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

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

#71
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.

[deleted]

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

#72
> Keen is experimenting with a modified version of the device that he thinks might even allow babies to type and communicate similarly to the way some babies communicate with sign language.

I feel like this warrants its own article. Jumping from understanding but not being able to reliably speak words to chording without reading or letters in between sounds like a really interesting direction. Are the chords chosen to relate to orthography? To sound? To semantics? How would you teach it? A caregiver can easily demonstrate a sign. A chord is a lot less visually salient and harder to demonstrate.

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

#73

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

I've used Dvorak for more than 15 years and love it. I'm "fluent" in QWERTY too but am faster in Dvorak.

I also use it on my phone. Dvorak is terrible on swipe keyboards but I'm used to it.

It was annoying to learn but I forced myself to power though my initially slow typing speeds, and it was 100% worth it. I highly recommend it.

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

#74
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.

I, and I think many other people, didn't really 'work' at learning to type. We just practiced as a side effect of using the computer rather than, say, taking typing lessons. For someone like me, QWERTY has a difficulty curve. I think seno technically wouldn't have a curve. The inability to hunt and peck means that without explicitly setting aside time to train in steno, there isn't any way to make real progress. Mathematically, a curve should not contain discontinuities!

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

#75

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

Posted above: Been using Dvorak for 16 years now, but I didn't necessarily "switch" as I had been using a memorized hunt-and-peck style with QWERTY and needed to force myself out of that habit by removing my ability to fallback to that practice (so I had never properly learned to touch type before starting with Dvorak).

I'll sing its praises until the day that I die - but it does have disadvantages in that most applications design their keyboard shortcuts and other inputs around QWERTY users. On macOS I can use the Dvorak-QWERTY Command layout to deal with this in particularly annoying cases, but there's nothing comparable I've found on Windows or Linux and that doesn't help with things like Vi.

Not to mention I frequently find myself having to change layouts back in forth in games. A lot of games published even today have a nasty habit of using the character code instead of the keycode for keybindings, and I've gotten tired of redoing bindings in everything just to avoid pressing Windows+Space to change my layout. Additionally, since my keyboards still have a QWERTY layout of keycaps it makes it challenging when I get prompted to hit "Y" (which doesn't get used for important things usually as it's a stretch for the index finger from the ASDF position) and hit F by mistake since I look for the "Y" keycap on my keyboard - ditto when something prompts me to hit "F" and I hit "U" instead (basically the mappings between Q/' E/. F/U C/J V/K are easy enough as they're used often and are within natural reach, but once it goes outside these I start looking at keycaps and screw up).

Anyway, I'll always highly encourage people to give alternate layouts a try and I'm never going to stop - but I'd say there's nothing wrong with using QWERTY either.

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

#76
post #8
post #2

"he did win another typing competition using the CharaChorder to hit 267 WPM with 76% accuracy." 76% accuracy doesn't sound so great to me, no matter how fast I can type on it.

Interviewer: "I heard you were extremely quick at math" Me: "yes, as a matter of fact I am" Interviewer: "Whats 14x27" Me: "49" Interviewer: "that's not even close" me: "yeah, but it was fast" Shamelessly stolen, but yeah, 76% accuracy is only 3/4s of characters typed correctly; if that "works" you could probably just train yourself to not even type the lesser used parts of the alphabet ...

when taking notes a few typos are ok, e.g. "we got an avg of 14 complaints in our 27 stores" is "about 400 complaints" :-D

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

#77
I looked into buying one a few weeks ago but ultimately decided not to move forward. One reason was that it comes with a pre-configured list of 500 chords, so it's up to users to create their own beyond the initial list. The other was that the build quality doesn't appear to be that great (with the PCB board clearly visible).

The reddit community[0] has some helpful reviews and progress updates. And their discord server[1] is quite active with lots of helpful links and advice.

0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/charachorder/ 1 - https://discord.com/invite/jMj6grUuBc

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

#78
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.

Yeah, I don't buy it either. I can type very quickly, but what brings my WPN down substantially is loading what I want to type next into my mind. Eg on typing speed tests, I can write the first sentence (if I can see it before the timer starts) much, much faster than the rest, because I can pre-memorize it. Later ones require me to multitask: read ahead while my fingers are still typing previous sentences, and this is much slower for me. If I memorize and practice a short sentence, I bet I could reach an extrapolated 500 WPM on my Kinesis Advantage with the Colemak layout with a few days of practice.

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

#79
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.

It says he competed at 267wpm in the article. The monkeytype site totally bans 300+ so I think that's still very impressive.

Yes, but at only 76% accuracy. If you were to include the time spent on going back and correcting mistakes, I bet he would be down in the 50-100 wpm range, if that.

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

#80
post #57
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewer: "I heard you were extremely quick at math" Me: "yes, as a matter of fact I am" Interviewer: "Whats 14x27" Me: "49" Interviewer: "that's not even close" me: "yeah, but it was fast" Shamelessly stolen, but yeah, 76% accuracy is only 3/4s of characters typed correctly; if that "works" you could probably just train yourself to not even type the lesser used parts of the alphabet ...

Back in the manual typewriter days, every typo subtracted 10 WPM from your score. (Source: my junior-high typing class.) It seems to me that 76% accuracy would put you into negative WPM by that reckoning.

Since WPM is a rate, and total typos is an accumulated values, it seems that whether this would bring you negative is a function of the test length. Seem like it would make test scores not very portable.
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