Old Man Yells At Cloud

[bartc]

On 18/09/2017 04:23, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Sep 2017 11:11 am, Rick Johnson wrote:
> 
>> Speaking in _keystrokes_, and that's what really matters
>> here, a print function is always three more keystrokes than
>> a print statement.
> 
> Keystrokes only matter if you are hunt'n'peck typing and need to pause between
> holding down the shift key and pressing the 9 key. Otherwise typing ( is little
> different than typing 9, its pretty much all the same regardless of what
> character you type. For an even half-arsed typist like myself, hitting the
> shift and 9 keys happens almost simultaneously. Technically it might involve
> two fingers but its effectively a single movement.
> 
> If you micro-analyse this, not all keystrokes are equivalent. They use different
> fingers, different hands, the movements are different. The fact that some
> characters need two simultaneous keypresses is not so important.

I don't hunt&peck but my typing accuracy is very poor.

Shifted keys are harder (in having poorer success outcomes) because two 
keys are involved, the keys are somewhat outside the Qwerty zone so need 
a longer reach, and some synchronisation is needed (the shift must be 
pressed before the '(').

It's not as bad as it sounds but just means that unnecessary shifted 
punctuation is more of a PITA than if it wasn't necessary.

It's a lot worse doing this in C however; compare:

    print a

with:

    printf ("%d\n",a);

8 extra punctuation characters, of which half are shifted (on my 
keyboard). /And/ you have to select a suitable format code. Suddenly, 
having to type:

    print (a)

doesn't seem so bad.


-- 
bartc