I've finally implemented the command I keep typing all day: gti

by colinprince • 14 years ago

108 60 14 years ago

The spokes of the GTI wheels often didn't appear to rotate on my screen because the frame rate was too high - I added a change to make the spokes change after every 5 ticks.

https://github.com/dickfickling/gti

Maybe even just every two ticks (% 4 < 2) would be fine.

edit: Forgot to say: wonderful idea and nice implementation! Simple yet satisfying.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

Why not just alias 'gti' to 'git'? I don't see what constructive purpose this serves. The only situation where it might matter is if you were using lots of different systems and didn't want to copy your aliases file over, though that's pretty simple nowadays, thanks to Git itself.

sjtgraham• 14 years ago

It's more fun.

simdiab• 14 years ago

You're right. How dare we have fun on the internet!?

jrockway3• 14 years ago

What would there be to blog about if he did that? Blogging is a sign of intelligence, and if you just do something simple and don't tell anyone, how smart are you really?

I use an even more failsafe technique: typing the word "git" correctly each time.

jlgreco2• 14 years ago

It serves the same purpose that sl serves. A minor somewhat amusing annoyance that gets tiresome over time, forcing you to drop the bad habit.

Aliasing it to 'sleep 2 ; git' would do the same thing, but would lack the embarrassment and amusement that the animation gives.

Of course mostly that is just an excuse. "Because it is fun" is really the only reason that there needs to be.

misnome• 14 years ago

I've been tempted to do things like this alias, but it's a slippery slope; I don't want to train my muscle memory to type the wrong thing, and if it's silently accepted that's what is likely to happen. This way, the command gets run but you get a reminder that you typed the wrong thing, I guess.

Now I need something to stop me typing 'pythong' in shebangs.

the_cat_kittles• 14 years ago

./mangae.py runserver, or some variant... another great one!

philwelch• 14 years ago

Ah, in the finest tradition of that other great Unix utility, sl: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/displays-animations-when-accid...

graue2• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, for those who have typed gti, how do you type 'git'? For me, left index finger on G, right index on I, left middle on T. I'm wondering because I never make this particular typo, although I do have 'sl' installed and tend to see the steam locomotive once every few days.

As an experiment, I tried to type 'git init' very quickly a bunch of times and my typos were:

    git niti
    git niit
    git itnit
    giti nit

but never 'gti'.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

I just tried the same and had a very hard time typing gti. I had to slow down to get it; if I try to type it as quickly as possible I end up with either "git" or "gir". The parallization between hands just makes it too easy to type correctly. While your left pointer finger is making that long move from g to t, your right middle finger is already done pressing i.

I never type "sl" either.

statictype2• 14 years ago

I was thinking along the same line.

When you use the same finger to type the G and T and a different finger to type I, it seems really impossible for me to accidentally type G-T-I.

The more common mistake is when you have to type two consecutive letters with the same finger but end up typing the next one earlier because its on a different finger (usually on the opposing hand).

Ex: 'teh' instead of 'the'- T,H with left index finger. E with left middle finger.

I also almost never type 'sl' though I do often type 'qw' in the Vim command line instead of 'wq'

GertG• 14 years ago

Left middle on T, on a querty-based keyboard? And you've never broken anything? :-)

[1] has what seems to be the classic way, with t and even r being typed my the index finger.

[1] http://www.powertyping.com/qwerty.html

graue2• 14 years ago

Wow, this could hardly be more different from how I type. I use only my middle and index fingers for all letters, moving them around as needed. I use left middle on 't' unless the next or previous letter is 'q', 'w', 'e', 'a' or 's', in which case I use left index for the 't'. It's not at all conscious, so I had to do some experimenting to figure that out.

wging• 14 years ago

I would guess you did this test on your own keyboard, which you're used to. I wonder if the results would have been different if you'd used an unfamiliar one.

(I also wonder if the number of trials you did was statistically significant--but never mind!)

mgkimsal• 14 years ago

I've just tested a couple different ways

usually it's left-index, right-middle, left-index, but sometimes it's left-index, right-middle, left-middle. It seems to depend on what I'm going to type next, but I don't seem to have a lot of insight as to what my fingers are doing (or why) ;)

anonymous• 14 years ago

It happens with touch-typing. Left index finger for g and t, right middle for i. After pressing g, I move my left index finger over t while simultaneously moving my right middle finger over i. It isn't very probable, but sometimes the index finger gets to the t juuust before I press i, so I get gti, instead of git.

andyjohnson0• 14 years ago

Left index, right middle, left index.

gcr• 14 years ago

I do right index finger on G, left index on I, right middle on T.

Oh, I'm a dvorak user, by the way. :)

Pawka• 14 years ago

Try zsh (z shell). It has auto correction for typos:

pawka@yoda ~/Desktop> gti

zsh: correct 'gti' to 'git' [nyae]?

freestyler2• 14 years ago

After I switch to zsh, I miss the `sl' so much.

jlgreco2• 14 years ago

You have zsh set to autocorrect sl to ls even if sl is installed? That seems a bit extreme, is that what the default behaviour is these days? I have all the autocorrection turned off in my setup.

rcthompson• 14 years ago

You need to add extras for common git subcommands like sl implements extras for the common options to ls.

