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0 pointsEForEndeavour5y ago0 comments

> 'F6' means nothing to me. Where am I supposed to look that up? In a manual? I don't want these kind of context-switches.

Yes. Yes, you are meant to look up the keyboard shortcuts of software programs in their manual, or Google them, or otherwise RTFM. It's part of learning one's tools.

Speaking from personal experience, the critical importance of memorizing keyboard shortcuts was drilled into me by years of PC gaming as a kid and teen. (Imagine playing StarCraft with just the mouse... Ugh.) I wonder if people who grew up with computer games are more likely to embrace keyboard shortcuts later in life.

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chrisseaton5y ago· 1 in thread

> It's part of learning one's tools.

Why don’t the tools learn me? Learn to show me buttons that I’d want to use in the right context? Why are the tools so broken that they need to be learned rather than being intuitive?

I feel I’m pretty productive without learning archaic key combinations. Typing is rarely my bottleneck - thinking is.

What am I missing? What makes it worth learning these spells?

(Yes I don’t play or know anything about computer games - maybe that’s it.)

EForEndeavourOP5y ago

Because "why don't the tools learn me" describes a perfect world, a fantastical end state worth working toward, but which we just don't live in yet. It's akin to questioning why we still bother with locks on doors when burglary and theft are solved problems in a post-scarcity society.

I'd love better design, UX, and discoverability in all software tools everywhere, but the grim reality is that this just isn't the case and won't be for many years. Until then, I can say again from personal experience that it was well worth it for me to Google the keyboard shortcuts for terminal cursor movements, greatly reducing friction between me and my filesystem. Similarly, occasionally bringing up the VSCode or RStudio keyboard shortcuts reference windows is well worth it to reduce the friction between my thoughts and my results. It's like going from hunt-and-peck typing ("why can't the input device just learn how to understand my speech?") to touch-typing faster than you can write by hand.

Come to think of it, resistance to plentiful keyboard shortcuts is not something I would have expected to read on HN of all places, yet here we are!

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