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

vice.com

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

#211

Post by 0kl »

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 think things like this are not “everyone must use this new better way of typing,” but more “hey there may be a better way of doing this task.”

I am always surprised, though at this point I shouldn’t be, that there is always pushback against any attempts at improving the status quo when it comes to typing speeds on HN - as though the creator is attacking all of us with lower typing speeds personally…

From another perspective: sure you might speed up only 0.5% of your workday - but how is that a bad thing?

Repetitive stress injuries aside, even if you only spend an hour a week typing (I suspect it’s honestly more) then if you end up increasing your typing speed by double you’re still saving yourself 25 hours a year. Assuming my a career of 35 years that’s 875 hours and you increase your time fighting imposter syndrome by 0.25%.

Scale up as appropriate for how much time you actually spend typing.

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

#212

Post by wutbrodo »

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

> hjkl with Vim using Dvorak was just too hard to get my brain around

Why not just remap? My intuition is that the cascading conflict wouldn't be that hard to resolve (at least compared to learning Dvorak...) but maybe I'm wrong.

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

#213

Post by dkonofalski »

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.

People are getting too hung up on the "500 WPM" part. He's not saying he can type 500 WPM. He's saying that he scored 500 WPM on a specific typing task and he's doing it intentionally. He gets to say he typed 500 WPM and the website that's flagging him as a cheater has to be the one to explain why which just gives him more promotion.

It's not about how fast he's typing. It's about being able to say that his product is significantly faster than everything else.

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

#216

Post by bee_rider »

rightbyte wrote: post #187
bee_rider wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason whenever I try to touch type 'correctly' I make typos. But I do get most of my fingers in play when typing normally. I just have a weird stance -- left index on f, right middle on j, right pinky on p. Index and middle fingers do a little extra work, left pinky is mostly reserved for control keys -- esc, crtl... I dunno. I don't have anywhere near 60 words per minute that are actually worth recording.

Ye since private computer chatting essentially died out I see no use for fast typing anymore. When I and all my friends communicated via computer text typing fast would have been really convenient. Ergonomic typing however, I guess is important. And I am bad at that. Looking down to find the keys might be a bad habit? I have almost trained that away.

Hmm. I wonder if I saved myself some embarrassment on Instant Messenger by not typing too fast to think.

I don't really understand why properly trained typing is more ergonomic, anyway. If I keep my hands perfectly on the homerow, each letter is nearly the same exact motion. The way I type normally, my hands move around a bit, so there's a couple character history built into my motions. This seems to me like it ought to reduce the repetitive motions, which are what lead to repetitive strain injuries, right?

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

#217

Post by ouid »

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.

well that and the fact that this is transparently an advertisement masquerading as journalism.

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

#219

Post by Hesinde »

FpUser wrote: post #86
iainmerrick wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been typing with the same speed for the last 30 years. It is not improving so I really doubt special exercise will do anything but marginal improvement.

Don't practice typing faster with your current method, because you already have for 30 years. Rather invest some time to learn a better method.

I learned touch typing within a week on holiday vacation with a software similar to this website: https://www.typingstudy.com/ (Young me felt very proud of being able to type like dad.) Once you have invested the time to learn the basic movements, you will become accustomed to them naturally.

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

#220

Post by Xevi »

xupybd wrote: post #149
voxl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah but you are not going to get the speeds they boast about without steno.

I'm not the one you responded to, but I just wanted to add that it's still not steno. CharaChorder just has chording, but no theories, or whatever you call them for steno. You basically have to memorize every single chord on the CharaChorder afaik.
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