don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?

iKnowItsLame

case 1:
at work I'm quite used to CTRL+F -> <enter searchstring> -> ENTER (repeat until <hit>) -> ESC to close the search-dialogue.

at home (linux only) I seem to be stuck with the abominations-du-jour of $editor (xed, gedit, whatever) where the following happens:
<exactly the same as above>, the important part is hitting ESC
... and the editor jumps back to BOF instead just closing the <search-thingy> (we cannae have a floating search-window, nonono, it has to be an extension of the toolbar because )

I do know I shouldn't store my <login-credentials> in a plaintext-file but the file I use at home doesn't contain credentials of any importance, so it just ...sucks...

case 2: debugging with Powershell-ISE
they had to faff around and mapped <go to next instruction> to <skip next instruction>

case 3: (absolutely not recent but I still hate it)
Netbeans -> recompile = F9
VS / SSMS: set a breakpoint = F9

case 4 / (my favourite, windows-heads only):
I bet you 100 <currency> that without using the address-book-thingy and -of course not using the clipboard- you won't be able to write the TO-Line on a mac using an apple-keyboard without quitting the mail.app on the first try, at least not on an european keyboard...
(hint: AltGr + Q maps to <quit> or whatever this shit is called on ios)

Your experiences?

boomzilla

I cannot tell you how often I type pring when I want print. Including while typing this post.

hungrier

@iKnowItsLame said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

I bet you 100 <currency> that without using the address-book-thingy and -of course not using the clipboard- you won't be able to write the TO-Line on a mac using an apple-keyboard without quitting the mail.app on the first try, at least not on an european keyboard...
(hint: AltGr + Q maps to <quit> or whatever this shit is called on ios)

I'm assuming AltGr+Q maps to @ on whatever European keyboard? And also for whatever reason, AltGr maps to the command key on Mac?

iKnowItsLame

@boomzilla

Exchnage

exec someShite @someVar, @otherVar PUTPUT

iKnowItsLame

@hungrier
ayup, give the person a

EDIT: let's call the thing on the keyboard "the one just right of the space-bar"

HardwareGeek

@boomzilla said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

I cannot tell you how often I type pring when I want print. Including while typing this post.

withing - my phone's autoincorrect has even learned to accept it
thing/think - this one goes both ways; whichever I want, I type the other

Captain

@iKnowItsLame Just use vim.

Gąska

@boomzilla said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

I cannot tell you how often I type pring when I want print. Including while typing this post.

Once upon a time I've got so fed up with myself hitting 0 instead of - that I've made a wrapper script for Git that checked if I typed git pull 0r, and if I did, it run git pull -r, otherwise it passed all parameters as is.

As for muscle memory - after a year of Scala and IntelliJ, I've really gotten to love the fancy features it offers, and the associated shortcuts. Shift+F6 to rename. Ctrl+Q to look up doc strings. Select text and Alt+= to check the type of the expression. Ctrl+/ to toggle comment. I used to love Visual Studio, but now it's pain to use, because while most of those features are there somewhere, I just can't stop using the IntelliJ shortcuts - often with interesting results.

Polygeekery

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@iKnowItsLame Just use vim.

Respectfully, DIAF.

HardwareGeek

@Polygeekery Just add him to your list.

Polygeekery

@HardwareGeek done.

cvi

@Polygeekery said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@HardwareGeek done.:wq!

FTFY.

topspin

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@iKnowItsLame Just use vim.

You know it's lame, but you still suggest it.

bjolling

@iKnowItsLame I have a habit of always typing functino, which is very annoying on VB.Net projects. I had to create an 'autohotkey' script to correct it immediately to function and stop me from smashing my keyboard.

Gurth

@iKnowItsLame said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

(hint: AltGr + Q maps to <quit> or whatever this shit is called on ios)

It’s called macOS.

@hungrier said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

I'm assuming AltGr+Q maps to @ on whatever European keyboard? And also for whatever reason, AltGr maps to the command key on Mac?

The Alt and AltGr keys on a Windows-style keyboard are in the locations of the Command keys on a Mac keyboard, and Command+Q is Quit <application name>. If you’re used to AltGr+Q = @ then I can see how this would cause problems, yes.

