Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

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The main issue with precise jumps (for me) is that they require you to

- already exactly know where you want to go

- figure out the relative distance either by looking to the side at relative line numbers or calculating

- move your hands to the numbers row to input numbers and back (I don't have small hands, but that still translates into a small amount of arm movement for me).

Whereas just using repeat input on jklhwe... only requires you to have a rough idea initially and leaves you plenty of time to figure out where exactly you want to stop while you're already getting there.

Besides: I don't like to think about random numbers while I'm coding. Doesn't exactly make the cursor feel like an extension of my body (imagine you had to tell your hand "move 10 centimeters left")

Another quite intuitive way I navigate is using "/something" and cycling through hits - usually you know some text that appears near the area you want to go. That was pretty much instant muscle memory.

> - already exactly know where you want to go

Same as with moving down by 1x10? How are you even choosing cursor direction if you don't know where to go to?

> - figure out the relative distance either by looking to the side

Ok, how is that an issue? You also have to figure out the distance by looking down when moving down with the arrows, so eyes still move?

> move your hands to the numbers row to input numbers and back

No, you could maintain your hands on the home row and use a numpad layer containing it

> imagine you had to tell your hand "move 10 centimeters left"

Imagine you had to tell your hand "move 1 centimeter left 10 times"? The mouse is that extension where you don't "move by 1 pixel X times" and move in an analog way

No one is doing 1x10 key presses. That's now how humans process information. You repeatedly press a key one time until what you see on screen is what you want. The further away you are the faster you do it.

> press a key one time

That's "1"

> You repeatedly press

That's x10

Oh. Now I get why we're talking past each other. There's a thing most computers are configured to do out of the box, but yours might be different for some reason.

I'm going to assume you're using Windows. In that case go to Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard and configure "Character Repeat". What this will do is repeat a key you're holding as if you're pressing it multiple times! Configure it until it feels natural.

This is what people were referring to when we said we're holding a key. We're not pressing it 10 times, just holding it down and having the computer automatically repeat it until we're happy with the result (such as having moved where we wanted to). It's a bit like moving a mouse cursor, where you're also not calculating the offset you want to move your mouse in advance.

> It's slower to "stop precisely"on key hold/release

For longer distances, unless your repeat speed is very slow, you're often either holding a key repeat and stop before a few lines and then tap or overshooting and tap to go back. So ok, it's not 1x10, but 7+1x3 or 12-1x2

(but yes, the initial leg of the journey is more mouse-like "natural", but still not that because you can't vary speed on most keyboards unlike with they mouse/hand)

For smaller distances you could just tap a few times.

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