What I’m finding is that productivity increases as my memory of hotkeys increases. At first I was using the mouse a lot. Even if you pick up only one hotkey per week. At the end of the year you’ve become more efficient at about 50 different operations.
Whereas with VC6, after about one week and two years, my level of efficiency is about the same.
Of course the user interface is dependant on the user. Some people will become more efficent at using the mouse, whereas some will be more efficient using just a keyboard.
All the user interface research that I’ve seen at universities usually focuses on improving the user interface for the general populous. I haven’t really seen someone track one user for a prolonged period of time and see how their efficiency increases.
In terms of html and Emacs, I actually have two buffers open at the same time. And let Emacs render the html. I don’t care what the output looks like until the very end. I just want to see the general outline. When I’m done with the particular webpage, I’ll put it through the W3C html checker, then Mozilla, then Opera, then IE.
Speaking of web browsers, other members of my family are horribly inefficient at anything other than IE. Because they don’t look like applications that are not typical windows applications. Whereas I can’t live without tabs and mouse gestures. I’m not so efficient at using pie menus right now. But that will probably increase when my memory gets better.
However, I see Jon’s point. Even if I’ve been away from Emacs for one week. I need my refcard by my side to get me back into the groove. However, I don’t really need a refcard to get back into the groove of working in VC6.
I’m also a little biased about research. Having worked in a research lab for a period of time, the researchers are usually only concerned about where their next source of funding is coming from.
I’m doing some stuff on Linux as we speak (php and html) and man, is it unproductive. I have to make changed in Emacs, save it, go to my Mozilla and try it out to see if its working right. Some times I have to switch folders in the console (cant use the explorer thingy).
Usually, I make changes,
C-x C-o (other window)
F4 (reload)
Of course, that might involve some .emacs hacking.