[OT] Affect of typing styles on coding style (Was: Make dur a property?)

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:37:28 +0100
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 24 January 2013 at 05:16:32 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
> wrote:
> > I think that shows how different editors or even just personal
> > typing styles can affect our coding style. For me, I'll do 
> > stuff like:
> 
> 
> Aye, I think this applies to my non-caring about identifier name 
> length too - I use tab completion in my editor.
> 

I tend to do a lot of copy/paste for symbol names. Maybe not as good as
auto-complete, but with either of these (depending on the situation
and my whims):

1. Up/Down/Ctrl-Left/Ctrl-Right/Home/End to line/word-skip to one end of
ident
2. Shift-Ctrl-(Left or Right) to select ident
3. Ctrl-C (copy)
4. Up/Down/Ctrl-Left/Ctrl-Right/Home/End to line/word-skip to target
5. Ctrl-V (paste)
6. Goto 4 if needed

(Less frequent, but nicer for long distances or if my hand is already
on the mouse):
1. Right hand: Double-click ident
2. Left hand: Ctrl-C (copy)
3. Right hand: Click target
4. Left hand: Ctrl-V (paste)
5. Goto 3 if needed

Been doing both long enough that muscle memory makes either of
them quick, natural operations. Ctrl-Arrow and Home/End are fucking
awesome :)

Anyway, point being, with either of those, longer idents don't bother
me much either (unless it gets the the point where line lengths for
simple things get too long, or I can't distinguish between the idents
without reading them).

> I've tried some of those auto parens things, and it just confuses 
> me.

They're not my thing either. Same thing for when they auto-indent big
checks of code (I can do that myself with Shift-Ctrl-Up/Down and then
Tab). It certainly *could* be helpful for some, but I don't like when
the editor tries to anticipate my typing style and changes things around
while I'm typing. It's like having someone reach over my shoulder while
I'm working and "help out" by banging on the keyboard uninvited
without them having any idea what my muscle memory, habits and concious
intent are just about to make me type.

I do very much like having <Enter> copy the same indentation of the
previous line into the newly-inserted line, but that's about it.

> I guess I could get used to it (I recently started playing 
> one of those newer shooter games. I come from Perfect Dark on the 
> N64, so I'm used to what Halo called "legacy controls". The new 
> controls were totally unusable to me.... but I was forced to 
> stick with it for a while and now kinda am ok. I just hope it 
> hasn't ruined my aptitude at PD controls! Perfect Dark is still 
> the best shooter ever.).

Yea, those "Halo" controls are usually just called "Dual Analog"
first-person controls. I think they're an abomination compared to
having a *real* pointing device, like a mouse/trackball or Wii's IR
pointing (Yea, the Wii's gesture recognition is crap as everyone says,
*but* the IR pointing works great and is a killer feature IMO). But when
I'm playing some first-person game that won't let me use a real pointing
device (ex: most PS3 first-persons, all XBox1 first-persons) then I've
always found the dual-analog to at least be a huge improvement over the
older single-analog designs.

But the notable exception for me is Metroid Prime: The single-analog
controls in 1 and 2 worked great for that game, and 3's IR-pointing
was botched and crappy - I hated it. Red Steel 1 and Call of Duty 3 did
IR pointing the *right* way, even though I never liked Call of Duty 3
overall, and Red Steel's controls *did* turn shitty during the
unfortunate sword battles.

But you're right, Perfect Dark *is* a great game. :)


> > Heh, actually, case in point, take a look at my normal work 
> > setup:
> 
> lol, I got one of those ipads as a gift last year. I found it 
> totally useless except for the angry birds and watching some 
> video streams, i.e. not work at all.
> 

Yea. For work, I spent most of 2012 in possession of a loaner iPhone 4
(and some Android thing). I got the urge to hurl it into the nearest
concrete wall every time I used it. I don't think there was a single
thing about it I liked. At the end, packaging it up to send back felt
like Christmas morning :)

Angry Birds gets a lot of flack for, I guess, being a bit too popular
and overly-marketed. But thing about it though, is it's pretty much the
only phone/tablet game out there that *isn't* total crap. (And the
"In Space" one is actually quite good.) All the other games on those
devices either have those completely unusable "soft gamepad"
abominations, or just simply have extremely minimal gameplay. And most
of them are just clones of each other.