Like "gti init" could have it start from a dead stop, "gti push" could have it push something in front of it, "gti pull" could have it pull a trailer behind it, etc.

splatzone• 14 years ago

Oh I get it. It's a GTI, innit.

suresk• 14 years ago

I've just used an alias file for some of my more common typos ('sl' is probably my most common) - nice to know I'm not the only one who makes silly typos with enough frequency to warrant some kind of technological solution!

tsigo• 14 years ago

As much as I type git, I just alias it to 'g' and be done with it.

dsirijus• 14 years ago

Tim Pope tried to implement interesting plugin for Vim. [1] It basically replaces frequently mistyped words with correct ones. I wouldn't support this method, but it is interesting how frequently I type some words wrong ('fucntion', for example). Instead, you should definitely try proper fingering.

As a pro piano, saxophone and guitar player, I'm prepping a rather lengthy blog post about proper fingering when typing, and the inadequacy of standard keyboard layouts, in particular, wrong placement of modifier keys as pivot points.

[1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1545

Someone• 14 years ago

Your mentioning of piano made me think of a auto-correct plug-in for an electronic piano. In the spirit of sl and gti, it would have to play a Rickroll first.

mcrider• 14 years ago

For me I always mistype 'master' as 'amster'. In my mind, I've invented a friendly little mascot, the Git Hamster.

itsboring• 14 years ago

Holy crap, I do this exact thing, and had the same thought about the git hamster. That and "gitp ush".

FrojoS• 14 years ago

Being a slow typer, I couldn't get bothered. I have about 30 alias in my bash_profile for git. These are the ones I use most:

    alias ga='git add'
    alias gs='git status'                                                                                                                                                                            
    alias gc='git commit'
    alias gls='git ls-files' #lists all tracked files!  
    alias gg='git add -u; git commit -a -m "lazy commit"' # stage and    commit everything tracked. So lazy ...

The latter I only use for committing non-code. Like my notes in org-mode.

I also found it very convenient to have

    alias eb='emacs ~/.bash_profile'

makes me edit my dash_profile almost every day.

sic1• 14 years ago

I'm with this guy. Basically the same setup.

I still alias 'git' to 'g' also for all the other commands needed throughout the day. Not sure why yall would keep typing 'it'.

I do enjoy the ascii car tho. Cheers to that. Probably will set this up anyways!

jordanthoms• 14 years ago

You can do the same for ls - apt-get install sl IIRC. Generally more productive to just do an alias though :)

praptak• 14 years ago

It would be possible to implement "did you mean" feature in bash, even for command arguments (bash tab completion already knows them.) Not sure if worth it though.

timinman• 14 years ago

Ha ha! 'More of a reward than a punishment.

grn• 14 years ago

I have:

  "\C-ga": "git add "

and so on in my .inputrc (https://github.com/grn/dotfiles/blob/master/inputrc). This allows me to type Ctrl-g, a to insert "git add ". It makes typing faster and is clearer than aliases.

benmathes• 14 years ago

alias g='git';

Toenex• 14 years ago

For years I had several aliases for 'make' and after a while I literally couldn't remember how to spell it correctly without thinking quite hard. mkae, meka both looked equally valid.

noodol• 14 years ago

i love this lol

ollybee• 14 years ago

I have an amdin on some servers. don't punish yourself with ascii animations make it launch gtypist or similar.

mlvljr• 14 years ago

nitty gitty :)

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

I have something similar on one machine, but without the awesome ASCII graphics. It made me type git better each time but I find I'll miss the h on 'push' so I think that'll be next, the horrors that could be generated in ASCII for 'git pus' will surely help.

veyron• 14 years ago

This seems pretty dangerous. If you misspelled git you may also have misspelled the command you wanted to run, and especially if you set 1- or 2- character aliases in git you may run something you never intended to run.

coldpie• 14 years ago

From my standard bashrc:

  alias l='ls'
  alias vmi='vim'
  alias ivm='vim'
  alias grpe='grep'
  alias amke='make'
  alias mkae='make'
  alias maek='make'

Fixes most everything I screw up regularly :)

peejaybee• 14 years ago

Is this going to be available on gtihub?

KC8ZKF• 14 years ago

I think a lot of people here are missing the point of 'sl', 'gti' et al. They're practical jokes, not training aids. Of course you can alias 'sl' to 'ls'! Of course some shells are smart enough to DWIM! 'sl' is there so we can watch the expression on the clewless n00b's face when he inevitably mistypes 'ls'-- probably in a moment of stress.

peterwwillis• 14 years ago

I had just started using Debian a few days before. I was trying in vain for hours to get a crappy Radeon card's direct rendering to work, futzing around with different settings. Suddenly a train roared across my terminal. "What the fu..." Eventually I figured out what happened and laughed my ass off.

mp99e99• 14 years ago

Maybe someone on HN can invent something that shocks you when you type the wrong command instead! Funny post, and GTI's had great mileage

I've finally implemented the command I keep typing all day: gti

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