[Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

This recent development of the thread leads me to these conclusions and 
conjectures.

* If you want to demonstrate the mouse to be faster than the keyboard, 
you can contrive an experiment to do so. Example: Randomize occurences 
of X's in a text, ask to replace them by Y's, but make sure there is no 
find-replace command or wizard to help.

* If you want to demonstrate the keyboard to be faster than the mouse, 
you can contrive an experiment to do so. Example: Ask to crack open your 
favourite Haskell textbook and enter it into the computer.

Some of us raise that speed is not the only concern. Indeed, cognitive 
switch may be more taxing on the worker. However, going on a limb, I'm 
going to wager that:

* If you want to demonstrate the mouse to be less taxing than the 
keyboard, you can probably contrive an experiment to do so.

* If you want to demonstrate the keyboard to be less taxing than the 
mouse, you can probably contrive an experiment to do so.

The keyboard-mouse duality (duelity?) doesn't end here. Some of us 
explains that keyboarding has become part of our motor skill, and 
mousing has not quite. So I ask, are there also people who are the opposite?

One year I went to COMDEX Canada (in Toronto) and saw a live demo of 
Photoshop or something. The demonstrator was amazing. He clicked through 
the menu system faster than I could watch! He performed long sequences 
of back-to-back menu mousing at a sustained speed paralleling that of my 
keyboarding. You may say "aha, Photoshop, analog!" but no, in his demo 
analog operations were the minority, the majority was on the discrete 
menus - I do mean it when I say long sequences of back-to-back menu 
mousing. A possible objection would be that he practiced on his demo. 
But I do invite you to observe someone who uses Photoshop or the like 
professionally; you may see a level of mouse-fu you never thought possible.

But all this musing on HCI and HCI research may all be just talking wind 
because:

Michael T. Richter wrote:
> All this talk about "efficiency" while editing text would make me 
> believe that most of my time spend writing software is typing.  Yet, 
> oddly enough, I find that the typing is the *least* of my tasks.  Most 
> of my work is done in my head, on whiteboards or on scraps of paper long 
> before my fingers stroke a keyboard.

Conventional wisdom would say: Then the priority is on improving the 
head, the whiteboard, and the paper. Give secondary priority to HCI and 
IDE dreams.