The other way around, pressing Alt+shortcut instead of Ctrl+shortcut unless you consciously remember is annoying too.

@boomzilla said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

I cannot tell you how often I type pring when I want print. Including while typing this post.

I too often press ; when I want ', and autocorrect then makes it worse, especially on an iPad, where it turns (say) wouldn;t into wouldn’t;t. Oddly, on macOS it corrects some things right and others, not so right:

wouldn;t → wouldn’t
couldn;t → column;t
don;t → donut

…

Khudzlin

@Gurth Hmm, donuts.

Zecc

@Gurth

CREATE TABLE Jinglamabobs (
    ...
    CreatedOnUTC DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
    UpdatedOnUTC DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

Zoom effect

atedOnUT atedOnUT

:homerdrool:

Zenith

Ctrl+F hits me in Outlook, where it triggers a Forward instead of a Find.

Also I like when a program, usually a browser, fails to register a focus or a tab key and I have to figure out where the hell whatever I just typed actually ended up.

Gąska

@Zenith said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

Ctrl+F hits me in Outlook, where it triggers a Forward instead of a Find.

Blame Bill Gates.

jinpa

@iKnowItsLame said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

case 1:
at work I'm quite used to CTRL+F -> <enter searchstring> -> ENTER (repeat until <hit>) -> ESC to close the search-dialogue.

at home (linux only) I seem to be stuck with the abominations-du-jour of $editor (xed, gedit, whatever) where the following happens:
<exactly the same as above>, the important part is hitting ESC
... and the editor jumps back to BOF instead just closing the <search-thingy> (we cannae have a floating search-window, nonono, it has to be an extension of the toolbar because )

Your experiences?

I use Pluma, because it seems to be more like other text editors (outside of Linux command-line stuff).

jinpa

@Polygeekery said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@iKnowItsLame Just use vim.

Respectfully, DIAF.

Yes, vim is for wussies, vi is much better.

dkf

@jinpa said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

Yes, vim is for wussies, vi is much better.

https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/806220981106683904

PJH

One particularly annoying one I've found:

ctrlw in bash, running locally in konsole
ctrlw in bash, running remotely in a browser window.

JBert

@PJH "Close current tab"?

PJH

@JBert said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@PJH "Close current tab"?

That's the second one. The first one is "delete last word," and the one I expect to work when 'working in bash.'

JBert

@Zenith said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

Also I like when a program, usually a browser, fails to register a focus or a tab key and I have to figure out where the hell whatever I just typed actually ended up.

The Chrome misfeature I hate the most is how its dev tools override shortcuts used in the browser.

Some background: I almost always start my debugging Chrome instance with --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs. This way the Network tool is immediately tracing any and all requests when a tab opens (handy for troubleshooting a Content-Security-Policy header because the header sent with your HTML page defines the access a SPA has).

So now the fun thing is that Ctrl+L usually focuses the address bar and selects it. Not so when the Console is in view: the shortcut now clears it.

Gurth

@JBert said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

The Chrome misfeature I hate the most is how it~~s dev tools~~ overrides standard OS functions ~~shortcuts used in the browser~~.

FTFY based on experience with Chrome running on a number of different makes and models of touchscreen running under both Linux and Windows.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked about getting an iNexio touchscreen working under Linux. Eventually, I had to use Windows instead, and even though the touchscreen works fine under that (once its drivers are installed and installed version of Windows 10 < current version of Windows 10 because of some ery I don’t even care to figure out), fucking Chrome refuses to acknowledge clicks anywhere in its windows if they originate from the touchscreen. The mouse pointer gets put where you tap the screen, but Chrome doesn’t register a click — not on the web page, and not on its normal window elements, menus, etc. Not even on the minimise/maximise/close buttons. But click the mouse button without moving the pointer one pixel, and it does work.