I do kinda want to get a WiFi-only Android thingamadoo though. Not
because I like it (I don't - it was clearly designed by people who
considered the iPhone to be perfection), but only because I could use a
new camera and a WiFi-connected PDA, and PalmOS is unfortunately dead
and therefore no longer an option.

> But, I wanted a computer in my other room last week. My laptop is 
> never at home, so I looked into buying something.
> 
> And my decision was sure to be painful to Steve Jobs: I bought an 
> off brand usb thingy for the pad, and a full sized (Microsoft 
> brand LOL) keyboard. Combined with an ssh app for the pad thingy 
> (death to lowercase i), it became almost useful.
> 

Heh, yea. Having ultra-mobile SSH is pretty damn cool. Part of why I
want a new PDA.

> So I was only in for $20 and now have a halfway usable portable 
> computer. No mouse though. Yes arrow keys (thank god, the morons 
> at Apple refuse to put them in, which makes this thing utterly 
> useless for anything other than their small set of sanctioned 
> activities. OK, that apparently serves millions of people and 
> turns an enormous profit, but that doesn't matter to /me/!). But, 
> surprisingly, no to home and end!
> 

/me nods head in total agreeance.

Manufacturers figure "Ehh, *most* people don't use them and we don't
give a shit about the rest, so let's just throw them away." Which is
going to lead to a need to start seeing special "Programmer Keyboards"
in the US like other countries have. Of course, these will probably end
up being as expensive as the rip-off "Gamer Keyboards" that are out
there.

In computers, companies have actually managed to turn "knowing what
you're doing" into a liability.

> Still though, 3/4 of a real keyboard is lightyears beyond the 
> touch nonsense,

Oh absolutely.

More like "non-touch" though. It's absolutely insane that these
companies toss around the word "touch" like crazy despite the clear
fact that they're systematically *eliminating* any and all touch
sensation, they're not adding one damn bit of touch. Thay're *not*
"touch", they're very much *anti*-touch. Idiots.

> and the price for the hack beat the crap out of 
> buying a real computer.
> 

Not if you didn't already have the iPad. Those things are expensive. I
got my laptop last spring (with dual-core, 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 320GB
HDD, USB 3, HDMI/VGA-out, DVD burning, Intel HD graphics which is
actually quite capable for many games, not that I needed that), for
only $340. Add in a few cheap accessories from MicroCenter (by far the
best computer store I've ever found - as long as you ignore the
salesmen), and I think it came out pretty well.

Still not nearly as portable as a netbook, and I *hate* the 16:9
screen that's become the ONLY option (unless you want one of those
completely moronic 2.x:1 screens that some companies actually offer) but
hey, beats the old desktop, and a damn better price than the ~$2000
that was typical for a decent portable 12/13 years ago when I'd bought
my first laptop (I'd made sure to splurge for the active-matrix
screen ;) ).

Speaking of, what's a good Linux for laptops these days? I'm anxious
to get rid of this horrid Win7 that was preinstalled (XP is genuinely
a possible option for me). Most of my recent Linux experience is
debian-based ((Ku/U)buntu a few years back and Debian 6 more recently).
I'm planning to give Mint a test drive in a VM. Is that any good for
laptops, or is "laptop" a non-issue for linux these days?


> > Geez, we still don't have that?
> 
> We spend too much time arguing over optional parenthesis!

Heh :)

Honestly, I'm *really* surprised that I didn't notice the continued lack
of += on properties. Must have gotten used to avoiding it or something,
I guess? I dunno.