power of the computer behind a set of fixed clickable options. That is a pretty poor interface.

You continue to argue for my point. OP was claiming that measured efficiency does not matter because it's about "flow". I argue that one can teach oneself to flow differently, the commands can be learned.

Picking from 100 options is what the mouse is best for. Keyboards require learning so they are best for the options you do often enough to learn. I know about 10 different vi commands of the hundreds.

There is more than selecting options. Selecting text is normally better with a mouse.

>Keyboards require learning

We are not talking about keyboard shortcuts (key combinations that you press to do something) by the way, and about the actual typing of commands in the terminal/shell/repl what ever...

> there is "natural" or "intuitive"

Your argument is sound but this overstates your case a bit. There's a reason we don't type with our toes.