<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-04-18 0:56 GMT+02:00 Colin Putney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:colin@wiresong.com" target="_blank">colin@wiresong.com</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="">On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Chris Muller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:asqueaker@gmail.com" target="_blank">asqueaker@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Some people like to "edit text" and some people like to "edit<br>
expressions". Personally, I find "editing text" pretty old-school,<br>
and a lot more tedious.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>You know, I bet this boils down to a simple cost-benefit analysis. For me, the effort required to </div><div>type a character at the cursor position is negligible, so saving that effort is of little benefit. Even </div>
<div>in cases where I will need to put a $) after the expression I'm typing now, sometimes I'll have to</div><div>type right-arrow to get past it. So the benefit is very small and often offset by a small loss.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Similarly, deleting an unwanted character is cheap, but deciding whether to do so is a huge cost.</div><div>I have to stop thinking about what I'm doing, and think ahead to what I'm going to do next. Even</div>
<div>if I know I'm going to need the closing character, it stays in my field of view and takes up cycles</div><div>as a pending thing that I have to worry about until I complete the encoded expression. </div><div><br>
</div><div>So, the benefit is small and unreliable, while the cost is large and inevitable. It forces me to think </div><div>about typing, which normally I don't have to do. Thus, it's infuriating.</div><div><br>
</div>
<div>However, that calculus is very personal. If typing a character took, say, 10x longer, or I had to look</div><div>at the keyboard to find the character, the benefit would be much more significant. Also, if I had to</div>
<div>think about where the keys are, then deciding whether or not to delete the character wouldn't be</div><div>an interruption; it would just get folded into the "thinking about typing" that I'd do. </div>
<div><br></div><div>So it probably has more to do with how fast we type than how we think about coding or "editing</div><div>text" or even familiarity.</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div>
<div>Colin</div></font></span></div></div></div>
<br><br></blockquote><div>Very well said.<br></div><div>Typing text is not only pretty old-school, it can be pretty low level too.<br></div><div>Forcing us to think (high level) during a low level activity is pretty disrupting, upsetting and inefficient.<br>
That's precisely why I got exactly the same repulsion to these automated help that constantly break my own automated flow...<br></div><div>Maybe we could train ourselves and adapt to these auto-enclose, but this will then break our flow anywhere outside Squeak, so I simply do not wish to.<br>
</div><div><br></div><div>Nicolas<br></div><div><br></div></div><br></div></div>