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How to Type 3x Faster

barehands.substack.com

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Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#12

I predicted (incorrectly) that this would just say "Change keyboard layouts". I actually made myself do that ~5 years ago (to colemak). Ultimately I am not sure if it was worth the effort, but I can tell you that I type at least 40% faster (tested), and typing Ultimately does it matter? Maybe on slack, but not while I'm coding. To me, learning my editor well (Vim) is where I got my 40% from while coding.

> Ultimately does it matter?

For coding, no. If your typing speed is your bottleneck, you're doing something wrong — either don't use your abstractions the right way and write too much code, or don't know your editor macro engine well enough. Probably both.

But for writing prose? Yes. Being able to type faster gives you more freedom to test more ideas, get more rough material and then edit it out.

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#13

How do court stenographers do it? Seems like a good formalized starting point.

They don't type in conventional English, they type in shorthand.

"The stenotype keyboard has far fewer keys than a conventional alphanumeric keyboard. Multiple keys are pressed simultaneously (known as "chording" or "stroking") to spell out whole syllables, words, and phrases with a single hand motion. This system makes real-time transcription practical for court reporting and live closed captioning. Because the keyboard does not contain all the letters of the English alphabet, letter combinations are substituted for the missing letters. There are several schools of thought on how to record various sounds, such as the StenEd, Phoenix, and Magnum Steno theories."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype#Example

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#14
post #2

TL;DR: Text replacement on iOS/MacOS: Dont = Don’t rr = remember wd = would be etc.

The best life hack I ever did, have iOS and Mac autoreplace "@@" with your email address.

I use Keyboard Maestro with AppleScript to replace @@@ with email+currentsite.com@mydomain.com. No iOS though

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#15
post #3

wasn't the QWERTY keyboard distribution done because of jamming debunked? I've read several contradictory accounts about initial typewriters.

I don't think there is a definitive answer on that but this is one of my favourite articles on the topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-l...

In the end we'll likely never know unless we find some new notes.

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#16
This concept intrigues me a lot. Not sure how I could make it work swapping between Windows and Linux, for work and play respectively.

Other things that come to mind are..

+ How would this affect your writing style? How would it affect your vocabulary?

+ If well done, I can see this having a positive impact around purposefully changing the way you write, by making shortcuts for the kinds of words you want to be using vs not using.

+ It is almost like creating another language as a translation/input layer. Could we agree on a mapping for the majority of English words to make this something worth learning? Something that could become common place?

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#17

I wish I could do this. As an admin, it would be hell on earth for me. Going from one system to another would be all but impossible, especially on systems I can’t make changes like that to. Still a cool idea though! Edited for formatting because mobile is awesome!

You could get a keyboard that supports QMK, then set up the shortcuts at the keyboard level, rather than the OS.

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#18

How do court stenographers do it? Seems like a good formalized starting point.

The short answer: very extensive systems of phonetic shorthand, a special keyboard with very few keys designed for chorded input (multiple keys pressed simultaneously), and specialised software dictionaries to translate the shorthand back into English. Professional stenographers can type upward of 300wpm as standard. The downside is that it takes years to become proficient. http://www.openstenoproject.org/ is an interesting resource if you're curious.

Re: How to Type 3x Faster

#20
post #4

"there are very few words in the English language that can be typed with only one hand on the Dvorak keyboard (for the curious, the two are “papaya” and “opaque”)." Probably needs to be clarified. There are even subsets of "papaya" that can be typed with one hand! e.g. "pay", "yap", "papa".

Yeah I'm pretty sure an anagram generator would find a bunch more. Possibly they meant that those are the longest words.

Lots of 5 letter words. pupae, poppy, puppy, queue, popup...

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