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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?

#61

Post by LorenPechtel »

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…

Same reason voice recognition isn't good for code.

AFIAK all writing-compression methods come down to optimizing for the common--and so much of what we do is the uncommon. We need lots of keys.

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

#62

Post by larsiusprime »

Yes:

https://www.fortressofdoors.com/stenography-for-programming/...

It was interesting and fun but I didn’t have enough time/patience to get really good at it.

To get good requires both a lot of practice and building up a personal dictionary. Also steno itself is more adapted for transcribing speech than code, which uses symbols and special characters a lot.

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

#63

Post by vundercind »

jjmarr wrote: post #52
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #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…

Steno will get you to 200+ wpm, not 100. I've been trying to learn steno on and off for 5+ years. The problem is I already have 150 WPM on qwerty and I cannot think of a message on Teams faster than I currently type. The opportunity cost is far too large to justify unless you need to transcribe someone else's speech.

I top out around 100 wpm but still rarely bother to push myself to hit my max—and pretty much never when writing code.

I can’t really relate to “I need to type faster!” programmer optimizations, nor complaints about things like static typing slowing people down because it’s a few more characters (more thinking, I’d get, but some folks do seem bothered by the extra keystrokes) since input speed is nowhere near being my bottleneck when I’m writing code.

I suppose there must be people out there who simply think a ton faster than me, and of course some others are much slower typists than me, and for those folks that stuff’s a bigger deal.

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

#64

Post by TylerE »

vundercind wrote: post #63
jjmarr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steno will get you to 200+ wpm, not 100. I've been trying to learn steno on and off for 5+ years. The problem is I already have 150 WPM on qwerty and I cannot think of a message on Teams faster than I currently type. The opportunity cost is far too large to justify unless you need to transcribe someone else's speech.

I top out around 100 wpm but still rarely bother to push myself to hit my max—and pretty much never when writing code. I can’t really relate to “I need to type faster!” programmer optimizations, nor complaints about things like static typing slowing people down because it’s a few more characters (more thinking, I’d get, but some folks do seem bothered by the extra keystrokes) since input speed is nowhere near being m…

I also see no need to type faster, but as I get older and have more and more RSI-type issues I'm starting to see more and more appeal into being able to type at the same speed with fewer keystrokes.

Always seemed to me like they'd be terrible for programming with all the punctuation though.

I also need a mouse way too much (and I have shakey hands so trackballs/nipple mice are not viable)

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

#65

Post by mmooss »

mchannon wrote: 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.

> Most court reporters use software nowadays that renders their special stenotype skills obsolete.

What software?

It would need text-to-speech of the same accuracy; for that to be possible (how accurate is that?) I think everyone would have to be properly mic'd.

Also, TTS errors would need to be detectable somehow by the stenographer, or transcripts could go dreadfully wrong.

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

#66

Post by noufalibrahim »

uberman wrote: 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.

Raw typing speed is not a blocker to being a good programmer. However, I've generally found that if someone types fast (and uses shortcuts especially in his editor), it usually a sign that he's done a lot of it and that has proven to be a decent proxy for coding experience. This is specifically for junior developers.

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

#67

Post by noufalibrahim »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #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…

This is interesting. I haven't watched the whole talk so please ignore this if it's discussed there. The Steno keyboard looks like it takes into consideration that the language being typed is English (syllable split etc.) so if you're typing a programming language with variable names that have non english spellings, wouldn't it be a problem?
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