Awaiting and Dreading Subtext

If you follow the link to the subtext demo that Preston Bannister mentions, you'll see my idea of hell, i.e. manipulating code primarily with a mouse. Have you ever seen those guys -- you know who I mean -- those guys that want to copy a chunk of code and reach for the mouse, almost select the text, almost select the text again, finally select the text they want, go to the Edit menu, choose Copy, click on the place near where they want the code to be, click again, finally click in the right place, go to the Edit menu and choose Paste and by that time, you've died of old age? It's all I can do not to tackle these people so I can use the combinations of Ctrl, Shift, Alt and the arrows to select the text and move the cursor to the spot where it belongs, using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, never touching the mouse, like BillG intended.

So, watching the subtext demo, which was nearly all copy and paste using the mouse made me want to tackle the guy doing the demo, especially since I couldn't run it at a higher speed (my very favorite WMP feature).

On the other hand, I loved the idea of the code always being executed with live, example data to show me instant code coverage and I loved the idea of the code always being executable. If I could get a structured editor that let me copy and link using the keyboard (and it used some language I could actually ship, at least in some transformation mode), I'd use it in a heartbeat.

I once pair-programmed with a senior programmer at a well-known DotCom who copied and pasted everything using the mouse.

I remember being horrified when I saw him copy and paste the 'i' loop variable from it's declaration to the use of that variable in the code.

Keyboard snobs. The keyboard is overrated. The first thing I select from the Start Menu (with my mouse, of course) is Microsoft On-Screen Keyboard. I haven't had a keyboard in years. In fact, I'm thinking about going completely voice-control, that is until they get the retina-scan thing sorted.

Making selecting using the mouse even more difficult, Visual Studio .NET has a bad habit of de-selecting text if you right click on it. It's probably some bad interaction of plug-ins here, but it's an annoyance to my co-workers who, indeed, copy and paste almost entirely using the mouse. Me, I typically use the mouse to select the text, as I'm often selecting text in the middle of a word. Normal arrow keys take too long to select a long word and CTRL-arrow selects too much.

Keyboard all the way! And that is why I love the clipboard utils like this one where I can call back from previous clippings with a hotkey:

http://www.yankee-clipper.net/index.htm

In every mentoring situation I've been in, I have strongly suggested to my team members that the mouse is off limits. Some people were shocked to find out you could use the keyboard (eegads!) for everything.

I'm sure this mentality comes from using TECO on a DEC PDP/11 back in 1980.

In a manner of speaking, parts of subtext are already here and shipping (for 20 years or so). There are a lot of similarities between subtext's programming model and the graphical dataflow model used by National Instruments' LabView. LabView is more graphical, and has explicit control structures for looping and selection, but the basic idea of programming by designing a nested dataflow graph is essentially the same thing.

Why don't you try to select text on this web site (in this thread) using ONLY the keyboard (508...), or does this all just apply to the IDE and code ;)

Thanks
/Jonas

Doesn't the use of the mouse in this video demonstrate far more clearly what is taking place than rapid-fire combinations of keys unseen by the audience?

Have you never slowed up your usual style in order to assist learning or to better demonstrate your point?

Without commenting on the Subtext demo and whether the guy chose appropriately in using the mouse, I know exactly what you mean. I threatened to cut a coworkers mouse cord with my knife the other day... Damn mice.

Smalltalk already has these things:

- Code is always running
- (Limited) structured code editing with class/method browsers
- Code can always be executed (select the code and press ctrl+d).
- It doesn't have code-by-example, but you can easily create a component that runs test code all the time and displays the results in a window. These results will change as you alter the code you're testing. But ctrl+d seems good enough.

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