I thought this was going to be a post about using an LLM when coding.
I type 20% of what I would have with copilot
Show HN: I automated half of my typing
281–290 of 331 posts
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Hope who noticed? My wife? What's redundant about being critical of your loser friend's programmed responses? He's a goober and I'm pointing that out. Also, calling it a "market need" tells me you're 2 birds of a feather.
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#283Instead of keywords and memorizing it, why not just use the first letters? I played around with ChatGPT with this few weeks ago and I don't think there is an existing software for this, I am not good in programming but hopefully somebody will create. Please see screenshot below. https://imgur.com/a/0o4zLwT
I built a prototype similar in concept to this, where you can just abbreviate arbitrarily, doing whatever, and ChatGPT fixes it after each sentence.
It’s decently accurate (although very annoying when it misses), but I found that even when it’s working perfectly, using it is just way more cognitive effort than typing normally. Concentrating very hard, I could just about match my normal casual typing speed while using the abbreviations, but I couldn’t beat it, and I found myself just gravitating back to normal typing.
That said, I’m a fast typist, and I write a lot, so I’m trying to make a prototype beat a process in my brain that has been intensively optimized over 30 years or so. It might work better with someone who isn’t a fast typist in the first place.
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#284This 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…
> expanding "t" to "the" seems like a no-brainer, just like "st" to "something" I have jk mapped to escape in vim, and for a key combo that seems like it should never occur naturally, I’m often surprised how often it misfires when I actually need to type “jk”. Globally remapping hundreds of things like “t” and “st” would actually be quite frustrating I think. Like imagine you’re emailing your friend about a trip to s…
>I have jk mapped to escape in vim, and for a key combo that seems like it should never occur naturally, I’m often surprised how often it misfires when I actually need to type “jk”.
I saw that great recommendation somewhere so immediately set that up in vim. But those are my initials, and usually the beginning of my username... So took that out real quick.
-jk
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#285Earlier 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…
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.
Typing is bursty, agreed. I'm not saying someone who is an extremely slow hunt-and-pecker is ideal.
What I'm saying is that, past an average typing speed, obsessing over WPM gets you diminishing returns, because that's not where the bottleneck is. You should rather spend time improving other aspects of your process, but of course, "thinking better/smarter" is harder to improve.
For the record, I never measured WPM but I'm mostly a fast 2-fingers typist. All keys are typed with my index fingers, and the spacebar with the thumb and some of the special (shift, CTRL, etc) keys with some other finger.
I will lose every competition with a WPM-focused typist, but I can guarantee you my effective tasks -- the actual job we're meant to complete -- will not take me longer, unless said job is transcribing a document (which is never my job).
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Typing is bursty, agreed. I'm not saying someone who is an extremely slow hunt-and-pecker is ideal. What I'm saying is that, past an average typing speed, obsessing over WPM gets you diminishing returns, because that's not where the bottleneck is. You should rather spend time improving other aspects of your process, but of course, "thinking better/smarter" is harder to improve. For the record, I never measured WPM bu…
If you are a 2 finger typist and also think people are "obsessing over WPM" because they're wanting to utilize their own tools to the fullest advantage, that sounds like some mental block kind of thing.
If you can type at least 80 consistently then thats probably would I imagine the dividing line is between "flow/concentration not breaking" and "breaks constantly"
Try a 50 word monkeytype https://monkeytype.com/
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
It goes without saying that typing notes, transcribing documents, and generally "stream of consciousness typing" is helped by a fast WPM rate.
But for coders, that's seldom the task we're doing. Hence the assertion "I spend more time thinking than typing".
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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”
That’s the fun part! You don’t notice it’s a problem until you pair with someone who can’t type fast or makes a lot of typing errors and you want to bang your face through the screen because it’s so frustrating to watch them struggle.
They don’t even realize they’re being held back by this. It’s an invisible friction until you notice it.
Easiest way to notice the effect is by switching to a new IDE where you don’t have the keyboard shortcuts in muscle memory yet. Or a language that’s easy but you have to think about the syntax because it’s new.
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typing is bursty, agreed. I'm not saying someone who is an extremely slow hunt-and-pecker is ideal. What I'm saying is that, past an average typing speed, obsessing over WPM gets you diminishing returns, because that's not where the bottleneck is. You should rather spend time improving other aspects of your process, but of course, "thinking better/smarter" is harder to improve. For the record, I never measured WPM bu…
If you are a 2 finger typist and also think people are "obsessing over WPM" because they're wanting to utilize their own tools to the fullest advantage, that sounds like some mental block kind of thing. If you can type at least 80 consistently then thats probably would I imagine the dividing line is between "flow/concentration not breaking" and "breaks constantly" Try a 50 word monkeytype https://monkeytype.com/
> If you are a 2 finger typist and also think people are "obsessing over WPM" because they're wanting to utilize their own tools to the fullest advantage, that sounds like some mental block kind of thing.
I get frustrated by this kind of replies on HN.
Please don't try to "fix" me. I'm telling you my WPM are not limiting, because -- like almost ALL coders and engineers -- I spend most of my time elsewhere, and that 2-fingers is fast enough. I will not solve a Data Engineering problem by typing fast.
I probably type faster with 2 fingers than you. Maybe not, but I've seen me "win" over people who type with all fingers, and that's good enough for me.
So thanks, but no thanks?
Re: Show HN: I automated half of my typing
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It is either an objective fact, or something you experience , but it cannot be both. Having said it, have you actually measured how much time you spend typing, to claim a huge boost in productivity? Developers very often overstate the amount they type p.d. I can imagine, that going from pecking on keyboard to 10 fingers is actually huge - it is just a bump disappearing. But going from 80 wpm to 160 should have dimini…
I was saying an "objective fact" for me, not globally. I was responding to the idea of "fetishizing" WPM when I'm saying, no, with 100% certainty, WPM is extremely beneficial to me with no grey area.
Also I did say in another comment 80 WPM would be where I'd put the barrier of not having to constantly break mental focus. BUT ALSO.. I'll take this a step further...
Have you ever gone from a 60hz monitor to 120?
Have you gone from non retina iphone to retina or remember that?
Have you gone from 32gb to 96gb in your computer and noticed things open THAT much faster?
Have you ever optimized something like the load speed of your terminal and removed 200ms from its boot time?
Now could you imagine ever going back after doing any of those things?
To me, thats what its like beyond 80. I can't imagine having to go back to 80 after I've felt 160. It's just THAT much more freeing when I'm really really deep in thought. quite literally I can type as fast as I can think, and it becomes truly seemless, like "programming in lisp" when the language gets out of the way (I dont program in lisp regularly, just seems like a good analogy)