And this is in addition to Chrome insisting on allowing things like pinch-zooming despite turning off all touchscreen functionality in chrome://flags. The only way to get rid of pinch-zooming, which I definitely don’t want on a kiosk-style touchscreen, is to start it with --disable-pinch.

pie_flavor

@Gurth E_NO_REPRO, my last computer was a touchscreen and worked just dandy with Chrome.

LB_

@Gurth My sister has a touchscreen laptop. I was showing her how to remote into her desktop with Chrome Remote Desktop. I pinch zoomed to zoom in, which worked, but then it became impossible to zoom out. It wasn't the browser's built-in zoom. Unpinching didn't work. The controls for the remote session were now offscreen and could not be scrolled to. Nothing we did could fix it. So, we just had to close and reopen the tab.

Cursorkeys

I've somehow managed to break muscle-memory a couple of times.

Once I forgot my card PIN number while in a shop, I was picking items up and suddenly had the idle thought I didn't know the PIN for my debit card. Dismissed it on the grounds my fingers knew where to go if nothing else. Got to the till and, no, they didn't all of a sudden

And the alarm panel at work, I've been a keyholder for over a decade and I managed to blank on the PIN one day, after I'd opened the outer door and tripped the entry grace-period, naturally.

Captain

@PJH YES, I use ctrl-w all the time.

I really like how MacOS uses ALT for its keybindings. Plays nice with Unixy stuff.

Tsaukpaetra

@JBert said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@Zenith said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

Also I like when a program, usually a browser, fails to register a focus or a tab key and I have to figure out where the hell whatever I just typed actually ended up.

The Chrome misfeature I hate the most is how its dev tools override shortcuts used in the browser.

Some background: I almost always start my debugging Chrome instance with --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs. This way the Network tool is immediately tracing any and all requests when a tab opens (handy for troubleshooting a Content-Security-Policy header because the header sent with your HTML page defines the access a SPA has).

So now the fun thing is that Ctrl+L usually focuses the address bar and selects it. Not so when the Console is in view: the shortcut now clears it.

I wondered about that...

cheong

When using BBS like 10+ years ago, we used to press Ctrl-W to save and post new message.

Now pressing Ctrl-W on a web browser will cause either the current tab page or window be closed. Imagine the number of times that I do it on web-based forums.

Really annoying in that time.

Of course, most BBS I used to go to has now closed, and the remaining one supports Ctrl-X to save and post message, so no problem now.

Gurth

@pie_flavor said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@Gurth E_NO_REPRO, my last computer was a touchscreen and worked just dandy with Chrome.

I’ve had to use that flag with four different makes and/or models of touchscreen to prevent Chrome from allowing pinch-zooming. That’s not really my complaint about it, though: my complaint is that Chrome has at least three different ways of setting options, none of which seem to allow you to find or set all of them. As a result, if you try to find how to get rid of annoying behaviour, chances are you have to dig around search results for ages before finally discovering there is one after all, that hardly anybody seems to know about.

Edit: And, of course, you have to hope that options don’t get renamed or removed entirely with new versions. “To stop Chrome doing foo, set ‘Don’t do foo’ in chrome://flags”. Fine, except I don’t have ‘Don’t do foo’, I have ’Don’t do bar’ that seems to have almost the same description as ‘Don’t do foo’ so maybe it’s the same one? Or: “To stop Chrome doing foo, use --dont-do-foo but that only works until Chrome 6134” and you turn out to have Chrome 7247.

Gurth

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@PJH YES, I use ctrl-w all the time.

I really like how MacOS uses ALT for its keybindings. Plays nice with Unixy stuff.

There is Alt key in macOS, but most people seem to use that word to refer to the Option key. (Probably because some Apple keyboards do have the word Alt printed on it, but that’s not the key’s official name.)

The Option key is mostly used for typing characters that aren’t on the keyboard directly, like àéßØ≤≥ etc. and in combination with Command to expand the number of available shortcuts. You’re right that this keeps Ctrl free for Unix-style shortcuts that happily also work in most GUI elements, like Ctrl+A for going to the start of a paragraph.

Zecc

Is reading PDF in phone, slow scrolling down with right thumb.

Accidentally presses invisible scrollbar on the right edge of screen, jumping randomly to wherever.

