Do You Write Code With Your Mouse?

A book to use more of the keyboard, less of the mouse.

Years ago, I was mentored to build a personalized, scalable, and mouseless development environment.

I discovered that it takes less cognitive energy to keep my hands on the keyboard without the need to grab the mouse all the time.

By writing this book, I would like to show you everything I learned.

What Will This Book Bring You?

A scalable development environment where you mainly use your keyboard to increase your efficiency.

Precise explanations how to configure everything, depending on your needs. You'll be in control, deciding what's more efficient for you.

Knowledge about Linux and the terminal. You'll learn to use timeless, customizable, and powerful tools.

How to build a personalized installer to bring all your tools and their configurations easily on any computer.

430+ happy customers.

0 asked for a refund.

Reading your book has been my guilty pleasure for the past month. I can imagine how much fun you had writing it. Thank you for sharing!

For years, I have been working back and forth on macOS and Gnome based Linux (mostly Ubuntu), but I always have been curious about using a window manager like i3. My problem was that I had no idea where to start and like many people, I lacked the time to search for good tutorials. Then I saw a post on Reddit by Matthieu asking people to please check out his new book, a book about exactly what I have been wanting, a book about i3 and other mouseless tools! Let me tell you that it does exactly what it says on the cover, it will change the way you work for the better. I have now been running Arch and i3 exclusively and I have never been as productive behind my keyboard. The book is also a great introduction to Vim and Tmux, which I have been using for years, but Matthieu still managed to teach me a few things about it.

I highly recommend this book to every software developer; get it, read it and get sh*t done by being a lot more productive.
I have read many books since I started my career at the end of the 80's as a Unix SysAdmin, and your book rates very high!
Kim C. Callis

Mouseless Powerful Tools

Logo of the tools Arch Linux, Tmux, Vim, and Zsh

Your Mouseless Development Environment will include these tools:

You don't like some of them? No problem! You can replace Vim by your IDE, or Arch Linux by Ubuntu. I show you the "how" and you decide the "what".

A mouseless environment is often centered around the Linux shell. If you don't use a shell often, that's fine too. You'll learn step by step.

Quick Overview

About The Author

photo of the author of the book Matthieu Cneude

Hi! I'm Matthieu.

I've been coding as a hobby for 20 years, professionally for 10 years.

I've worked from extra small to extra big companies, mentoring and leading developer teams.

Teaching is very rewarding to me. That's why I love writing for my blog, The Valuable Dev.

Using only keystrokes for common editing operations is more efficient than mouse or menu-driven commands, because your hands never leave the keyboard.

The Pragmatic Programmer


Is the book outdated now?

In short: no.

I test the book every month to be sure everything works as expected. Additionally, I use all these tools every day.

What if I don't want to use Arch Linux?

I choose Arch Linux because it can teach you a great deal about Linux systems in general.
If you want to keep your current OS, I recommend you to follow the book with a virtual machine (using Virtualbox for example) to get the most out of it.

You have then two options:

  1. You can use the installation scripts to automatically install everything on a new computer.
  2. You can pick the tools you want and use them with another Linux distro, or even with macOS (except i3).

Why not learning all the keystrokes from the software I already use?

For three reasons:

  1. The keystrokes across software are inconsistent and difficult to remember. You can't always change them either.
  2. It's tedious to re-configure manually your keystrokes for every software each time you install your system. I automated all of that.
  3. The tools described in the book are especially designed for the keyboard.

The book proposes a set of consistent keystrokes across tools which fit very well together. They can easily interact with the shell too, making them really powerful.

I don't know how to use the Linux shell. Is it a problem?

Not at all! If you're motivated, you'll learn a lot from this book. Guaranteed!