It's all about avoiding context-switching from keyboard to mouse and back.

and also in your brainz (no context switching)

Have you tried a MacBook with its trackpad right in front of the keyboard? I like keyboard-only too, but some jobs are faster when you can point at the screen

I have, and it's much better than a mouse, especially since I've got used to working the trackpad with my thumb.

But I still prefer keyboard shortcuts, they juste feel more natural while the hands are already in "typing mode". I feel like there's a question of "waiting around". Even though I've always found the mac trackpad to be very precise, even for quick movements, you still have to aim for an icon, move the cursor to it, click, etc.

Now in the particular case of a macbook, where the windows will probably be maximized or not move around a lot, you may get some kind of muscle memory. But you still have to look around for the icon, etc. Whereas a shortcut is always the same, you press the keys and you're done, it doesn't matter where your cursor and / or window happen to be. I also prefer hidden icon toolbars, this allows me to gain some vertical space.

But, as another commenter said, some actions are easier with the mouse and wouldn't throw mine away. In my case, that's web browsing.

I’ve tried the vi-like plug-ins for browsers that let you press a key then choose a link/button on the page by letter(s). I haven’t quite got ‘into’ them, however.

File management is also something that I find a lot easier with a pointing device. Also drawing diagrams, unsurprisingly!

"pointing at the screen" can be done a lot better, a number of different ways. My personal favorite is the Trackpoint, IBM's nifty little nipple that lets you use a joystick from the home row. You can actually type while using your mouse, and it's a a very jarring experience. Barring that, a touchscreen is also a great interface for quickly interacting with specific UI elements. I like Apple's trackpads, but the rest of their input peripherals are pretty terrible for ergonomics.

I've been a huge fan of the Trackpoint for many years, but unfortunately it's always been plagued by annoying drift issues, where the cursor keeps moving in one direction and you have to fight with it to make it stop. This has been an issue on older IBM ThinkPads as well as modern Lenovo models. It's a disgrace the technology hasn't improved much (at all?) in the last 20 years that this is still a recurring problem.

The trick is: as soon as you notice it drifting, take your finger off it and let it come to a stop. If you keep pushing opposite the drift it'll never stop.

Also, if you haven't in a while, replace your cap. I replace mine every year or so and it makes it perform much better. You don't have to push as hard, which also reduces the drift problem.

Yeah, I do this as well, but it's still annoying as it takes it a few seconds to stop. And then usually happens again soon after, so I often just force push it in the direction I want.

I don't replace the cap often, but I do take it out and clean it, blow out the dust, etc. I'll give a fresh cap a try soon, thanks. It's just ridiculous this highly disruptive behavior is still a thing after all these years...

There was also just shy of a dozen different Trackpoint designs, I don't doubt that one or two were seriously faulty, and I certainly have my preferences (the lower profile ones definitely don't track as well). In any case, the positioning and design of it is pretty ideal for people looking to reduce context switching at any cost.

I've not used a MacBook, but I've used laptops with trackpads. Either way, I'm a vim user, so I really don't have a reason to use the mouse for editing.

When there’s a trackpad below the keyboard you only have to move your hand slightly to use it.

I don't get why you are being downvoted. A good trackpad under a keyboard (like on the Macbooks) is probably the (or at least, my) best input method. I would pay high price for a desktop keyboard with a qualitative touchpad right under the keyboard.

Indeed. If the challenge is to move to an arbitrary location visible on screen, then it’s logically almost certain that a good trackpad is more efficient than any combination of keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts can be more efficient in some specific cases of course (e.g. moving to the beginning of the next word, or something like that). But I see no point in memorizing the more obscure shortcuts when the trackpad works so efficiently and requires no thought or memorization.

The difference is that with a pointer device you need to control the input very carefully and precisely, which wastes time and brain cycles. A misclick could result in either maximizing or closing a window. Consecutive clicks can be interpreted differently depending on the configured period. Dragging and dropping is awkward, etc.

On any trackpad other than Apple's this becomes even more difficult. Gestures are nice but also require nuance and IME don't become part of muscle memory as quickly as keyboard use does.

Keyboard-driven workflows have no such issues. A keyboard shortcut is an immediate command to the computer to perform an action, and if that's something you do often, it will save you time and effort right away. You'll memorize it soon and forget about it since it will become part of muscle memory.

> If the challenge is to move to an arbitrary location visible on screen, then it’s logically almost certain that a good trackpad is more efficient than any combination of keyboard shortcuts.

But moving "to a location on screen" is never a challenge worth using keyboard shortcuts for. If moving a cursor is your only UI option then a trackpad will be more efficient than doing the same with a keyboard of course. What you should do is use hotkeys to perform the action you would with a pointer so that you don't have to move it to begin with.

I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. I find my MacBook trackpad to be a fast and precise method of placing the cursor at an arbitrary location within a text buffer. Outside of certain special cases it is faster for this purpose than fiddling around with keyboard shortcuts. There should not be any significant mental overhead associated with using a pointer device if you are sufficiently practiced at it.

