[Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[apfelmus]

Jules Bean wrote:
> apfelmus wrote:
>> I can't know whether that's the case, but the fact that virtually all
>> commands are invoked with the keyboard clashes with HID research
>> reported at
>>
>>    http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
>>
>> It adresses the question whether selecting commands in menus with the
>> mouse or accessing them via keyboard shortcuts is faster. The answer is:
>>
>>  "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
>>     mousing.
>>   * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
>>     keyboarding."
> 
> 
> The research there is reported as hearsay, it is not referenced
> research, so I can't check their methods.

Well, hearsay is probably not the right word but the selection of tasks
on which the conclusions are based is indeed vital yet missing. In

   http://www.asktog.com/SunWorldColumns/S02KeyboardVMouse3.html

, he reports on an actual experiment in response to a comment. It can be
debated (no use of "advanced" cursor positioning like M-f or M-b?), but
for the task at hand (replace all '|' by 'e' in a text by hand) the
mouse seems superior. Of course, a find/replace command performs much
better, so a keybinding for that would be worth it because it makes the
computer perform the task.

But in any case, this research can easily be reproduced at home! Of
course, nobody (include me) does :)

> Despite the implicit claim that my brain must be lying to me and causing
> amnesia I'm unaware of, I would dispute the claims there. I suspect
> there might well be a large body of users (even 'most') for which it's
> true. However 'most' people are not fast typists.

(I think "amnesia" is not a good choice of words. It's more like the
well-known effect from a quotation of A. Einstein "Put your hand on a
hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty
girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.")

> I'm sure that I can quite reliably hit the command editor keybindings I
> use many, many times faster than if I had to select them from a menu.

Note that the claimed time-consuming part is not to actually press the
keybinding, but to chose and remember which one to press.

Being sure and verified experimentally are two different things. The
question cannot be decided by arguments or by stating opions, only the
stopwatch can answer it. In a sense, the basic statement is that the
human's internal stopwatch is unreliable.

Regards,
apfelmus