Re: Visual Studio Sucks

I disagree. I believe you feel this way simply because it is what you are
more used to. I am an IT trainer and have stood over the shoulders of
thousands of students over the years. I teach software in IDE's and I teach
some programming in Notepad.

I think what you are saying would have more merit if the statement was:
"When typing code, it is faster to use keyboard shortcuts for some
operations, than to use the mouse.". But, the fact of the matter is that
very often VS is used for other reasons than to bang out code, so my hands
wouldn't necessarially be positioned on the keyboard in the first place.
There are a multitude of things one can do without ever touching the
keyboard, so that whole point about taking your hands off the keyboard to go
get the mouse is irrelevant. I can just say that taking my hand off the
mouse to get to the keyboard is time consuming for certain tasks.

Again, it's what you are used to but you can't simply say that this is
faster than that, period - that's just not true for evreryone.


"Larry Smith" <no_spam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OLfSKc9QIHA.4880@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I do believe though, that more people would say the mouse is faster for
most tasks.

That's because learning commands isn't popular and even appears laborious
compared to using the mouse. Most developers today cut their teeth in a
point-and-click world so they don't even realize how inefficient it often
is
compared to using commands. Hence the popular sentiment that you're
espousing here. I was weaned in a command environment before
Windows even existed and I've experienced both worlds. The time spent
moving
your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, moving the mouse cursor to its
target (which for submenus is especially bad), clicking what you want and
then moving your hand back to the keyboard again, is often very slow
compared to <Alt+Whatever> or even typing commands on occasion. This is
self-evident and I've seen it over-and-over again while standing over the
shoulders of other developers. In a contest to see who can navigate the
fastest, the mouse would easily lose to the keyboard.

But remembering hundreds of keyborad shortcuts and creating macros and
add-ins are faster?

Yes, they are. By comparison you have to learn where many things are even
when you use the mouse so you're still faced with a learning curve. You
need
not learn hundreds of commands either. There are probably a dozen or two
that most use regularly. The marked improvement in efficiency you achieve
by
learing them easily offsets the time invested to learn them. It takes very
little time at all before they become second nature and you don't even
think
about it. As for AddIns, that's more for extreme cases but macros that you
can record on-the-fly in particular are extremely useful for conducting
repetitve editing tasks. Most developers often do this without even
realizing it and they repeat the same keystrokes and/or mouse movements
over-and-over again. It's often wasteful and completely unnecessary.

Again, I'm not saying you're wrong because it's your opinion, and for
you,
the keyboard seems to be serving you well, but I do think that what you
call "wading through menus" and "moving the mouse" is not any problem at
all for the majority of people out there.

It's not that using a mouse is a problem, it's that using the keyboard is
almost always easier and faster. This all adds up when you're navigating a
computer
8 hours everyday and can greatly improve your productivity. It actually
makes your
life easier if most would simply just take the time to learn it.

I could just as easily say that you'll be far more productive if you
master the menus, context menus
and windows provided in the IDE via mouse access.

You can say it but it but it wouldn't be true.



.

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