Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 477 posts

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#41

Post by FpUser »

tambourine_man wrote: post #19
umvi wrote: post #7

The "500 WPM" video is a little suspect. He types literally one memorized sentence and extrapolates a WPM from that one 10 word sentence. I'd like to see him actually type 500 meaningful words in under 60 seconds. Anyway, this is cool but basically just a modern stenography device. Steno has a learning curve problem that makes it so most people won't use it.

QWERTY has a steep learning curve as well, it’s just that it’s so ubiquitous that most people don’t question or remember the work that was put into.

To my shame I've never learned how to type. It does not really impede my coding abilities as it is fast enough to follow my thinking. But if I need to chat online my slowness drives me mad (I assume it does the same to the other party).

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#43

Post by hannasanarion »

caslon wrote: post #4

Chording input devices hardly count as keyboards. It's not even that it's fast, it's that it's an entirely different paradigm of input. Stenography is an entirely different skillset than typing. According to its website, the device mentioned in the article basically serves as a device that does autocorrect on top of traditional chording, which is quite literally cheating in typing competitions.

> article basically serves as a device that does autocorrect on top of traditional chording

This is normal for chording input devices. Both old-school stenography machines and modern steno software like Plover are context-sensitive to consecutive inputs.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#44

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

Shank wrote: post #10
58x14 wrote: post #3

I'm fairly obsessed with alternative HIDs. I bought the Tap Strap 2 but never broke past the initial learning curve. I'm going to buy a CharaChorder now. I'm also a musician, so I'm really interested to see what types of functionality I could map, given the additional interface dimensions. However, I'll need to test the input lag, typically anything > 20ms is rather noticeable for live music; if they have esports as…

> I type ~80WPM with 90%+ accuracy, but I don't find that typing speed is my blocker, rather the speed of a coherent thought. Maybe typing at ludicrous speeds will channel some deep stream of consciousness? I agree with this, at least to some extent. If I'm rote copying something from a text (e.g., from a typing test website), I can achieve 130-140wpm easily. If I'm creating original thought or trying to actually com…

>If I'm rote copying something from a text (e.g., from a typing test website), I can achieve 130-140wpm easily.

Weird. I have the opposite problem. I'm usually in the ~80-90 range typing something I'm reading. I find it way slower to read the text, the repeat it. But if I'm typing from my brain I'm way faster because I can skip the reading step.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#45

Post by gonehome »

FpUser wrote: post #41
tambourine_man wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QWERTY has a steep learning curve as well, it’s just that it’s so ubiquitous that most people don’t question or remember the work that was put into.

To my shame I've never learned how to type. It does not really impede my coding abilities as it is fast enough to follow my thinking. But if I need to chat online my slowness drives me mad (I assume it does the same to the other party).

It's worth learning and really doesn't take that much time to get to a decent wpm.

It makes it way easier to communicate via text.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#46

Post by aksss »

gonehome wrote: post #29
tambourine_man wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QWERTY has a steep learning curve as well, it’s just that it’s so ubiquitous that most people don’t question or remember the work that was put into.

I'd argue it's a different kind of learning though. QWERTY is more 'what you see is what you get' - you push a key and you get that letter. Sure the layout is weird and learning to type takes some effort, but there's very little additional cognitive load. It's like a WYSIWYG editor. Steno is like Vim, you have to have all of the phrases in your head tracking a lookup table cognitively. Over time sure that becomes mus…

> IME most people will never do that so it'll always remain niche.

like vim.. winces in anticipation of things thrown at him

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#47

Post by warp »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #21

Back in the 90's I worked with a guy who used a Dvorak. Any fans still out there?

Yup! I learned Dvorak probably in 1999 or early 2000s (and I have a coworker who also still uses Dvorak).

The kind of people (like me) who got into Dvorak at that time would today probably learn something like Colemak DH, although there are many alternatives available nowadays and a big (discord) scene of folks optimizing and designing both their keyboards and the layouts they use on them.

I expect Dvorak will die with people like me, because anyone willing to switch away from Qwerty is probably better served by other alternatives.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#48

Post by iainmerrick »

FpUser wrote: post #41
tambourine_man wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QWERTY has a steep learning curve as well, it’s just that it’s so ubiquitous that most people don’t question or remember the work that was put into.

To my shame I've never learned how to type. It does not really impede my coding abilities as it is fast enough to follow my thinking. But if I need to chat online my slowness drives me mad (I assume it does the same to the other party).

It’s worth practicing! I bet it’s not too hard to get reasonably fast in a few weeks. The hardest part will be un-learning any bad habits, but if you reckon you’re currently slow, you probably don’t have too many.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#49

Post by Dumblydorr »

torpfactory wrote: post #12

I don’t think my problem is being able to get the words from my brain into the computer fast enough. My typical HID use case is composing meaningful written communication, a process which is unfortunately much slower than 500wpm.

Yeah. The sheer amount of button presses to write a 1k line script? That'd be roughly 10,000 words let's say, so 500 wpm would bang that out in a mere 20 minutes. Meanwhile the thoughts to compose 1k lines of code? That could take weeks of reasoning to deduce the proper logic.

Re: Keyboard lets people type so fast it’s banned from typing competitions

#50

Post by tombert »

58x14 wrote: post #3

I'm fairly obsessed with alternative HIDs. I bought the Tap Strap 2 but never broke past the initial learning curve. I'm going to buy a CharaChorder now. I'm also a musician, so I'm really interested to see what types of functionality I could map, given the additional interface dimensions. However, I'll need to test the input lag, typically anything > 20ms is rather noticeable for live music; if they have esports as…

Feel like when I am speaking somewhat conversationally (e.g. IM or even HN), I can think much faster than I can when doing something like Typeracer. It could be a result of me growing up with AIM and MSN Messenger, or maybe just a result of the fact that I tend to talk really fast regardless, but I almost can view typing as an extension of my brain, and as a result I do actually feel like my inability to type faster is a limiting factor.
Post reply on HN