I love how deeply nerdy Lemmy is. I’m a bit of a nerd but I’m not “mice were a mistake” nerd.
I don’t think mice were a mistake, but they’re worse for most of the tasks I do. I’m a software engineer and I suck at art, so I just need to write, compile, and test code.
There are some things a mouse is way better for:
- drawing (well, a drawing tablet is better)
- 3d modeling
- editing photos
- first person shooters (KB works fine for OG Doom though)
- bulk file operations (a decent KB interface could work though)
But for almost everything else, I prefer a keyboard.
And while we’re on a tangent, I hate WASD, why shift my fingers over from the normal home row position? It should be ESDF, which feels way more natural…
Thanks, I got you beat on ESDF though because i’m a RDFG man, since playing counter strike 1.6. With WASD they usually put crouch or something on ctrl but my pinky has a hard time stretching down there, but on RDFG my pinky has easy access to QW AS ZX, and tab caps and shift with a little stretch. It’s come in handy when playing games with a lot of keybinds.
Pfff, minutes after trying to minimize your nerdiness, you post this confession.
What pisses me off even more is many games bind to the letter instead of physical key position (e.g. key code), so alternative layouts get a big middle finger. I use Dvorak, and I’ve quit fighting and just switch to QWERTY for games.
I don’t have a problem with hitting control (I guess I have big hands), but I totally agree that default key binds largely suck. I wish games came with a handful of popular ones, and bound to key codes so hs Dvorak users (or international users) didn’t have to keep switching to QWERTY.
I always rebind to ESDF if the game doesn’t do stupid things preventing it from being practical. The addition of the 1QAZ strip being available to the pinky is a killer feature all on its own. I typically use that for weapon switching, instead of having to stretch up to 1234 and take my fingers off the movement keys.
Tablets are better than mice at drawing, modelling, and photo editing. Mice are good for first person shooters. Game controllers are better for most other games. You can mouse in dired-mode i guess, if you’re a casual.
The problem is they generally use E and F for something, which results in a cascade of rebinding.
And yeah, tablets are better, but they’re also more expensive and don’t do other mice things. For how rarely I do 3D modeling and whatnot (pretty rare), making sure my mouse has a middle button is plenty.
And yeah, I much prefer controller, even for FPS since I don’t play competitively (even then, I’ve seen awesome videos about gyro aiming).
I am using ESDF because my “A” key stopped being as responsive, didn’t expect someone to do this on purpose!
It’s also an age thing. My visual processing is getting worse and worse. My disorientation facing a busy screen with literally thousands of objects that can be interacted with by mouse is a cognitive drain compared to a textual interface where I do most of the work abstractly without having to use visual processing at all. Like reading a book vs watching a movie.
I probably have a lot more experience using pre-mouse era computers than most people. It’s like being asked to start using a different language when you are 20. Yeah, you’ll become perfectly fluent for a couple decades… but you’ll also lose that language first when you get old.
I have noticed that millenials navigate multilayer mouse interfaces (like going down a few chained drop down menus) way faster than I ever did. And zoomers use touch screen keyboards almost as well as I ever touchtyped. Brains are only plastic to a degree, and it just plain feels good to use all those neurons that you first laid down when you were young and your mind was infinite.
