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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

#161

Post by tombert »

a-dub wrote: post #82
tombert wrote: post #40

Has anyone tried this with coding? It looks like this is very focused towards writing English, which is fine, but as someone who spends a good chunk of my day around code editors, a keyboard that is crap for code editing is a non-starter. However, if it's good for that, I will probably be buying one.

i don't think there's anything to gain here that you don't already get with good autocompletion. i wonder how a trained stenographer on a chorded keyboard would compare to a trained typist with a good english language model backed autocomplete and a ui built for speed on a classic qwerty keyboard.

I'd be ok with it being "as good" as my current coding setup, at least if it improves my other typing speed. A vast majority of my correspondence these days involves me typing (as I've made , so being able to speed that up would still be cool, though I doubt it's going to be a categorical difference in my day-to-day life.

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

#162

Post by systemvoltage »

bastardoperator wrote: post #144
systemvoltage wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use vim quite a bit too, just sayin... https://github.com/github/copilot.vim

Oh boy..., I guess there are people who find this useful. I respect "To each their own" and "You do you".

I also like using Sublime Text with vim keymap. I prefer the low latency of editors over features of big IDEs. Sometimes, I do use PyCharm or CLion for debugging since that experience in vim sucks. GDB is terrible in CLI.

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

#163

Post by nawgz »

prirun wrote: 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.

I just went on 10fastfingers and got 124WPM with 100% accuracy on the 60 second test. Can't say I'm impressed either - 2x as fast in exchange for far worse accuracy and use of a predictive layer is pretty bad overall.

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

#164

Post by lomaprietasolo »

pxeger1 wrote: post #107
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 can type the word "a" at 1000 WPM!

No you can't.

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

#165

Post by patall »

bluejellybean wrote: post #101
prirun wrote: 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.

I've been active in my typing practice since I was about 4, and once I'm warmed up I can usually hit high 120s with 100% accuracy on unseen MonkeyType using a qwerty keyboard with red Cherry switches. If I ignore accuracy and go for 'raw' speed, I am able to achieve significantly faster WPM, typically between the range of 140s-180s. The issue I run into with programs like these is that I have to read/match the expect…

Monkeytype also has a 'zen' mode where it measures the speed of you typing whatever you want.

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

#166

Post by clove »

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

You can easily and quickly add a Dvorak keyboard to someone else's computer, deleting it once done. I did that all the time when I worked as an editor, having to occasionally edit on clients' computers. The benefit of speed gained from using Dvorak outweighs the inconvenience of having to occasionally add and delete a keyboard on other computers.

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

#167

Post by tombert »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #150
cwp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that means it's likely very useful for coding instead of English. You just need a custom dictionary. Code has a smaller vocabulary than prose, even with the domain-specific words that get used as identifiers . You could probably do pretty well with a dictionary that just has all the keywords in your favorite language, plus some common variable names. Heck I bet it'd be a win just to make the punctuation used in c…

Seems like it would be better to have the device be dictionary agnostic and leave it to your editor do know whether you're writing a comment, or code, or a string containing sql...

I wonder if it would make sense to latch into the syntax highlighter for something like Vim. Most syntax highlighters have a reasonable understanding of what context you are currently in, so conceivably the device could, for example, see that I'm inside a comment and revert to vanilla English, and then see that I'm back in code and change to F#.

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

#168

Post by jldugger »

romwell wrote: post #117
gowld wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you should definitely consider switching keyboard layouts to reduce RSI. I did, last week. Going from 80wpm to 30 wpm is definitely a job impediment (in the short term). So many things are keyboard driven:

- communicating with peers over slack

- writing code / git commands

- writing email, comments in HN, documentation, etc.

- taking notes in meetings

- all the browser shortcuts

- all the CLI readline shortcuts

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

#169

Post by half-kh-hacker »

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.

I like typing :)

Here's 163 wpm on a macbook keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ulK2VJdQpw

Here's 175 wpm on a custom mechanical keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO-A8rVJDOM

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

#170

Post by mellinoe »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #21

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

I've used Colemak primarily for the past 5 or so years. However, the benefit is primarily in typing comfort and hand strain, not quite as much in speed, although it is probably marginally faster at its limits. I'm still fluent in QWERTY (I'm typing this message with qwerty to make sure it still works :)), so I can switch if needed, or if I'm using an unfamiliar computer (or a phone, etc). Moving to Colemak completely solved the frequent wrist and hand pain I got while typing using QWERTY. Others have had the same experience.
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