Comment by ReleaseCandidat
4 years ago
> Ergonomics isn't all about making everything self-descriptive for someone seeing the thing for the first time.
We're talking about `xset`. It doesn't make sense to optimize that for usage of more than once a year.
The less frequently I need something, the more frustrating it is if it's not short and memorable (or easy to look up in the synopsis or built-in help). Forgetting and googling a needlessly complicated command over and over again every year isn't fun.
xset achieves that perfectly. If I somehow didn't remember how to set mouse acceleration with it, a quick glance at the synopsis immediately tells me. Or I can just run the command and it'll tell me:
Zero frustration, and the command is so short and simple that I end up remembering it without trying.
This is something I've observed more than once: I easily memorize useful sets of one-letter flags even if I can't remember or know what they all stand for. This just doesn't happen nearly as much with long options. Commands like ls -ctrl or ss -nap quickly become part of my repertoire even if I don't use them very often, but I really couldn't remember ss --numeric --all --processes (if I had written that from memory, it could've ended up as --num --all --pid or --numeric --any --process), and I don't even know what the corresponding long options for ls are. In the rare case when I have to deal with an option that has no short equivalent, I feel like I have to look it up every time if it's been longer than a few weeks.
You talk of optimization but I think this is just a very basic (and reasonably successful) attempt at sane design. It's not like someone had to go far out of their way to make this in a manner that isn't batshit insane.