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Show HN: I automated half of my typing

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Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#191

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

Swizec wrote: post #180
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what kind of work you are doing where WPM is a limiting factor. I’m in software, like a lot of people here, so being able to type in speed is rarely the limiting factor. Besides stenographers, the only other line of work off the top of my head that needs this kind of speed are people who are paid to write subtitles for TV shows and movies in another language. Which I guess is just another form of stenography,…

> I’m in software, like a lot of people here, so being able to type in speed is rarely the limiting factor I think of typing speed in coding the same way I think of cardio in boxing – it won’t win you the round, but the lack of it can easily lose you the round. You want topping to feel seamless and reliable. Whatever you think should come out on the keyboard reliably and without friction. Any time you have to stop an…

Interesting perspective. I have a decent wpm (like 120 if we are doing mavis beacon shit) but otherwise I usually go at like 70. I cannot think of a single time in my 10 year software engineer career where I have been like “damn, I wish I could have typed that faster and my typing speed was a limiting factor in my job”

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#192

Post by penteract »

Exuma wrote: post #177
penteract wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood the argument "I spend more time thinking than coding". You are still going to write the same amount of code whether you're thinking or not. My ideal world (why I love typing fast) is that that time of me coding gets brought down by 50-200% over someone who types slow. My perspective on this (I'm not a fast typist, but don't feel it's a big limitation) is that I can think while typing, so if I can…

If you want my unsolicited 2 cents to help speed up (if you care!) 1. put your fingers on home row keys with pointer fingers feeling the bumps on F and J 2. DONT move your wrists all around, try to keep them still and let your fingers do all the work. try to keep your entire palms as still as possible, they really shouldnt move. I rest mine on my laptop surface. 3. dont look at the keys. use https://www.typing.com to…

Thanks for the advice - I do 1 & 3 and I think I do 2 & 4 although that's less true when writing things with symbols (such as code), or when navigating text (I don't use vim). According to monkeytype.com, my typing speed is ~40wpm, which is apparently around average (not average for monkeytype users).

Thinking time definitely dominates, I'm hesitant to write something unless I'm confident in it, which I feel serves me well when writing code, but less well in other contexts (except perhaps HN, which has an unusually high fondness for accurate rebuttals of minor technical points). I spent ~20 minutes writing each of my 3 replies to you (longer on this one now that I've finished it). Perhaps being able to type at the speed I could talk would deny me the chance to think about it while waiting to finish typing, speeding me up indirectly.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#193

Post by yieldcrv »

replwoacause wrote: post #187
yieldcrv wrote: post #164

My friend does this on dating apps, he aliased a bunch of typos in his iphone with paragraphs of progressive sounding text that many women want to hear, interlaced with lots of flirty emojis branches of conversation too, one step above botting works for what he’s looking for

Huh, have to say that strikes me as kind of sleezy. It seems disingenuius and shallow. Like, instead of having meaningful conversation with people, relating to them on a substantive level (if possible), he’s just mindlessly automating his way through women “telling them things they want to hear”, hoping to get laid, using macros from his phone. That gives off major creep energy, and this is coming from another guy.

I hope she noticed bro /s

aka obviously. redundant to signal your lack of support.

anyway, he fills a market need. many women are annoyed by not well thought out short responses, as much as men are

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#194

Post by fouronnes3 »

Fearlesspancake wrote: post #132
crazygringo wrote: post #42

This is a very clever idea. However, I realize that I would never want to use something like this that would change over time. E.g. if I ran it every 6 months and last year "db" produced "debug", while this year it produces "database". Because talk about messing up my muscle memory and habits. And the language I write changes very much over time. So I'd actually be much more interested in a "universal" version of thi…

I discovered [Yublin]( https://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2007/06/yublin-shorthand-for-... ) a while back which set out to do exactly this: create 1-3 letter shorthands for the 600 most common words in English. And sure enough, "the -> t" is at the top of the list.

