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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

#411

Post by 0kl »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #404
0kl wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you here entirely. I don’t really see how this is transformative compared to any chorded typing system. The specific op I was replying to was saying > …and 0.5% actual typing, I think I am quite safe with my good 'ol QWERTY. And there were a host of similar comments initially. 100% on fighting snake oil. 0% on pushing back against people trying new things that might improve the status quo

Ah yeah, that's fair. I could defend that as cost/benefit analysis, but I'm with you - let's push the limits and worry about utility evaluation later! (I literally have a chording keyboard on my desk right now, so I'm quite serious when I say I want to push the limits:])

What hardware/software are you using? I’ve looked into it a few times, but the cost benefit hasn’t been there for me for doing the research without knowing anything about it yet.

Do you code with it as well, or is it primarily chat/browsing/etc?

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

#413

Post by shever73 »

This reminds me of an old electronic organiser / PDA that was available in the 80s/90s that had just five (I think) keys for typing. Letters were formed by pressing the keys in combination. Skilled users could type very quickly on it.

I can't remember the name of it now. "Jaguar" is in my head, but I think I'm conflating it with the Atari console.

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

#414

Post by usrbinbash »

Izkata wrote: post #311
kelseyfrog wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It allows for minimal disruption to thinking process Willing to dive into this a bit more? My personal experience is different so I figure this is a chance to learn something new. The subjective character of typing experience for me is like riding a bike, driving a car, walking, or speaking. That is to say that unless I'm mountain biking, off-roading, on a balance beam, or trying to say a tongue twister, for the mo…

> My paltry 50-60wpm doesn't feel like an impediment to putting thoughts into text, but maybe others feel differently. That may be high enough that you don't have the impediment, but when you work with someone who types down around 10-15 WPM... You can definitely tell they're spending a lot of brainpower on hunt-and-peck instead of the problem they're actually trying to solve. Basically there's diminishing returns on…

The thing is, when a programmers starts to generate input, the problem is already solved, he is merely putting the solution into whatever representation the tools demand.

I am not defending 10-15 WPM here ofc. just statingt that the majority of work happens before we start typing in code, and after we typed it.

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

#415

Post by usrbinbash »

Too wrote: post #396
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.

Doesn’t this argument go both ways? Given you have so little time left for actual coding, you should be squeezing every last bit out of it. Depending of course if your meetings are necessary discussions, or just pointless constraints.

The argument isn't that there is so little time to type code, but that typing code requires so little time compared to everything else.

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

#417

Post by usrbinbash »

wnolens wrote: post #336
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.

An old very experienced co-worker once said, "code is written once but read a thousand times". Most of the old wizards I worked with hunted and pecked, looking down constantly.

I had the opportunity to work with a guy who studied CS back in the day when punch cards were still used. Sadly he left into well deserved retirement a few years later.

He typed slowly, not hunt&peck, but really slow compared to the other engineers.

Didn't matter. The guy was a wizard. Ever seen someone implement radix sort in assembly or debugging a microservice using nothing but nc and echo? Without looking up ANYTHING either in a book or online? That kind of guy.

Working with him, I sometimes felt like Mickey Mouse in that scene of "Fantasia: The Sorcerers Apprentice", when the Master came back, surveying the flood, and fixing everyting in seconds just by waving his hands imperiously :D

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

#418

Post by Veen »

robbedpeter wrote: post #356
aphit wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a CharaChorder and this is exactly right. Using the CC, you can't get 100% on monkeytype because when I type `helo` it then backspaces that and types `hello` using the CharaChorder's onboard firmware. The final text is 100% accurate--it's just what was typed by the keyboard wasn't 100% accurate.

So is it autocorrecting helo to hello? Predictive tweaks aren't good in a keyboard, you want everything to be intentional, or you'll lose time and patience correcting things. Spellcheck should be post hoc imho.

I tested that by turning off Apple's autocorrect on my Mac. It turns out I'm a less accurate typist than I thought. Now, I'm happy to let autocorrect put right all "teh" mistakes I make. It's annoying when I want to type something unusual, but that happens less often than I make mistakes, so the balance is in autocorrect's favour.

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

#420

Post by foxfluff »

rightbyte wrote: post #119
bee_rider wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The best way to learn IMO is to find a way to force you into it.

What worked for me was switching to dvorak. With no keycaps to match the layout, I had no option but to memorize it (initially with the help of a cheatsheet on screen). Conveniently, back then, I had no idea how to revert back to qwerty without restarting X after using xmodmap to switch layout, and I'm the type to not restart my session (or computer) except for updates every few months or so.

It also helps a lot doing this "at home" when you've nothing particularly important to do on the computer (running a basic touch typing tutor program for an hour or two and again later in the evening while just chatting away on IRC or such during the day is great because you're typing but have no real pressure). Not during work. It sucks struggling to get things done, and you're very likely to switch back to the old method and that'll just stall progress.

After one day, I had more or less memorized the layout but of course typing was still slow and somewhat frustrating. After a few days, it stopped feeling frustrating but was still a little slow. In a week or two I had reached or surpassed my original qwerty speed. I never used qwerty during that period, it was learn or bust.

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