If trackpads don’t work well for you then don’t use them. I believe you, and have no interest in proving that your favored working methods are suboptimal. However, having tried the ‘keyboard first’ approach, I know that it is less efficient for me.

I do tire of the ritual haranguing of anyone who notes that they find the use of pointer devices an aid to their working efficiency.

> I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.

I'm disagreeing with your assertion that "it's logically almost certain that a good trackpad is more efficient than any combination of keyboard shortcuts".

I thought you were talking about moving the cursor to a general area of the screen, not within the context of a text buffer, but there I still think using the keyboard for motion is more efficient once you build up the muscle memory for it. There are plugins like vim-easymotion[1] that make this faster, but I've found plain motion bindings to be efficient enough for me.

In any case, my intention wasn't to dismiss your personal preference, so apologies if it came out like that. At the end of the day we all have a specific workflow we prefer for whatever reason, and that's fine. I just objected to the general statement that a trackpad is more efficient.

[1]: https://github.com/easymotion/vim-easymotion

I think it depends on what is your work.

As a developer, eventually, the raw task of "writing code" is really not where I feel losing time. Tbh, most of my time developing software is reading code and thinking about what needs to be written and "doing nothing" waiting for build/test to complete.

Fast switching between tools using touchpad gestures is more important to me than being able to type faster (but I acknowledge you can do both). As a sidenote, I absolutely love macOS fullscreen mode combined with 4 fingers swap. It's such a productivity marvel that I don't understand why Windows never copied it.

It's not so much about saving time for me as it is about avoiding the context switch. If I'm typing on the keyboard moving my hand away to the mouse or down in the case of a trackpad and then carefully positioning the cursor on the screen and clicking, is disruptive to my workflow when I just want to think about what I'm typing. For daily use I use a Trackpoint to at least avoid the hand movement, but moving the cursor around still takes me out of whatever I was doing to focus on the UI (in addition to the annoyingly persistent Trackpoint drift issue).

But I agree that Apple's touchpad gestures are awesome and from the few times I've tried it it worked much more reliably than on any other device. Still, I haven't found a more comfortable setup than a ThinkPad keyboard + Trackpoint. The insanely short key travel on Macbooks is unbearable to me.

Oh, Looks like Lenovo is selling desktop keyboards with trackpoint. Your comment makes me want to give a try for my Windows machine.

>but there I still think using the keyboard for motion is more efficient once you build up the muscle memory for it.

I think a lot of people underestimate how fast a good trackpad can be with practice. I can move the pointer to an arbitrary location on screen in less time than it typically takes me to make a key chord. However long and hard I might train on Vim (and I did use it for ~10 years!) there's a hard limit on how much time that could save me when the trackpad is already so damn fast.

The keyboard is not necessarily precise, there are frequent typos.

True, but it's much more precise than an analog pointing device sensitive to subtle movements, click timings, etc. Keyboard input can be trained and ingrained in muscle memory. Mouse movements always require focus to at least ensure you're clicking on the right UI element.

In my experience, a good work environment let's you go a really long way without even thinking of the mouse (or trackpad). So discussing which pointer device is most comfortable is sort of foreign to me. For context, I use shells and vim in tmux. If I don't need a web browser, I'll often not even start an X server (so no mouse at all).

Obviously it's possible to just use the keyboard if that's how you want to work.

The point is that using a good quality trackpad positioned below a keyboard doesn't actually require you to move your wrist much, if at all. With this set up, there is not really any cost associated with switching between the trackpad and the keyboard. Thus, there is really no benefit to using the keyboard for tasks which can also be accomplished efficiently using the trackpad (as you are not paying any significant penalty for switching between the two input methods). For example, I was able to move my mouse cursor to the 'update' button to submit this form faster than I would have been able to use the relevant keyboard shortcut.

I'd say that pointing is inherently slow because it involves checking where the cursor is, where the target is, moving it in that direction, then stopping at the right time. With a typical keyboard-based browser interface clicking the update button would have been a 2 key combination. Two discreet steps without any timing or measurement nuances.

I guess which is better for me doesn't have to be so for someone else. Mouse interfaces do have a certain simplicity to them.

Check demo animation on Saka Key's readme: https://github.com/lusakasa/saka-key

You say that you hardly ever use the mouse. If you’re out of practice then you’d probably be slow at it.

On a good trackpad you don’t actually need much visual feedback because the response is very predictable. You can make a short movement and click more quickly than you can press a couple of keys.

Saka Key looks to be both slower and more complex than navigating using a trackpad (especially once you take scrolling into account).

With a pointer you treat the screen as a continuous space. With Saka Key's link clicking method (for the lack of a better term) you're selecting out of a discreet set of keys. I'm not sure what the implications are, but I feel like the difference is qualitative.

I would buy such a keyboard too. Or a touchscreen. I can raise my hand, touch the screen to place the cursor close to where I want and probably be faster than with a touchpad, surely much faster than with a mouse. Unfortunately I would have to clean my screen as often as my glasses.