21–30 of 116 posts
Visual Studio is a very powerful editor. Everything that you can do in Visual Studio through menus you can do through the keyboard. In fact you can setup visual studio to use emacs shortcuts ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165509(VS.80).aspx ) and I'm sure it exists for Vim and etc. People who believe the tools make the hacker are naive at best and would probably think the person with the best shoes wins…
Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
Of course you probably also do other stuff than typing on a keyboard. It's just that the keyboard often is the most efficient interface between you and your main tool, your computer.
I think typing speed is a good competency to improve to be more efficient in the next few decades.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a "real" issue, so much as a proxy. I've never seen a good hacker look at their keyboard, whereas there are plenty of people that get out of flow looking for a symbol. If a person can't type, I simply assume they're a noob and don't want them on my team. I don't expect them to have a very different ration of thinking vs. coding though :)
I can see that - it's like musicians that don't rate musicians who can't play piano. But - I guess I've seen a few counter-examples in coding - e.g. I used to know a mainframe guy who had arthritic pain. He coded very slowly indeed, but it flowed out of him flawlessly.... So I tend not to have that bias. If I met someone who wanted to get into programming, I certainly wouldn't say "practice your typing" - I'd say, "r…
Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
The other didn't grow up around computers/type writers (growing up in the 1940s/1950s in Soviet Union), didn't really heavily program until after graduate school and for the first decade mostly programmed by writing code on paper and having it punched onto cards.
These things aren't really enough. They're more of "things you need to know be a computer hobbyist". I did put together a quick list once -- for an HN post asking what should someone learn as undergrad if they wish to be a web developer -- of things I'd prefer a back-end developer that I would hire to know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499880 Of course, knowing these things (or really, knowing anything ) doesn…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both cases describe a person who has not learned how to properly use the most basic tool for their profession. How could that be excused?
Because I don't think typing is the most basic tool - It's abstract thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a "real" issue, so much as a proxy. I've never seen a good hacker look at their keyboard, whereas there are plenty of people that get out of flow looking for a symbol. If a person can't type, I simply assume they're a noob and don't want them on my team. I don't expect them to have a very different ration of thinking vs. coding though :)
I can see that - it's like musicians that don't rate musicians who can't play piano. But - I guess I've seen a few counter-examples in coding - e.g. I used to know a mainframe guy who had arthritic pain. He coded very slowly indeed, but it flowed out of him flawlessly.... So I tend not to have that bias. If I met someone who wanted to get into programming, I certainly wouldn't say "practice your typing" - I'd say, "r…
Anyways, there are probably a subset of slow typists that are good programmers. But I'd be surprised if they weren't the exception.
Typing speed? Not sure how much code people here write per hour, but I doubt typing speed is a real issue (the ratio of my staring at the screen thinking versus coding is probably 10:1).
It's not a "real" issue, so much as a proxy. I've never seen a good hacker look at their keyboard, whereas there are plenty of people that get out of flow looking for a symbol. If a person can't type, I simply assume they're a noob and don't want them on my team. I don't expect them to have a very different ration of thinking vs. coding though :)
- Type fast - Use Linux - Use TextMate/VI/emacs - Don't read documentation Sounds like "Core competencies of ruby on rails hackers"
Well, it's more "Core competencies of hackers in the C/C++/UNIX/Scripting/Web tradition." Most of the great Windows hackers I know use Visual Studio. Most of the great Java hackers use IntelliJ. Of course, people in the UNIX/web tradition would probably not admit that great hackers exist in those cultures, but they've put out some pretty impressive software... Also - I suspect that great UNIX/web hackers don't use ID…
Visual Studio is a very powerful editor. Everything that you can do in Visual Studio through menus you can do through the keyboard. In fact you can setup visual studio to use emacs shortcuts ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165509(VS.80).aspx ) and I'm sure it exists for Vim and etc. People who believe the tools make the hacker are naive at best and would probably think the person with the best shoes wins…
The article was pointing out correlations, nothing more.
The implication here is completely in the negative.
Further, it's like saying "If you want to be a hacker, use English measuring units because we've never any met any great hackers who use the metric system."
Just because a bunch of rails hackers don't use an IDE doesn't imply the contrapositive.