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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

#111

Post by usrbinbash »

gowld wrote: post #95
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.

I also spend less than 15% of my time drinking coffee.

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

#112

Post by umvi »

voxl wrote: post #93
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

If it's happening at the firmware level why wouldn't it just resolve the word internally and output only the completed word to the PC?

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

#113

Post by ummonk »

omegalulw wrote: post #34
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.

Yup, having to type unseen text makes a lot of difference. Here's what I personally use to test my keyboard setups: monkeytype.com. My best is ~95 WPM and 100% accuracy.

Tried that and got 109 WPM with 100% accuracy on my Macbook Pro (non-butterfly) keyboard. I usually score around the 80s with regular sentences and punctuation on other sites though, so subtract 30% from the WPM results on this side to estimate a regular WPM.

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

#114

Post by watwut »

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…

In real world, there is check for typos - your eyes. You fix them after yourself.

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

#115

Post by systemvoltage »

bastardoperator wrote: post #103
gowld wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm typing even less these days with tools like copilot.

For some reason I don’t like any of this automation tools. I find VSCode unbearable even without copilot. Too many things happen when I type. I prefer linting and that’s about all I want to write my code peacefully. I use vim in iTerm and it’s all I ever need. Jump off to Pycharm to debug if needed.

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

#117

Post by romwell »

gowld wrote: post #95
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.

It's a trade-off between spending some time thinking about what should be written, and then typing a little - or spending all the time typing, typing, typing, and rewriting.

I don't think I've ever been in a job where I was limited by typing speed.

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

#118

Post by dmux »

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.

I'm having difficulties finding the source right now, but I remember reading a story about a sysadmin that was berated for his typing speed and the story ended with him replying "I don't get paid to type code fast, I get paid to press enter very, very slowly."

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

#119

Post by rightbyte »

bee_rider wrote: post #74
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, 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. Math…

I never learned to write on a keyboard in a controlled way and I still can't 'touch type' naturally.

I tried to learn in, but I always fall back to my old habits since my right hand hurt otherwise. I don't think I will ever bother getting fast. It is probably way better to learn it properly from the beginning.

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

#120

Post by mynameisash »

nthdeui wrote: post #105
globuous wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I switched to Dvorak a few years back, it was the worst experience in the world. Granted I had to fight against my qwerty reflexes

When I learnt to touch type I switched to Dvorak at the same time. I liked the idea of improved efficiency but whenever I had to use someone else's computer or they needed to use mine it was too much hassle. Once I'd relearned to touch type with Qwerty life was so much easier. Also hjkl with Vim using Dvorak was just too hard to get my brain around

J and K are adjacent in Dvorak, and they're down and up, respectively, which makes vertical scrolling just as easy, IMO. I never really used H and L but instead rely on mostly W and B (which aren't adjacent but are close enough). So by happy coincidence, navigating in vim works just fine, I think.
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