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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

#221

Post by baq »

the_af wrote: post #167
Exuma wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely situation dependent. When writing a lot of frontend code (vue, typescript, css, tailwind, html) I know what I'm typing several mental steps before I actually type it, so speed gains there are most pronounced. Sitting somewhere in the middle are dynamic languages where there might be certain implementations (say... some random api integration) where it's simply a lot of code I've typed thousands of tim…

> 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…

Typing is bursty. You don’t type much usually, but sometimes there’s a lot of it. Effortless typing minimizes interruptions and allows to stay in the zone for longer. It isn’t just about the time spent typing, it’s about typing at the speed of thought so you don’t switch contexts from thinking to typing.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#222

Post by paradite »

Here's something you probably didn't know if you are not native Chinese speaker:

Chinese language has this feature "built-in".

It is officially called 双拼 （Shuangpin）where you type two (English) characters of each word to type out the entire word:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-sg/%E5%8F%8C%E6%8B%BC

Even if you don't use Shuangpin officially, most Chinese input methods supports a similar feature (简拼) for popular phrases, where you type first English character of each word to type out a phrase of several words.

For example, to type "thank you" in Chinese (xiexie), you just type "xx" and it should automatically give you "xiexie" (Chinese characters) in most popular Chinese input methods.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#223

Post by baq »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #149
Exuma wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely situation dependent. When writing a lot of frontend code (vue, typescript, css, tailwind, html) I know what I'm typing several mental steps before I actually type it, so speed gains there are most pronounced. Sitting somewhere in the middle are dynamic languages where there might be certain implementations (say... some random api integration) where it's simply a lot of code I've typed thousands of tim…

for me philosophically code is a liability. Every line of code I write is a liability for me and future generations. So I try as hard as I can to not write code at all so it takes me quite a long time to decide to write code. I see it like that in the places I work too, I get paid to decide when it makes sense to write code eg introduce liability to the business

I’ve come to that realization consciously not long ago after two decades in software, but felt this tingling for a while.

Code not written is code not using up resources of your colleagues… and future you. It might be an asset if you sell code, otherwise it’s strictly a liability if you sell a service which the code provides.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#224

Post by yellow_lead »

paradite wrote: post #222

Here's something you probably didn't know if you are not native Chinese speaker: Chinese language has this feature "built-in". It is officially called 双拼 （Shuangpin）where you type two (English) characters of each word to type out the entire word: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-sg/%E5%8F%8C%E6%8B%BC Even if you don't use Shuangpin officially, most Chinese input methods supports a similar feature (简拼) for popular phrases,…

Yeah for common sentences it's easy to type quickly with a good pinyin keyboard.

Like "what do you want to eat" 「你想吃什麼」 Is typed with n x c s m

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#226

Post by efreak »

beardedwizard wrote: post #212
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…

> a "universal" version of this -- if you ran it across books and e-mails and text messages from thousands of authors covering diverse backgrounds and contexts, then what would most reliably help everyone Isn't this approaching llm territory?

No, this is simple statistics. Just list all the words in your corpus in order by how frequently they're used, then use a dedicated software solution like the one given here to make shorthand from it and expand as you type. Machine learning is massive overkill for this, like nuking a fly-- it's a massive waste of resources (time, energy, energy over time, every metric I can think of), and you're going to have targeting issues at that scale (how exactly do you propose to ensure a LLM stays on target and doesn't duplicate answers, make up words, skip words, etc? Are you sure your LLM actually knows what the correct distribution is? If you know it does because you checked, doesn't that mean you already have a word list you can use?)

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#227

Post by kqr »

> I was surprised that very short and frequent words topped this list, such as the -> t

Having studied some shorthand, I'm not surprised in the least! There, the most frequent words tend to get single-symbol abbreviations. Common wisdom even says that much of the benefit from shorthand writing comes from these few one-symbol abbreviations.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#228

Post by 0RQ2kaTBBlQp »

paradite wrote: post #222

Here's something you probably didn't know if you are not native Chinese speaker: Chinese language has this feature "built-in". It is officially called 双拼 （Shuangpin）where you type two (English) characters of each word to type out the entire word: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-sg/%E5%8F%8C%E6%8B%BC Even if you don't use Shuangpin officially, most Chinese input methods supports a similar feature (简拼) for popular phrases,…

This is not related to the topic being discussed at all.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#229

Post by leokennis »

Out of curiosity...sure you type less, but do you need to think more about which abbreviation was which word?

In iOS I maintain a small list of abbreviations (@@ expands to my e-mail address, lk expands to my name etc.) but if it was hundred(s) I'd probably lose more time thinking about "what was the abbreviation of 'online meeting' again" or correcting accidental abbreviations that are part of normal words, than I'd save time typing...but maybe that's just me.

Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing

#230

Post by globular-toast »

Alekhine wrote: post #101
codedokode wrote: post #64

I use similar abbreviations in code editor, for example: r0 -> return false rn -> return null t -> this puf -> public function You can easily find the opportunities for saving typing by analyzing existing code and most used words there.

What editor are you using to do this? I assume it's vim or emacs.

I have this with yasnippet in emacs. It's more than just simple expansion too. It expands to a skeleton to fill in the blanks, so f expands to a function definition and then allows you to put in parameters, return type, then body or whatever makes sense in the current language.
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