On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 13:48 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote: > > > "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than > > > mousing. > > > * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than > > > keyboarding." > > Even if it is empirically true that mousing is wall-clock faster than > keyboarding, one has to ask the question why users feel internally that > keyboarding wins. Perhaps it is because using the mouse requires a > cognitive switch from editing the document, to a physical hand-eye > co-ordination task, and back again? The mental effort of switching > might be harder work than keeping your focus on the document at all > times, and therefore switching _feels_ as if it must be slower. > > Of course this assumes that the person is sufficiently skilled at typing > on a keyboard that they do not need to look at it, and hence their eye > can stay with the cursor in a window on the screen. > > Perhaps you can find and move your mouse using only peripheral vision, > but even so, the first cognitive task you need to accomplish is to find > the mouse pointer on screen, which is invariably in a different place > from the text cursor, and so drags your attention from one focus to > another.
All this talk about "efficiency" while editing text would make me believe that most of my time spend writing software is typing. Yet, oddly enough, I find that the typing is the least of my tasks. Most of my work is done in my head, on whiteboards or on scraps of paper long before my fingers stroke a keyboard. -- Michael T. Richter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (GoogleTalk: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code. (Richard Pattis)
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