Blogging Ottinger (tim)Eclipse for Polytentacular Aliens
I’m convinced now that eclipse is designed for use by polytentacular aliens who might be capable of pressing their bizarro key chords. This thing gets more bizarre the longer I use it. I am struggling to remember how to do the simplest things. I’m stuck with the mouse and menues for now, and hating it.
I’m also convinced that my friend David is a polytentacular alien. Somehow he zips between mouse and keyboard without looking. I noticed that he’s good at finding all the various shiftmode keys (Alt, Option, Splat, Control, Shift) with the right hand. That’s really weird to me, but I’ll try it.
The other thing I notice is that there are tiny, tiny little groups of pixels that have grave meaning. I’m talking about the package view. Little tiny icons represent files. These little tiny icons are hard enough to decypher, but at least they normally look like little disk “drums” from flowchart days. But the itty bitty corners of the tiny icons get their own icons. For some reason a white asterisk on a black background of a itty bitty bit of screen real estate about the size of George’s left eye pupil on a dollar bill means that there’s been a change in the file. Or that there’s an error. Or something. I think the question mark on a blue background means it’s not in version control. It’s tiny, tiny, and much iconography is as arbitrary as the key chords required to reach anything useful.
This is clearly another “expert friendly” system, because it’s pure heck for novices. Eclipse has all the features, and if you can press 80% of the keyboard in one blazing strafing run with unbelievable accuracy you can use it.
I’ll get over it. I’ll become an omnitentacular alien if necessary, but it’s sure not becoming a natural tool. It does not disappear into the background, and it’s hard to watch an expert use it because they move quickly. It’s another bit of strangeness on top of all the other strangeness that is this new project. But we live. Time and familiarity, time and familiarity. Eventually even I will be able to do work.
