{"id":12133,"date":"2024-04-26T11:36:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T15:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=12133"},"modified":"2024-04-27T11:36:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T15:36:16","slug":"%f0%9f%a5%a9-red-meat-friday-why-use-tabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=12133","title":{"rendered":"🥩 Red Meat Friday: Why Use Tabs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWhen I wasn’t paying attention, someone decided that what Emacs really needed was Tabs1<\/a><\/sup>. The next thing I knew, they were a feature of Emacs. To flog a tired meme, this brought to mind fish and bicycles. I just don’t understand it. As far as I’m concerned, fish can make better use of bicycles than I can of Tabs in Emacs.\n<\/p>\n

\nOf course, lots of people disagree. Those people are all exclaiming, “It’s about time!” One of those people is Benjamin Leis who has embraced Tabs and even made customizations to optimize them for his workflow. He’s received a bit of pushback so he made a video<\/a> to give his answers to the common objections to Tabs and to showcase his workflow.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt’s an impressive setup and if you like that sort of thing, you should take a look at the video and his configuration, which he links in the comments. You may even find yourself convinced.\n<\/p>\n

\nI didn’t. It runs against everything I believe constitutes efficient text editing. For me, every mouse use is a cache miss. If my fingers leave the keyboard\u2014even for the arrow keys\u2014it feels like a failure. Leis’ workflow is perfect for someone who would really like to spend all their time in the browser. Every action involves a mouse click and you needn’t touch the keyboard unless you want to enter text. There are some\u2014serious people like Rob Pike\u2014who claim this is more efficient. They’re wrong.\n<\/p>\n

\nI’ll say it again: if you take your hands off the keyboard, you’re sacrificing efficiency for\u2026 What? Using an interface designed for your Aunt Millie? The WIMP<\/a> interface is fine for those who don’t code or write for a living but if you are one who does, maybe you should get serious about how you use your tools.\n<\/p>\n

\nUPDATE<\/b> [2024-04-27 Sat 11:31]<\/span><\/span>: There are a lot of nice comments that discuss the benefits of Tabs and how to use them without the mouse. You should definitely look through them because they give you the other perspective on using Tabs.\n<\/p>\n

\n

Footnotes: <\/h2>\n
\n
1<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n
\n

\nI’m talking about those things that live in Tab bars, not the ^i<\/code> character that’s also called a tab. I’ve capitalized Tab as a way of distinguishing the two.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wasn’t paying attention, someone decided that what Emacs really needed was Tabs1. The next thing I knew, they were a feature of Emacs. To flog a tired meme, this brought to mind fish and bicycles. I just don’t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-12133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-emacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12138,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12133\/revisions\/12138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}