Re: [9fans] Mousing is faster than typing but users do not believe it

[dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 15 June 2011 20:16:49 Connor Lane Smith wrote:
> (...) The optimal
> solution is to use *both* the mouse and keyboard, because they each
> have their advantages. Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Yep.


It's the FWD vs. RWD drive depacle all over again. You can stunts drive with
RWD, you can ride safer with FWD. But for general use AWD is optimal.



On Wednesday 15 June 2011 20:37:10 Harri Haataja wrote:
> It is ridiculous. And I never think what keys I hit. I think "browser,
> messages, back to image editing" without even forming words and the
> desktops change, the flicker being just slow enough to see if any
> screen has changed. I think "change two words to xxx yyy" and the
> words change. If you asked me what keys did that, then I'd actually
> have to think about it.
>
> And it seems to even work if I'm stuck in an alien OS. E.g. alien
> browser shortcuts like ^T ^W ^C ^V also just happen. I might have to
> think what the shortcuts are for a CAD program I rarely use.
>
> It's just like playing a musical instrument; the fingers know their
> way through things you've just learned and things you didn't even know
> you remembered alike, but you may have no idea what the actual notes
> are any more. It's a choice between having a language the machine
> understands and having RSI-inducing dragging around of a brick.

In other news, VisualBasic 6 makes one more productive than Lisp. No, really,
VB programmers on average produce daily 10 times as much Lines of Code as
Lispers, ergo are more productive. And every line of code takes a VBer much
shorter to write, so again it's clearly more productive.</sarcasm>


Please have a look at the original post:
http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

It's about appearances. Typety-typety makes us feel good. Keyboarding around
switches off (or busy-waits) a part of our brain, while providing nice tactile
and quantized visual (every character stop) stimuli in regular interval. It
feels faster, because that's how our brain is wired to measure time.

Of course noone argues for mousing through long, hierarhical menus; that's
obviously slow.



--
dexen deVries

``One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.''