I think people expert in (and more or less married to) an existing text tool are the ones you don’t want to be watching if you’re developing new text editing tools. They’re not going to switch until everybody else around them has, if then.
If you want to learn about regular people using text, and how you can improve their lives (and these are the people you should target if you’re developing something new) you’d want to look at videos of Jane Sixpack using Word, or G Docs, or an author (not a programmer) using Scrivener, things like that.
Because these people are almost universally married to their text editors. Not because of some innate goodness in the way they operate, just because that’s the one they’re used to, and the one they’ve customised. There’s very little knowledge about text-editing-in-general to be extracted, and they’re the worst possible market for a new text editing experience.
Why exactly would you want to cater to people who won’t take the time to learn about features you implement? I’m not disagreeing, I actually thought of a handful of reasons while writing this, but I’m interested in the reasons you have.
It’s not so much you want to targeting people who won’t invest time, it’s that the ones who already have are very unlikely to switch until other people have already jumped on-board with something new and are harping on about how great their new thing is.
It would help you see how people do | expect to interact with text on a screen when they haven’t had their expectations moulded over years of getting into the text-editing equivalent of a butt-groove in the couch.
I’d think you’d want both, as these super-expert users may have customized tools or workflows that would still be useful to the normies that you might want to expose to them.
I’m not saying there’s no value in existing editors and their users or anything like that. I too am an old hacker who’s probably too set in his ways. It’s just that people who are that much into their text editor are that way because they’ve tweaked it over years to exactly their personal tastes, the end result being more a reflection on the individual journey of that user over their career, rather than any particular features of the editor in question (besides the fact that it’s very customisable).
Very cool! I’ve had it on my list to try and find videos similar to this of people using Emacs or Vim so I’d love to hear if people take/took Drew up on his suggestion and/or if there are already existing resources that are just people editing text and vocalising the process
Drew’s video already includes him using Vim—you don’t need to wait for additional submissions.
I don’t think this is a good style of video to learn Vim from, though, because it’s poorly organized for that purpose. As the linked page says,
The purpose of this page is to provide a reference for people writing new software which involves text editing tasks.
If you already know how normal text editing works, Drew spends too much time reiterating that. Even in the Vim section, he often switches between explaining Vim’s features and explaining generic text-editing features you already know.
A video focused on teaching the Vim or Emacs editing models and keybindings could be much more concise. I bet you could find one just by searching YouTube for “Vim tutorial”.
I guess I was more interested in watching people use it from a more wholistic point of view. For example, I recently started investing in org-mode (via Doom Emacs so using Vim bindings).
While there are plenty of great org-mode tutorials, a strict tutorial can be quite hard to express ie; how do all of these disparate bits and pieces work together in a real life setting.
Likely I just haven’t properly sat down and invested enough time but I like to think that the style of watching someone use a tool to achieve an end goal vs a tutorial about the tool itself have different focuses. The former is much more likely to help me understand the value of it but not necessarily how to go about actually using the thing in question if that makes sense?
I didn’t really clarify in my original comment but in this case, the wholistic format is what I find interesting more than any specific thing being demonstrated :)
I agree, a video of someone using Vim or Emacs for actual work while making it clear how they are using the editor would be a great way to learn.
I just tried searching for a video like that. I found plenty of recordings of livestreams where people use Vim (example). However, in my quick searches I’m afraid I couldn’t find any videos of a programmer using software that displays their keystrokes on screen, or of a programmer aiming to talk about how they are using the editor to do everything they are doing.
I think people expert in (and more or less married to) an existing text tool are the ones you don’t want to be watching if you’re developing new text editing tools. They’re not going to switch until everybody else around them has, if then.
If you want to learn about regular people using text, and how you can improve their lives (and these are the people you should target if you’re developing something new) you’d want to look at videos of Jane Sixpack using Word, or G Docs, or an author (not a programmer) using Scrivener, things like that.
I just realised the mighty G has giga-datapoints of how people type.
what’s your reasoning?
Because these people are almost universally married to their text editors. Not because of some innate goodness in the way they operate, just because that’s the one they’re used to, and the one they’ve customised. There’s very little knowledge about text-editing-in-general to be extracted, and they’re the worst possible market for a new text editing experience.
Why exactly would you want to cater to people who won’t take the time to learn about features you implement? I’m not disagreeing, I actually thought of a handful of reasons while writing this, but I’m interested in the reasons you have.
It’s not so much you want to targeting people who won’t invest time, it’s that the ones who already have are very unlikely to switch until other people have already jumped on-board with something new and are harping on about how great their new thing is.
what knowledge would you expect to gain from observing normies using popular word processors?
It would help you see how people do | expect to interact with text on a screen when they haven’t had their expectations moulded over years of getting into the text-editing equivalent of a butt-groove in the couch.
this begs the question that M$ word or google docs are not just as much a butt groove in the couch.
are you saying the goal should be to conform to the butt grooves already made by tech giants, because those are the ones normies are used to?
I’d think you’d want both, as these super-expert users may have customized tools or workflows that would still be useful to the normies that you might want to expose to them.
I’m not saying there’s no value in existing editors and their users or anything like that. I too am an old hacker who’s probably too set in his ways. It’s just that people who are that much into their text editor are that way because they’ve tweaked it over years to exactly their personal tastes, the end result being more a reflection on the individual journey of that user over their career, rather than any particular features of the editor in question (besides the fact that it’s very customisable).
Very cool! I’ve had it on my list to try and find videos similar to this of people using Emacs or Vim so I’d love to hear if people take/took Drew up on his suggestion and/or if there are already existing resources that are just people editing text and vocalising the process
Drew’s video already includes him using Vim—you don’t need to wait for additional submissions.
I don’t think this is a good style of video to learn Vim from, though, because it’s poorly organized for that purpose. As the linked page says,
If you already know how normal text editing works, Drew spends too much time reiterating that. Even in the Vim section, he often switches between explaining Vim’s features and explaining generic text-editing features you already know.
A video focused on teaching the Vim or Emacs editing models and keybindings could be much more concise. I bet you could find one just by searching YouTube for “Vim tutorial”.
I guess I was more interested in watching people use it from a more wholistic point of view. For example, I recently started investing in org-mode (via Doom Emacs so using Vim bindings).
While there are plenty of great org-mode tutorials, a strict tutorial can be quite hard to express ie; how do all of these disparate bits and pieces work together in a real life setting.
Likely I just haven’t properly sat down and invested enough time but I like to think that the style of watching someone use a tool to achieve an end goal vs a tutorial about the tool itself have different focuses. The former is much more likely to help me understand the value of it but not necessarily how to go about actually using the thing in question if that makes sense?
I didn’t really clarify in my original comment but in this case, the wholistic format is what I find interesting more than any specific thing being demonstrated :)
I agree, a video of someone using Vim or Emacs for actual work while making it clear how they are using the editor would be a great way to learn.
I just tried searching for a video like that. I found plenty of recordings of livestreams where people use Vim (example). However, in my quick searches I’m afraid I couldn’t find any videos of a programmer using software that displays their keystrokes on screen, or of a programmer aiming to talk about how they are using the editor to do everything they are doing.
ThePrimeagen has some nice vim videos with software that shows the keystrokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o4l4GVLW0
I think what you’re looking for may exist on destroyallsoftware.