Crazy idea?
Well, I guess I hesitated before posting on this forum but "you get nothing if you do nothing", so...
I was playing with my gamecube (game: baten kaitos) last week-end and I was telling myself: "I like this game, and the interface is good - compared to what must be done - in term of menu, actions: simple, ergonomic, intuitiv... in brief I was having a good user experience".
Now I'm kind of loving to develop softwares in Java and I love IntelliJ IDEA!
And what should happened happened I compared these two things: playing video games / developing under IntelliJ IDEA!
Though one of the thing that makes me love playing video games is fantastic 3D graphics, I like the simple GUIs of video games: they - generally - are good! and the joypad you have between your hands has something to do with this feeling!
I said I also like developing under IntelliJ IDEA, why? Because it proposes simple features that greatly improve my "developing power" in term of speed and code quality.
So, apart the fact that we don't have four hands... what about controlling certain functionnality of IntelliJ IDEA through a joypad...... yes a crazy idea...
But imagine: you've adopted the eXtreme Programming way to develop your softwares and thus you have two people on a same computer. Imagine the power of such a feature!!! Controlling/Developping/Reviewing in perfect harmony source code by two people at the same time! Moreover, with their -generally- 10 buttons, 2 or 3 analogic sticks, possibilities may be enormous.
So is it a crazy IDEA?
If yes then I'm sorry for this post ;)
WS
Please sign in to leave a comment.
I'll be cruel person to slap you down. Sorry, nothing personal. ;)
wondersonic wrote:
10 buttons on a gamepad compared to 100+ buttons on a keyboard? Trying
to read large amounts of text on a TV with a quarter the resolution of
each of my two 22" monitors?
No thanks!
Ciao,
Gordon
--
Gordon Tyler (Software Developer)
Quest Software <http://www.quest.com/>
260 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario M5A 4L5, Canada
Voice: (416) 933-5046 | Fax: (416) 933-5001
Yes, I agree, developing with a joypad, when compared to a keyboard, does sound a bit painful.
But, I, like yourself, have given some thought about how better to integrate myself to my development environment. While my hands/arms, I think, are "at one" with my computer, my legs and feet contribute absolutely nothing. Therefore, were my computer to offer two pedals, I think my productivity would go through the roof. Perhaps by pressing down on one, I could launch a build. By pressing all the way down, I would launch a clean build --- halfway would invoke an incremental build.
No reason to stop there either. By connecting a tube to my mouth, blowing/sucking could offer two additional inputs (though many coworkers maintain I already suck at my job). Those lucky individuals who can wiggle their ears might wear special headphones that invoke "Copy/Paste". For reasons of propriety I won't go into the exotic inputs that could be made available to men only.
Anyway, I've been tongue and cheek, but I'm serious about the pedals. I await the residual checks generated when someone capitalizes upon my idea (patent pending).
~Keith
Ha Ha.. Funny! But keyboards and mouse are long due to be overhauled, dont you think?
Thanks ;) (phew)
-1- Yes and...? Please read the answer to Mudhu below...
-2- of course not, this post is just about joypad! ;)
Keep your 22" monitors, one for the guy who edits the code with its keyboard and mouse, the other for the guy who navigates through the project with its joypad ;)))))))
Hmmm, well, what I can tell you about my experience with keyboard and mouse:
- keyboard is fantastic but I can't successfully remember all the CTRLALTSHIFT key sequences of IntelliJ IDEA,
- I hate to code and then switch to mouse, keyboard then mouse tons of times per day but things are what they are
and I can't change that...
I remember a colleague telling me what will Martians think of us once the human being will be extinct when examining our computers:
- the ancient inhabitants of this planet have one eye because monitors don't permit "true 3D",
- and they must have two hands!!! The left one has more than 100 small fingers and strangely the right one has only one, two or three long fingers...
I let you to meditate this point. ;)
Hmmm, at the first glance yes. But maybe after redefining
the way things are... and combinations on joypads may be very complex!
// start of delirium #1
Remember the "dragon punch" movement for Street Fighter? I'd like to be rewarded for such a combination of buttons in IntelliJ IDEA by the start of my "Program bench" all of that with a terrible digitalized voice "Prograaaaam bench" ;).
// end of delirium #1
Again one thing that is not really used in the world of Java (apart games): the sound.
