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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

#91

Post by voxl »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #53
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.

A significant difference between a conventional keyboard and steno is that a conventional keyboard is capable of producing all the of the text we normally type, and a steno machine is not. A necessary part of stenotype is a combination of pre-work (dictionary development for e.g. proper names) and post-work (editing the steno transcript to produce a "real English" document instead of one that may only have the genera…

CharaCorder is not a stenograph, individual character entry is supported, just like a normal qwerty keyboard.

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

#92

Post by gowld »

nosianu wrote: post #52
derefr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If software used for typing competitions is anything like a typing test in a typing tutor program (which give similar WPM + accuracy measures at the end), then it would track the number of incorrect inputs you make, but also wouldn't let you proceed (i.e. would ignore all further input) while any incorrect input remains in the buffer. With such software, you're expected to correct each word you type before moving on…

In addition to the other reply, if they did that the test would be so far from real world typing to be meaningless and nothing but an inconsequential curiosity. Only in tests is there an option to check against what is expected. In the real world you could at most apply some dictionary and grammar checks, and we know those can go either way. Those tools don't know what you actually wanted to write after all, and stil…

Even if you type without making corrections, you still need to go back and make corrections, so you need an estimate for the time spent on corrections. Forcing corrections midstream is a decent approximation.

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

#93

Post by voxl »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #85
blackearl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"with 76% accuracy" - I'm surprised typing competitions even allow scores below some accuracy level, e.g. 95% or so. Missing every fourth letter means it's basically gobbeldygook, and if you were actually typing anything where you even needed to be remotely accurate you'd spend at least 2x as much time revising.

The accuracy measurement is flawed, because the firmware of the device is deleting chorded letters and retyping the chorded word, which artificially reduces accuracy

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

#94

Post by jmcphers »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #21

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

Yeah, I used it for probably 6 years! Despite becoming very fluent I eventually came to the conclusion that the hassle of was not worth it.

This was in the early 2000s and I had to use a lot of Windows and Remote Desktop, so there were at least several incidents a week in which the keyboard would start making the wrong letters and I had to figure out why. It doesn't help at all that Windows' default layout-switcher switches using Ctrl+Shift so any key combo that includes that pair (including select-by-word!) will swap your keyboard layout too.

Sometimes I'd remote into a machine and after dozens of failed password attempts realize I was being treated to Double Dvorak, a much less well known layout in which the Qwerty -> Dvorak mapping is applied twice, due to the map being loaded both locally and remotely. This is all w/o third party software, literally nothing more than Windows just not coordinating with ... itself.

And finally, despite claims that Qwerty and Dvorak could be maintained at the same time, that wasn't true for me. The faster I got at Dvorak, the more speed and accuracy I lost on every other keyboard in the world I had to type on.

So now I'm typing this on Qwerty. It ain't as comfortable, but the number of hours I spend each week trying to get the computer to show which letter I'm pressing is now zero.

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

#95

Post by gowld »

usrbinbash wrote: post #89

>You may soon see that coworker with the weird monolith style trackball mouse rocking this strange peripheral and claiming he’s upped his efficiency in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Since coding is 20% sitting in meetings, 50% reading code, 10% drawing on whiteboards or sticky notes, 15% drinking coffee, 4.5% fighting impostor syndrome and 0.5% actual typing, I think I am quite safe with my good 'ol QWERTY.

You type a lot more than 0.5% of the time.

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

#96

Post by xhevahir »

The idea of typing 500+ words a minute sounds silly to me. If you're writing in a natural language and you can touch type reasonably well, your typing skill is not going to be the bottleneck. Your speed at putting things into words is.

Stenography or other data entry are an exception, of course, but I'm guessing the intended audience for these pitches is the average joe who dreams of writing an email in seconds.

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

#97

Post by srcreigh »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #21

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

I use Dvorak Kinesis Advantage 2.

I switched to using copy and paste with the mouse with it since Cmd+c and Cmd+v are so hard to reach.

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

#98

Post by gowld »

ars wrote: post #31
wly_cdgr wrote: post #14

Cool but who needs this? I'd rather see a keyboard that limits you to 10 WPM so you are forced to think before you type

Not everyone thinks while typing. I do all my thinking ahead of time, then I just need to record it on the screen after I'm done. I'm usually thinking of other things at that time, since I just need to transcribe the words in my head, not think about them.

How much text do you memorize before you type a round?

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

#99

Post by bastardoperator »

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.

I'd say it's a lot suspect. Couple this with the fact that he scored 267 WPM with 76% accuracy in another competition. Until we see more and it gets more accurate I'm not sure typing this fast is very meaningful if I'm going to have to fix 24% of what I just typed.

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

#100

Post by Broken_Hippo »

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.

I'm not sure the learning curve is all that steep. I learned it as part of a "keyboarding" class around... 1989 or something (I was in middle school). Learning to type was only a small portion of the class, and it happily included games and letter art alongside the learning.

Best class I took because of touch typing.

On the other hand, I have plenty of peers that type nearly as quickly using two fingers or simply by doing years of using a computer. People learn the layout with use. It is easy enough that switching from a standard American keyboard to a Norwegian keyboard (whose alphabet has 3 more letters in addition to some other European language letters and punctuation) was a non-issue.

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