As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to not fat-finger the Insert key when writing code in Studio’s Code editor. The Insert key toggling an overwrite mode contributes legacy text-editor behavior to Roblox Studio, an otherwise modern editor that services programmers on the younger side.
An example of the functionality I’m at odds with:
Everyone I’ve asked that experiences this problem has the same experience I do; they accidentally press Insert when writing code, and especially when intending to use functionally valuable keys like Home, Page Up, End, and Page Down. Not once have I gotten the response that it’s a feature used by the engineers I work with; people who have been writing code full-time for past years of their lives.
Some of the people I asked are on macOS, so don’t even have the opportunity to experience this problem, because it has been designed out of existence for them by Apple – alternatively, modern editors like VSCode don’t enable this behavior by default, either.
This is my opinion, but I think that the Insert key supports a legacy functionality akin to text editors from decades ago. I suspect that an overwhelming majority of people writing code on Roblox do not use the overwrite mode in the Script Editor, and thus, the miss-input functionality brought by the Insert key is an annoyance for the workflow of many people writing code on Roblox.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because myself and the other people I work with would no longer accidentally press Insert and overwrite code that we originally intended to insert.
You probably won’t be able to use it, as it’s a pretty niche feature, but the actuation point is how far you need to press the key down for it to activate.
I disagree with this. I try to use this feature all the time and it’s frustrating when it isn’t supported; Studio is one of the last text editors that I use that actually supports it.
The world doesn’t revolve around me, but just know there’s at least one person who uses it deliberately.
Just curious, why do you use this feature over backspace or text highlighting? Since we know there are people using this, it’s probably best being left as a toggle if they do this, but I know this feature is very annoying for most people.
We’ll look at adding a setting to remove this mode. I’d be interested to hear suggestions on whether it should default to on or off. I agree that this is a feature I rarely use intentionally but often trigger by accident.
Personally, I’d go with default off. I always accidentally click my insert key when using my arrow keys (98% keyboard woo), and it often disrupts my flow. Maybe a poll of some sort would be useful!
Do you use “Overtype mode” in Studio using Insert?
I do use this mode
I do not use this mode as I don’t like it
I do not use this mode as I didn’t know it existed
This is actually a somewhat useful feature that just needs a dedicated shortcut you can modify instead of just an on-off toggle. It makes overwriting lines of code way faster if you get used to it. Instead of having to go to the end of the line, press backspace till you erase everything and only then start typing, you can just press insert, type whatever you want, and hold delete until you get rid of the rest. It’s awesome if you get used to it, but a massive hinderance to everyone else as is.
