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Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#21

Post by kazinator »

rhelz wrote: post #9

For programming, querty-typing speed is not really a bottleneck for me. I already don't think as fast as I type. I would like to be able to take notes as fast as people are talking, though, and for that you do need a chording keyboard.

I don't think that's true. You've probably had moments when you had the entire design of a program in your head, and it required typing out hundreds of lines, or even thousands, all of them mostly conforming to the original idea.

Sometimes, and more so in certain languages and the way they are used, massive amounts of boiler plate are required. Programmers use copy and paste techniques to do this, which are basically devices for massively amplifying typing speed and accuracy. When you copy 50 lines, and then change five places in the copy, that's faster than typing them from scratch. The editing commands are a kind of shorthand, which gets expanded in the editing buffer.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#23

Post by op00to »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #16

Depends on your goal. Chording technique is superior when typing words contained in the dictionary. Meaning that typing some rarely used word required typing it multiple times to "confirm". Writing code does not suite well for this, since coding with completion contains much more punctuation than plain text. Instead, check out ergonomic mechanical keyboards: low-profile, split, with columnar stagger, preferrably with…

Couldn’t you just create new chords that represent the most commonly typed code components?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#24

Post by sanderjd »

valbaca wrote: post #6

The special phrase you want is "chord" A stenographer's keyboard is a special kind of chord keyboard for spoken English. There are other kinds of chord keyboards, but look into those. For example: - https://www.charachorder.com/ - https://github.com/davidphilipbarr/Sweep Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515912

Somewhat hilariously, having perused your first two links, and followed the link from Sweep to Ferris, I still find myself having no idea how any of this works. (But I know a lot about how the firmware and PCB layout is designed!).

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#25

Post by bee_rider »

elness wrote: post #3

IANACR, but I would think it's not practical, in that the stenotype keyboard (the official term for the keyboard used by court reporters) is used to record the phonetic _sounds_ of what is being spoken, rather than the actual words. These phonetic codes do not resemble anything approximating the actual words they represent. Also, computer source code (whatever the language) typically contains variable names which oft…

I wonder how far programming-specific chorded keyboards could get. Like you usually only have a handful of variables in a function or method. I bet, at least, all the extra context provided by object oriented languages could be used to help the keyboard provide us meaningful suggestions.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#26

Post by fn-mote »

op00to wrote: post #23
ivanjermakov wrote: post #16

Depends on your goal. Chording technique is superior when typing words contained in the dictionary. Meaning that typing some rarely used word required typing it multiple times to "confirm". Writing code does not suite well for this, since coding with completion contains much more punctuation than plain text. Instead, check out ergonomic mechanical keyboards: low-profile, split, with columnar stagger, preferrably with…

Couldn’t you just create new chords that represent the most commonly typed code components?

Yes, but people who use an IDE will already have support for “code snippets” and completions, so you need to look for a different advantage to create.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#29

Post by ewpratten »

valbaca wrote: post #6

The special phrase you want is "chord" A stenographer's keyboard is a special kind of chord keyboard for spoken English. There are other kinds of chord keyboards, but look into those. For example: - https://www.charachorder.com/ - https://github.com/davidphilipbarr/Sweep Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515912

If anyone is interested in a fun chording layout, check out ASETNIOP. It’s surprisingly easy to use.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone tried adapting a court reporter keyboard for writing code?

#30

Post by fuzztester »

fuzztester wrote: post #28

Not me. I gave it a trial , but couldn't do justice to it. The key jurors got bored of the case . So I couldn't write a sentence .

Downvoted for a good pun!

The HNHEF (HN Humor Eradication Force), like the oft-mentioned-on-HN RESF (Rust Evangelism Strike Force), strikes again!

Foo(l)ray!

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