Chapter 2: Keyboard Shortcuts

So much to code…so little time! reads the saying on one of my favorite programmer t-shirts. The focus of this chapter is how to save time and code more productively.

When developing, we form a mental construct of the program we are writing and break it down into components, APIs, methods, and logic/looping structures. Once we have imagined the next code bits, we need to transfer those thoughts into syntax on screen. The most common modalities for doing this are the keyboard and mouse. The assertion made in this chapter is that, for those of us with fewer than three hands, time is lost switching from keyboard to mouse and back again. Without getting into the details of scientific studies, our experience is that using keyboard shortcuts can save you boatloads of time. Now, I'm not sure how much time fits in a boat, but you get the point.

It is important to recognize that most tasks can be performed directly from the keyboard (without a...