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Comment by gear54rus | Hacker News Reader

I, for one, fail to realize how can one design any half-complex app (gadget, whatever) to be stateless. I mean, modes are literally everywhere.

So long as you can always tell which mode is the current one, I feel modes are fine.

That said, the example in the article seems like a pretty severe oversight (crucial indicator, completely identical modes) by itself.

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>I, for one, fail to realize how can one design any half-complex app (gadget, whatever) to be stateless.

It's fairly obvious, isn't it? A keyboard with no shift key is going to need twice as many keys... but of course you'll also never find yourself accidentally typing with caps lock on. That's the trade off. The UI becomes more complicated.

That's the nicest short explanation of the mode tradeoff I've ever seen.

The shift mode key is usable, as the position of your finger gives you tactile feedback of which mode you are in; and it enters a predictable state when you let go.

The caps lock key does a very similar thing to shift, and is not very useful on a modern keyboard. In my experience it is more often engaged by accident than on purpose.

My car has a "reverse" mode which tries to kill me every once in a while when I hit the gas. I think a separate reverse pedal to the left of the brake would do the trick instead, and be nicely symmetrical.

That would play havoc with people used to clutches. As it is, I often have a couple go-rounds with 'the brake is not a clutch' when I get a rental.

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