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lelanthranHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day

> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x that amount to account for variance, changes, debugging etc, you'd be at 12 lines PER HOUR. Being generous at a full 80 chars per line, you have a maximum of 1000 keypresses per hour, or an average of one every 3 seconds. Even doubling your typing speed or keyboard response time would have no discernible effect. Just my personal experience, it's not about how fast I can get my ideas down in writing (whether code or not), it's about how often I am broken out of the flow when typing. At one extreme, using your stats above of "10 finished lines of code per day", you could argue that using this keyboard ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA ) should have no effect on your productivity, and yet no developer would make or support this argument. Small frictions add up; there's a joelonsoftware post that I read a long time ago about this[1], and it stuck for 24 years! The best editor/environment is the one that gets out of my way. One where I don't need to look things up on google. …

Original discussionLeaving Neovim for Zed322 source comments · at import
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kstenerudHN

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x that amount to account for variance, changes, debugging etc, you'd be at 12 lines PER HOUR. Being generous at a full 80 chars per line, you have a maximum of 1000 keypresses per hour, or an average of one every 3 seconds. Even doubling your typing speed or keyboard response time would have no discernible effect. 90% of software development happens in the mind. The small amount of time spent actually writing it out seems kinda silly to optimize for.

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ReleaseCandidatHN

> Emacs `M-x sql-connect` is much easier for me to do than to look up, in VS Code, what shortcut has been assigned to the extension I use that does the same thing [...] > removes the whole command interface `C-shift-P` works the same in VS Code (and other editors) as `M-x` in Emacs. VS Code (and many other Editors, like Sublime Text) has the same "keyboard only" usage possibility as Emacs. I've switched from Emacs (after more than 20 years) to VS Code to Sublime Text and did not need to change my habits. And to be honest, Sublime Merge is what Magit always wanted to be, a useful combination of GUI (for the "easy stuff") and a textual interface for git.

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troupoHN

> Emacs `M-x sql-connect` is much easier for me to do than to look up, in VS Code, what shortcut has been assigned to the extension I use And the knowledge of `M-x sql-connect` came to you how? In a dream? Commands in Emacs are undiscoverable unless you know what to look for. > Each time I want to do something in the IDE I switch focus from the code to the IDE. When in Vim or Emacs, that never happens! No. It happens only because you're used to Emacs and Vim, and unused to an IDE. > So that’s what days were like. A bunch of tiny frustrations, and a bunch of tiny successes. But they added up. And those frustrations are rampant in the Emacs/Vim world. People pretend they are not there because of this false notion that only those two are the sign of a great programmer. By the time I've done my coding, project-wide refactoring, and looked up half of a project's code most Emacsers/Vimers are …

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