That's really cool. If using a QMK or other configurable keyboard, I could see this being on a dedicated modifier+chords.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#195

Post by spindle »

Exuma wrote: post #130
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what kind of work you are doing where WPM is a limiting factor. I’m in software, like a lot of people here, so being able to type in speed is rarely the limiting factor. Besides stenographers, the only other line of work off the top of my head that needs this kind of speed are people who are paid to write subtitles for TV shows and movies in another language. Which I guess is just another form of stenography,…

Typing fast is one of the greatest strengths for programming for me personally, especially when compared with Vim. It's that that it's a limiting factor, but rather I max out typing quite often, and also I have always wanted to hit 200 just for fun, but it currently feels not attainable. Some people say they spend more time than they do typing, but I definitely don't find that to be the case very often.

> It's that that

Made me laugh, given the topic!

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#196

Post by replwoacause »

karencarits wrote: post #90
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #74

I use a tool called "Espanso" to accomplish something similar at work. It only runs locally, so no weird data scraping issues to worry about. And it's easy to update as things changes because everything lives in a simple yml file. https://espanso.org/ It can do simple text replacement, so I have words, phrases, and sentences I use frequently compressed into a few keyboard clicks. It can also grab what is in your clip…

A sidenote, but Espanso can also be set up to communicate with eg chatgpt; you copy some text and type a trigger word such as ":ask" or ":debug" and it makes a request from the trigger and the clipboard and returns the reply from openai https://github.com/rohitna/chatgpt-script

I’ve got to plug Snippety on macOS. I’ve configured it to work with my PowerShell scripts, so I can easily call out to OpenAI endpoints and then inline the response into whatever app I’m in. Plus, the dev is super cool and his product is well done. Not associated with it in anyway other than being a happy customer.

https://snippety.app

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#197

Post by neaumusic »

mikysco wrote: post #61

https://kapeli.com/dash Somewhat similar tool to Autokey for MacOS that I use as a text expander. Allows for great customization - appending ; to a phrase ensures you don't accidentally expand a keystroke into a phrase/URL/etc ";url" expands into "whatever string you configure"

yep, came here to comment this, I use backtick wrapping for tons of shortcuts, probably have 50+

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#198

Post by gertlex »

Exuma wrote: post #170
the_af wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood the argument "I spend more time thinking than coding". You are still going to write the same amount of code whether you're thinking or not. The argument is that time spent typing is insignificant compared to time spent thinking, so optimizing for WPM seems like a less relevant endeavor. So if you spend (say) 1 day thinking about the problem and 1 hour typing, it matters little if you can speed up…

I spend over 10+ hours a day typing at the computer, across slack, writing specs, writing code, etc. So really I suppose in my mind I don't live in a vaccuum. I don't fetishize it at all, in my mind it is a simple objective fact that I actually experience myself. Fast typing is up there with Vim as one of the literal most productive things I have ever done, with the 3rd being memorizing hundreds if not thousands of O…

Writing specs is a key bit here that I'd generalize as: I think by typing. The hardest problems I troubleshoot are worked through with best quality if I am typing up a worklog of stuff tried, rather than taking no notes at all. And like mentioned in other comments, the effort of typing these notes is a limiting factor on the quality of my notes (too much time spent typing slows the troubleshooting iteration loop).

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#199

Post by Sparkyte »

1000 mph into a concrete barrier scenario, but I like the enthusiasm behind it. I would imagine some words with nearly the same spelling have potentially collided with automation causing some hilarious feedback. English is a pretty annoying language.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#200

Post by Sparkyte »

eschluntz wrote: post #77
crazygringo wrote: post #42

This is a very clever idea. However, I realize that I would never want to use something like this that would change over time. E.g. if I ran it every 6 months and last year "db" produced "debug", while this year it produces "database". Because talk about messing up my muscle memory and habits. And the language I write changes very much over time. So I'd actually be much more interested in a "universal" version of thi…

Yup, it doesn't run automatically for exactly this reason. It outputs "suggested_shortcuts.yaml" and I can copy and paste from that into "shortcuts.yaml" so I have manual control over which shortcuts are live :)

This is good I can imagine all of the embarrassing auto typing. It is the reason I hate Android phones. I will be typing and it will try to predict what I am writing. Some of it not sure what data it is built on came out hilarious or down right inappropriate. Not like swears or vulgar just the punch of the expressions.
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