FFFFFFUUUUUU—

This might belong on the UI Bites thread actually.

Captain

@Gurth Yep, if I had been calling it by what Apple calls it, It would have been the "Apple Key" or "Command Key".

I still love it.

Gurth

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@Gurth Yep, if I had been calling it by what Apple calls it, It would have been the "Apple Key" or "Command Key".

The name “Apple key” went out with the last Apple ][, I think. (How to recognise Blakey-vintage Mac users: see what they call the key with the ⌘ symbol on it.)

loopback0

@Gurth said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

see what they call the key with the ⌘ symbol on it

 key

HardwareGeek

@Gurth said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

To stop Chrome doing foo, use ~~--dont-do-foo but~~Firefox; that ~~only~~ works ~~until Chrome 6134~~no matter what version of Chrome you (used to) have

FTFY

Filed under: Technically true; even if FF also does foo, or worse, Chrome doesn't do foo if it isn't running.

dkf

@Gurth said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

what they call the key with the ⌘ symbol on it

The Point-of-interest key should be its proper name; that's the official name of that character.

hungrier

@dkf

PLACE OF INTEREST SIGN (U+2318)

Get the complete details on Unicode character U+2318 on FileFormat.Info

Old name COMMAND KEY

Gurth

@dkf said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

The Point-of-interest key should be its proper name; that's the official name of that character.

The inspiration for the symbol, certainly. However, because it has been widely used to mean “Command key”, it can be argued that it has two separate meanings nowadays. It’s not like it’s the only symbol that has a distinct meaning in computers compared to what it meant before. ⌥ comes to mind, but also ⌃ and even @.

xaade

@Polygeekery said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@Captain said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

@iKnowItsLame Just use vim.

Respectfully, DIAF.

In context, I thought this was IDGAF.

xaade

@Zenith said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

Ctrl+F hits me in Outlook, where it triggers a Forward instead of a Find.

Also I like when a program, usually a browser, fails to register a focus or a tab key and I have to figure out where the hell whatever I just typed actually ended up.

My first programming job was writing software where F12 for save, and Ctrl-S was for Search.

Why?

Because it carried forward from terminal keystrokes, because the company had written its own OS instead of adopting a standard OS for a gui interface.

anonymous234

No one has mentioned: in Windows systems configured in non-English languages, Microsoft programs change all shortcuts to better match the words in that language.

Zecc

@anonymous234 Oh, YES!

In Word, wanting to save file

Ctrl+fuckingS

bold style is toggled

I particularly hated selecting all files in File Explorer the time I used a Windows OS in PT-PT.

Ctrl+A

 : does nothing, because the keyboard shortcut for selecting everything is actually Ctrl+T. Hope you like stretching your fingers.

, Ctrl+T

: still does nothing, because apparently File Explorer forgot to support this localized keyboard shortcut used everywhere else in the OS

Bulb

@iKnowItsLame said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

stuck with the abominations-du-jour of $editor (xed, gedit, whatever)

What about vscode? It behaves everywhere the same and can be installed from all package managers I could think of (on Windows, there is a Choco installer, on Linux there is an APT repository, Snap, Flatpak and probably a Yum repository, but I don't use that).

Gąska

@anonymous234 said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

No one has mentioned: in Windows systems configured in non-English languages, Microsoft programs change all shortcuts to better match the words in that language.

Thankfully, the Polish translators had enough sense to leave them intact.

Gurth

@anonymous234 said in don't you hate it if muscle memory gets the better of you?:

No one has mentioned: in Windows systems configured in non-English languages, Microsoft programs change all shortcuts to better match the words in that language.

Depends on your language. In Dutch, the shortcuts are the same as in English (Ctrl+S to save your document, for example, even though the menu item is called Opslaan). The Alt-shortcuts once the menu is open are probably localised, though it’s been too long that I really used Windows for me to actually remember if they are.

Still, localising shortcuts would probably actually benefit users — provided it’s done well and everyone localises their shortcuts accordingly. You can probably forget about that last part, though, and it would also cause a lot of confusion if you’re forced to use a non-localised program.