but I did write a blog post called “I judge developers by how many toolbars are showing in their IDE”, which could also have been called “if you reach for the mouse, you are n00b scum to me”.

I wrote the original blog post on how to strip some of the disturbing elements off of Visual Studio and get started using the keyboard for navigation because I was frustrated when I saw colleagues helplessly wiggle the mouse around and try to click small pathetic buttons among hundreds of other buttons in huge menu bars in integrated development environments…

So, today I got a tip from Brendan J. Baker who suggested I install the “Hide Main Menu” VSIX and get an auto-collapsing menu bar! Pretty cool, actually – it shows up again when you hit Alt, just like you expect it to after having used the keyboard for navigating Sublime all day.

The menu bar might not take up a lot of space, but it’s still 30 px in the expensive direction, at the entire width of the screen, holding a BUNCH OF YELLED WORDS – but most of all, it’s clutter!

Thanks, Brendan – you made my Visual Studio even more clean and good looking 🙂

Usually, I try not to be judgmental about stuff. I like to keep my mind open and to accept people as the beautifully unique snowflakes they are… or something… 🙂

There’s one thing that irritates me though, and that’s C# developers who constantly reach for the mouse to click the tiny crappy toolbar buttons that for some reason seem to have survived in Microsoft IDEs since 1995 VB4. Yeah I’m looking at you! You’re crap!

There is nothing more annoying than pair programming with someone, who cannot even go to another file without having to scroll up and down in Solution Explorer, looking for that file to double-click. And then comes the time to re-run the current unit test… Sigh!!!

Now, if you have any ambition as a C# developer, I recommend you start out every new installation of Visual Studio by

• Hiding all toolbars (which, unfortunately, cannot easily be done at once – new ones pop up every time you open a new kind of file for the first time).
• Making all tool windows auto-hide (i.e. click the little pin on e.g. Solution Explorer, making it collapse – usually to the right side of the screen).

That will make your work environment resemble the picture on the right (especially if you have a 1337 dark color scheme like mine) – see: no clutter! No stinking buttons to disturb your vision while you’re swinging the code hammer! And, it will serve as an incentive to start using the keyboard some more.

Now, in order to be able to actually work like this, it’s essential that you know how to navigate using the keyboard only. Therefore, here’s a few very basic shortcuts to get you started[1. Assuming of course that you’re using Visual Studio with standard keyboard settings and R# with Visual Studio keyboard scheme]:

• Navigate to any open window in the environment: Ctrl + Tab + arrows while holding Ctrl.
• Jump to file currently being edited in the Solution Explorer: Shift + Alt + L.
• Jump to the R# test runner: Ctrl + Alt + T.
• Pop open the context menu: Shift + F10.

Now, with these in place I think it should be possible to start doing all navigation with the keyboard only. And then, when you get tired pressing Shift + F10 and choosing stuff in the menus, you can start learning the real shortcuts to everything.

Using the keyboard for the majority of all tasks has several advantages – in addition to relieving the strain on the right wrist, arm, and shoulder, you also get the advantage that your navigation and execution of common workflows is sped up, allowing your work pace to better match the pace of your train of thought.

Also, I won’t judge you 🙂