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Comment by Kessler83 | Hacker News Reader

Hahaha, like you are some sort of brave free-thinker for using the mouse! There are tons of reasons for preferring the keyboard, one of which is to alleviate the hand and shoulder pains resulting from pointing and clicking with a mouse for 35 years ... Go into any work place where people work with mouse-heavy applications all day, and count the number of employees who have had to resort to special solutions, like trackballs, trackpoints or roller-bars. I'm not saying you can't get pains from a keyboard---not least from Emacs unless you switch capslock and ctrl. But the intro to this article is kinda silly I think. It's not a statement to use the keyboard, and you certainly aren't a rebel if you don't.

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I've been using Linux, traditional Unix editors like vim and emacs, and other keyboard-driven tools for the past decade with very little mouse use, and I'm starting to get RSI as a result. Singling out mouse-use for this is a wild claim, especially because typing on a keyboard involves far more RSI-inducing motions (many tiny repetitive finger-motions) than using a mouse.

Also, the author is specifically speaking about "Unx dogmatists" (not programmers in general), where using the mouse absolutely does* make you a rebel.

What part of "I'm not saying you can't get pains from a keyboard" is unclear, would you say?

As you seem to have missed it, the author isn't positioning himself as a dogmatist using the mouse. He is calling Unix users who don't use the mouse dogmatists.

> As you seem to have missed it, the author isn't positioning himself as a dogmatist using the mouse. He is calling Unix users who don't use the mouse dogmatists.

Not quite, I want to say is there are Unix dogmatists, that don't use the mouse because of what they think the right way to use a Unix-like system is, not that preferring to use a mouse or not makes you a (Unix) dogmatist.

Oh, come on, did you mean to be polemic or not? :) I think it's a hard sell to claim that the article was actually directed at a small, perhaps barely existent, group of Unix users who seem to be either afraid of the mouse (!) or proud not to use it.

I'll rather accept what you said earlier in this thread (the "I wrote this mess ..." post): that you simply meant to be provocative. That's OK in my book, even when it doesn't turn out all that great. Nothing wrong with the rest of the article, either.

Ah, I didn't think about it that way, and I understand what you mean, but yes, my polemics were directed at a very specific, rare kind of user that I used to associate with. The reason I call my article a mess is that I don't proof read anything I write, so I just assume there are mistakes all over the place.

> I think it's a hard sell to claim that the article was actually directed at a small, perhaps barely existent, group of Unix users who seem to be either afraid of the mouse (!) or proud not to use it.

Good thing then they never said the article was directed at that subset of Unixers. It was only that little provocative starting section that was.

What part of my comment implies that I didn't read "I'm not saying you can't get pains from a keyboard"? Answer: none of it. Perhaps you should read more carefully yourself before accusing others of not doing so.

> the author isn't positioning himself as a dogmatist using the mouse

I never said that he did.

> He is calling Unix users who don't use the mouse dogmatists

He is not. The actual article reads:

"It seems as though an irrational fear of the mouse dominates amongst Un*x dogmatists".

This observation also isn't relevant to my comment, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

My point stands - you absolutely are a rebel among Unix-users to use the mouse.

Your mocking statements like "Hahaha, like you are some sort of brave free-thinker for using the mouse!" don't do anything to improve your arguments that are mostly lacking in support.

> I've been using Linux, traditional Unix editors like vim and emacs, and other keyboard-driven tools for the past decade with very little mouse use, and I'm starting to get RSI as a result.

Eh - it's well known in my company where some jobs are mouse heavy and some are more keyboard heavy. Both camps get ergonomic pains, but it is more common with the mouse heavy folks.

Typing can affect hands, wrists and forearms. Mousing affects neck/shoulder/side more.

People who get it with typing tend to get it after extended use (years). People doing mouse heavy CAD work often get it quickly (1-2 years) unless they're aggressively trying to mitigate it.

Contrary to what I just said, I do think they are equally prone assuming equal usage. The reality is that a lot of programming jobs do not require a lot of continuous keyboard usage - you spend a fair amount of time thinking. It's why I get more ergonomic issues when typing emails or writing documentation than when programming.

Mouse heavy jobs, OTOH, often involve continual mouse use. So they automatically are more at risk.

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