Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lanaer 6036 days ago
> However, the cognitive load of this distraction is lower than that of having to remember keyboard commands.

I do not find this to be the case. But then, there are various keyboard commands, both in Vim and on the command line, that I do not really have to call to mind before using. I just type them when needed.

It’s really weird how that works, actually, how with many things (I’ve noticed this with GUI interfaces, too) the mind will learn it to the point where you don’t need the conscious part of you to be aware of it anymore.

So I think this is really about what we’re most used to, what our mind has adapted to. I feel very clumsy if I’m editing in something other than Vim, because that’s what I’ve adapted to.

For a time, I had gotten used to typing correct apostrophes and quotes ( ‘ ” “ ), such that I could no longer automatically type a ' or ". I had to think about those primes if those were what I wanted, although the quotes are certainly harder to type.

So what am I saying here? I guess I’m saying that we can’t rely on our own experience too heavily — whichever interface we find we have to think more to use may be far more natural for another, and all of that may be entirely irrelevant from an objective standpoint.

1 comments

The point is that the windows/toolbars/icons/tooltips/buttons/mouse/etc. GUI is an interface you can learn and apply everywhere with minimal inspection required to get up and started using an unfamiliar GUI, whereas textual interfaces take much more investment in time to learn and effort to inspect.