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Intermediate Vim

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Re: Intermediate Vim

#101

Post by breyerjs »

jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life.

Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teaching myself to touch type. Basically, I took online typing tests over and over after work.

Since then, my typing speed has at least doubled. I don't look at the keyboard anymore, and I'm able to get my thoughts down with _much_ less friction. I can't recommend it enough.

Re: Intermediate Vim

#103

Post by alanning »

kaitari wrote: post #92

After years of using Vim, I recently learned that I could use `Ctrl+C` instead of `ESC` to get back to command mode. Mind blown.

Interesting! I didn't know about `CTRL+C`.

You may like to also try `CTRL+[`. It's the telnet escape character and seems to be a general substitute for ESC on OSX, Windows, and I think Linux too. I find it pretty quick since my hands can work together.

Another handy tip I ran across was to remap CAPS LOCK to CTRL. Quite nice for both Vim and Emacs users once you get used to it.

Re: Intermediate Vim

#104

Post by lprd »

breyerjs wrote: post #101
jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life. Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teachin…

Mind if I asked which course/website you used to learn how to type properly?

Re: Intermediate Vim

#105

Post by zerr »

jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

I believe one learns such skill implicitly while typing lots of texts/prose continuously, which is not needed for programming, especially nowadays, where the editor properly guesses the needed token after you type 1 or 2 symbols.

Re: Intermediate Vim

#106

Post by fphilipe »

lprd wrote: post #104
breyerjs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life. Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teachin…

Mind if I asked which course/website you used to learn how to type properly?

I used Tipp10 about 12 years ago when I forced myself to learn it. What worked for me is to do the basic lessons and then always use touch typing without looking whenever on a keyboard. You’ll be slower initially, but speed will increase over time.

https://www.tipp10.com/en/

Re: Intermediate Vim

#108

Post by fphilipe »

jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

I’ve noticed with a few colleagues when pairing that they were rather slow at typing and made plenty of mistakes. Then I realized that they were not touch typing and always had to look down for the backspace key.

I was quite surprised to see that there are programmers that don’t do touch typing.

Re: Intermediate Vim

#109

Post by ElijahLynn »

jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

I taught myself at age 30 using online software. However, yes, touch typists in this industry seem rare to me. I often get called out on conferences for my typing, which is at best only about 60 words per minute. Maybe it is because I don't mute as much as I should, OR is there another reason?

Re: Intermediate Vim

#110

Post by ElijahLynn »

breyerjs wrote: post #101
jaequery wrote: post #81

“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.

We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life. Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teachin…

Truth, typing quickly is crucial to getting thoughts out of your brain. Our brains think much faster than we type, so typing is our bottleneck. I am only at 60WPM (tops) and it really helps. It especially helps for the large majority of an engineering/programming job, which is not coding, but communicating.

Also helps writing code big time, but the big win is in communication, and as someone else mentioned during pair programming sessions.

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