Sound can sometimes alert of good things: compilation successfull, class has no warnings (green square in the upper right corner)...
// start of delirium #2
Also, sound could be used server side:
- when an unexpected NullPointerException is thrown, alert the world: "A NPE has just been discovered, please call immediately Jhon Vincent to save the application!"
- when an OutOfMemoryError happens then alert the world with a warning sound (as if the server room would explose)... (I can imagine the cacophony with certain application servers...).
// end of delirium #2
Well, here, you define something very interesting: the most used tasks (repeated time after time,
should be available very quickly!
Why should I hit CTRL+F9 (which are not very close, I use the left CTRL key) to "Make Project"?
Well, I could use my mouse and click on the right button, but here I lose from one to two seconds each time.
Okay, I can redefine default keys, but can someone explain me why this function is not available directly with F9 which as far as I know is only used when you debug a program that has just been stopped at a breakpoint to continue execution.
Here comes the problem of contextual key mapping! (patent pending)
When I'm not in the previously explained situation (debuger stopped) I whish F9 to "Make Project".
One interesting thing is that when I'm running the debuger, why can I "Make Project" using CTRL+F9, shouldn't this command be disabled?!?
Hmmm, I whish I could get the "things" used by Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report
to develop...
WS
wondersonic wrote:
>>10 buttons on a gamepad compared to 100+ buttons on a
>>keyboard?
And how would you propose entering text? Tekken button combos? ;)
Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding and you're advocating replacing the
mouse with a gamepad?
Ciao,
Gordon
--
Gordon Tyler (Software Developer)
Quest Software <http://www.quest.com/>
260 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario M5A 4L5, Canada
Voice: (416) 933-5046 | Fax: (416) 933-5001
wondersonic wrote:
I can. But maybe I'm just weird that way.
Just goes to show how accurate archealogy can be ;)
Ciao,
Gordon
--
Gordon Tyler (Software Developer)
Quest Software <http://www.quest.com/>
260 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario M5A 4L5, Canada
Voice: (416) 933-5046 | Fax: (416) 933-5001
Well entering the text, will always be done with the keyboard because a keyboard is the right tool to enter text.
Mouahahahahahahahahahah. :D
I'm not telling to replace the mouse with a gamepad, I'm just telling, why don't we use a gamepad also?
Gamepad could simplify THE way to navigate in program structure.
Consider the links between a Class, the libraries is uses, the places it is extended. IDEA proposes to navigate by different ways. Now, I'm wondering what it could be to navigate through this structure using a gamepad the same way I'm searching a treasure in a Final Fantasy game.
The only problem here is: the time spent to switch from the keyboard to the gamepad...
The thing I like with the gamepad in opposition to the mouse is that: I don't have to move the mouse cursor to the right place because the application already knows where are the useful places to point to.
Maybe something could be done to the way the mouse is handled to force the cursor to directly move from one "interesting" place to another one (like when pressing TAB while navigating with a browser on the Internet).
Well, one thing is sure, It's hard to make a "shuuuuuuuuriken" with a mouse... ;)
WS
>
I propose a contest: write a defined class in IDEA in a minimum number of clicks/keys ;)
Hmmm, for me, it shows that we just don't have the good tools yet. :(
I think that what you mean is using all the tools at your disposal, so
if one has a joy pad why not use that too for some tasks?
I think that the one problem in that approach is that you may get
clutter instead of productivity.
The example I can come up with is keyboard usage.
In IDEA, I use the keyboard for file editing. Even though I could use
the mouse for everything else, I still use the keyboard almost
exclussively instead of clicking on menus and buttons because of the
context switching involved with taking my right hand off the keyboard
onto the mouse and back to the keyboard.
Adding another device in my case where some things would even be more
comfortable to do (e.g. a steering wheel for scrolling with much more
control than a mouse wheel or the PageUp/PageDown keys) wouldn't
contribute to the bottom line productivity because of the switching.
May be this should be diverted to ideas regarding a developer keyboard,
just like there are a bunch of gamers and multimedia keyboards out there.
Things like scroll pads between the main area and the arrows +
Insert/Delete keys should be intergrated with the standard keyboard for
better usability and consolidation of the input devices we use rather
than diverging them.
Amnon