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Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

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Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#201

Post by HPsquared »

dawnofdusk wrote: post #47
jchw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to type >140 WPM at high accuracy when I was younger without home row. These days I think I likely sit closer to 90 WPM or so, since I really just don't really need to type super fast very often and am pretty out of practice. I reckon home row is probably not terrible or anything, but like a lot of weird old ergonomics advice, I just don't trust the idea that you must or possibly even should use home row. For…

Staying at home row is not really about ergonomics. The best thing you can do (without breaking the bank, i.e., no bespoke split keyboard setups) for your hand ergonomics at the computer is to get a vertical mouse and tilt your keyboard downwards and away from you (the opposite of what most keyboard feet do, which is tilt your keyboard up and towards you). Both of these keep your wrist neutral/in slight flexion, wher…

It's more natural for your palms to be basically facing each other. That's how they are when you're just standing up. Also think of steering wheel, joystick on e.g. a crane, or control yokes on aircraft where people have to hold it for hours at a time and possibly apply force. Neutral grip is also a thing in resistance training, for instance neutral grip pull-ups are easier on the joints. It stands to reason the sideways mouse, and some kind of keyboard that allows the hands to lie in a more natural position, would be less stressful on the various small parts. You don't want to be constantly moving things far away from their natural position!

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#202

Post by adornKey »

GabrielBen wrote: post #197
adornKey wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe some people confused wpm and characters per minute... For writing software having 100% accuracy with numbers and special characters is more important than speed. I don't think 100 wpm is real for coding.

This is why I built wpm.silver.dev. Theres no tolerance for typos on code and way more special characters than MonkeyType. 120 on monkeytype can be 50 on wpm

Nice. Writing code is very different. People mostly seem to train English word-lists to increase wpm. But for code you constantly have to deal with new words, prefixes and special characters. Awkwardly placed special characters on the keyboard can ruin the flow. Dvorak, Colemak don't have any improvements over Qwerty - so they're most likely pretty useless.

Layouts with nicely placed special characters are all very non-standard. Building a custom keyboard nowadays is quite easy, but it takes some courage to train something that is seriously less standard than Dvorak ever was.

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#203

Post by genewitch »

jimbob45 wrote: post #25
dawnofdusk wrote: post #11

Typing fast is an underrated skill for developers. A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs is easily replicated by typing variable and function names at 100+ wpm. Not a fan, however, of the desire to disparage the "right" way of doing things that's done in this blog. I type the "proper" way, home row and all, and can reach 150+wpm with high accuracy. So, based on this evidence, you're…

The only time typing speed has helped me is when people try to gish gallop me when I’m messaging them and I’m able to gish right back faster than they can respond. That’s…not exactly healthy though.

May I ask when you first heard that term?

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#204

Post by absoluteunit1 »

stavros wrote: post #153
sevensor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Can touch type accurately while maintaining eye contact during a meeting. Young people find it unnerving.

What? You guys are talking about this as if touch typing is some rare skill. I'm pretty sure everyone around the office touch-types, all my friends definitely do.

I worked at FAANG and at a few mid tier companies and in my experience that hasn’t been the case with majority of my coworkers surprisingly

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#205

Post by stavros »

absoluteunit1 wrote: post #204
stavros wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You guys are talking about this as if touch typing is some rare skill. I'm pretty sure everyone around the office touch-types, all my friends definitely do.

I worked at FAANG and at a few mid tier companies and in my experience that hasn’t been the case with majority of my coworkers surprisingly

Huh, really? I'm very surprised, I'll look around the office with more intention and take an informal mental poll.

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#206

Post by ohthatsnotright »

GabrielBen wrote: post #197
adornKey wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe some people confused wpm and characters per minute... For writing software having 100% accuracy with numbers and special characters is more important than speed. I don't think 100 wpm is real for coding.

This is why I built wpm.silver.dev. Theres no tolerance for typos on code and way more special characters than MonkeyType. 120 on monkeytype can be 50 on wpm

I think the problem with this approach is that when I type, I don't type formatting because prettier can do that for me.

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#207

Post by absolute_unit22 »

pbw wrote: post #19

This is cool but I feel like typing speed and vim skills are going to play less of a role in overall development speed as AI use increases. But certainly it won’t hurt to type fast, even if it’s mostly typing prompts.

> typing speed and vim skills are going to play less of a role in overall development speed as AI use increases

I feel like it will always be relevant. Both typing fast and vim.

I always bet on vim / neovim.

Even as tools like Cursor and Windsurf grow, Neovim will always catch up and beat them. Developer attitude of “I can do it better” or “I can build that” will always compete with leading tech products. Tools like aider are already gaining large adoption

Always bet on vim

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#208

Post by toomanyreps »

toomanyreps wrote: post #140
DavidVoid wrote: post #93

This just makes me want to get back into learning stenography again. It requires a hell of a lot of practice, but being able to write at 200 WPM (without frantic finger movement) would be quite nice. Here's a demo/explainer at 200 WPM for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVXrX5TDk4

Its really fun once you get into it if you have the time, are somewhat linguistically inclined, and like messing with emacs configs/keyboard layers. Its not necessary for programming, but my reasoning was that I was going to be spending 8+ hours a day on the computer for the foreseeable future so it was probably worth putting the time in learning given I was already interested. Its much less physical effort to type,…

Another interesting demo is someone using plover to hit 100WPM with a controller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3muXdSqD2M

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#209

Post by absoluteunit1 »

stavros wrote: post #205
absoluteunit1 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at FAANG and at a few mid tier companies and in my experience that hasn’t been the case with majority of my coworkers surprisingly

Huh, really? I'm very surprised, I'll look around the office with more intention and take an informal mental poll.

Yeah - definitely there's always a few engineers with custom keyboards who type like 200wpm but on average its folks who seem to look down occasionally and type fairly slow (noticable when they're screensharing)

Re: Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways

#210

Post by Trixter »

JohnMakin wrote: post #4

> Plot twist: I don't type "correctly" at all. My fingers just go wherever they want. It's like anarchist typing. My left pinky probably hasn't touched the 'A' key in months, but somehow I'm still in the 99.5 percentile. Turns out the "proper way" is just a suggestion. Like following PEP 8 or using semicolons in JavaScript. Sure, it's nice, but if your way works better, who cares? This is super interesting - I have t…

It is my guess that everyone in the thread with "Hey, I don't type normally either and my speed is just fine" comments are likely staring at the keyboard when they type. All two-finger typists I've personally witnessed, even the extremely prolific Roger Ebert, couldn't effectively transcribe a printed document with their learned typing style.

If you never have to type something you're reading, I'm sure unique typing styles are just fine.

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