Hi, I just discovered what steno is and it seems really cool. Right now I am just blown away by how fast some stenographers can type. I am thinking of buying a Uni v3 but wondering if the amount of effort it’ll take to learn steno will be worth it. Does anyone here use steno for programming or just writing in general? If you do, do you have any tips on how to learn stenography faster? Thanks in advance.
Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#2I love the idea of steno-like keyboards such as the gerkin, but I haven’t been able to go below 40 keys on a split keyboard myself without significantly changing my tools.
My main editor for example (vscode) heavily uses modifier based shortcuts and with less keys the overlap of modifiers and normal characters is too high and becomes confusing for me. I already have basic characters mapped to modifiers, ie click for tab, hold for ctrl and click for space, hold for layer2. Moving to chord based shortcuts might help but that means completely changing both my input and ways of working at the same time.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#3If you end up using it lots, making a cool tool, or having some epic disasters it could make a great Show HN or blog post!
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#4https://www.artofchording.com/ is your friend for getting started with steno. The plover discord is also a great resource. Learning steno theory can be intimidating, my recommendation is not to set a goal timeline for being “productive”. Put in a half hour a day and just take it one chord at a time.
I own several steno specific keyboards, and the Uni is my least favorite. An EcoSteno seems just to be overall better if you want a solid body keyboard, but my preference is a Georgi if you can get ahold of one.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#5My grandfather, a teacher in peace times and Wehrmacht Lt in WWII, reportedly used steno to write notes on impossibly small pieces of paper. I guess the savings in paper suited his extremely frugal mindset, sharpened by the two world wars and two post-war periods he had to live through.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#6I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning.
I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go much faster.)
I think I'd prefer to put effort into a chording system with more predictability and less memorization (I've heard that Velotype might be a good match). Or failing that, I'd rather learn an actual new foreign language :)
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#7I started learning this week. Added a steno layer to my QMK-based keyboard, installed Plover, and off I went. I did some practice exercises, where it just shows you what keys to press to enter certain words, and tried that. I'm at about 5 words per minute. It's that hard to move my fingers to the right place and press them all down at once.
I'm going to stick with it, but I can see why people require years of training before they become court reporters or whatever.
Oh, and all these keyboards dedicated to steno that have like 12g activation force switches? I can see why they do that. I have 60g switches, and it's quite a bit of effort to press two keys with the same finger (which is often required). I might build myself a dedicated steno keyboard, and swap the sprints in the keys with something lighter.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#8No I don't like it because it's heavily encouraged that every stenographer heavily modify their dictionary, making it harder to learn. There's a million and one different theories, it's somewhat strange.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#9I'm a fast qwerty typist (135wpm) who looked into steno but ultimately decided not to put the effort in to learning. I was surprised to discover that learning steno theory is much like learning a new foreign language due to the use of steno word dictionaries, and it takes most learners a few years of full-time study to get fast. (Of course, like with foreign languages, a small percentage of learners are able to go mu…
Any advice on how to get from "fast for a normal" to "fast for a computer person" (like you)? I'm around 90wpm on a good day, but for the life of me can't break ~100.
Always used to piss me off... my ex typed ~120 while I typed ~70wpm. Both of us engineers. Completely demolished me anytime we fought over chat. ;)
Re: Ask HN: Anyone Here Using Stenography
#10Just learned that there are two different things, stenotype, which uses a special keyboard (mostly in the US?), and stenography, a form of hand writing, which some of the comments refer to. Interesting.