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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?

#31

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…

Non-qwerty seems to me to be one of the biggest wastes of time we’ve come up with in search of productivity. The time spent learning it could be spent learning vi, learning Haskell, learning to shoot hoops or learning the guitar. Pretty much all of those would benefit you more.

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

#32
A while back in PyCon UK I met some of the people behind http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/

It’s awesome just how fast and accurate they can be, and most devs were of my mindset “wow can I learn to type like that - it woukd solve this problem and that”

Till we found out just how much work is needed to get good. It’s a true skill, and sadly undervalued but something that just has too little pro for the cons - in my opinion as a developer.

I already type at faster than I can code, and slightly slower than I can write English. A better keyboard, or the same keyboard at different workstations and laptops, or some typing tutorials woukd help me - but full on 100wpm is not going to help me debug Kerberos failures

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

#34
post #8

I can already type on a QWERTY keyboard way faster than I can think. That's one reason I haven't adopted a Dvorak habit. Most court reporters use software nowadays that renders their special stenotype skills obsolete.

Can you give some names/information on the software that is used ?

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

#36
post #31

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…

Non-qwerty seems to me to be one of the biggest wastes of time we’ve come up with in search of productivity. The time spent learning it could be spent learning vi, learning Haskell, learning to shoot hoops or learning the guitar. Pretty much all of those would benefit you more.

For some it's not about productivity, but about getting a few more years out of your fragile body before RSI ends your career.

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

#37

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!

Humor on HN is generally accepted if it's clever or makes you think in some way. But "haha some words have multiple meanings!" doesn't quite meet that bar.

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

#39
post #35

In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.

The real argument for using stenotype keyboards for coding is not typing speed, it's avoiding RSI. On a stenotype keyboard you "type" chords by pushing down with your arms, not your fingers - it's a bit like playing an organ, or a synth keyboard. You don't hear about many organists getting RSI (though some piano players do). The fingers also just move a lot less, much of the "moving" to different keys is also done with the arm muscles.

I agree w/ others in this thread about the underlying challenges for using a steno keyboard for coding. You basically need to pick a custom chord for every program identifier, keyword or symbol, and somehow make those chords memorable. Perhaps a custom IDE featureset can help, leveraging the LSP or tree-sitter parsers?

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

#40
post #35

In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.

> In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.

Thinking is a lot easier when your output is seamless and reliable though. Nothing sucks more than debugging typos. The code should work, but it doesn’t. You know you did everything right, but it just won’t work.

20min later … oh wait it’s a typo. Fix was perfect just mangled between brain and keyboard.

Double bad when for whatever reason you can only debug on a remote environment and every iteration takes several minutes.

Learn to type fast and reliably. It’s easily one of the highest ROI things I ever did.

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