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Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

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Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#21

Post by decasteve »

Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I can't stand writing. It's slow and it's messy, and I can't read a lot of other people's handwriting. I write about 30 words per minute and I type 167 wpm. Perhaps there are some cognitive benefits but I'm willing to give them up in exchange for the ease of getting my thoughts down quickly. The only case that I still prefer handwriting is doing math. It's much easier for me to write out equations and "explore" thing…

Although I still handwrite/sketch math I'm actively working on, I always LaTeX it afterwards.

As a math student I take typed notes into LaTeX (in emacs) during lectures. Even with the extra typing for symbols it's still faster for me to type and I'm only a ~120 wpm typist. The only thing I take down on paper are diagrams/figures.

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#22

Post by rdtsc »

> The group that learned to write letters by hand were better at recognising them than the group that learned to type them on a computer.

I have noticed for the physical act of writing with a pen on paper concepts and diagrams helps me internalize and learn them more. There is some kind of an improved feedback mechanism of sorts. Than, say if I do it in an editor, mind mapping software, or some kind of diagram creating app.

When I program and design I always think with paper and pen (or whiteboard if in a group). A lot of it is not really "writing or typing" as in actaully writing code, but mostly it is scribbling blocks, arrows, labels. Maybe an API description.

For price + "user experience" ( here = responsiveness, latency ). Nothing compares to pen, paper or whiteboard and marker.

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#23

Post by wallflower »

If you want to challenge yourself, I highly recommend learning visual note taking. The goal is not to do it at a level where you can show off - but to learn how to visually capture the themes and some details of what is being said.

http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#24

Post by taeric »

Xcelerate wrote: post #18
andreastt wrote: post #15

I'm constantly bewildered by this notion that writing by hand is slow and thus bad, and that typing is fast and consequently good. In my daily routine work as a programmer I find most of my work consists of thinking rather than writing. Or to twist the words a little: I don't think my typing impairs my creative ability, because the hard part of my job is thinking out the right solution. If you can't hold that thought…

For me, it's not that handwriting is a bottleneck in getting my work done; it's that it's psychologically annoying. For instance, I also get severely annoyed sitting at red lights or driving behind someone going 10 mph under the speed limit (I joke with people that the only thing that ever makes me angry is having a green light turn red right before I get to it). Is it really going to make that much of a difference i…

I can hope you are merely invoking hyperbole. Otherwise... wow.

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#25

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ssivark wrote: post #13

The most crucial distinction where paper wins is that writing is a "nonlinear" process whereas typing with the tools we have today is "linear". You could use something like a mindmapping tool, but you're again constrained to a fairly rigid format rather than giving you the ease of switching. Eg: you can write down a bunch of things and draw arrows between them. Or draw a graph/sketch. Or draw a link between the thing…

>I can think while I write, but not while I type //

To me handwriting is more rigid in that one can't rearrange thoughts without drawing big arrows and having lots of crossings out. But then I only type and don't hand-write so perhaps I've lost track of what I'm missing out on.

Do you touch type? I don't by the strictest definition but I don't look at the keyboard and can have a conversation whilst typing - I'm not even sure any more if I can hand-write and think on an alternate topic, but I can type as I internally oralise thoughts without having to consider the physical movement. I'm sure this is true for most people who can type without looking.

Whenever I'm thinking about something with visual creative elements or anything with maths/equations then I'll use pencil and paper but as my working life has moved away from that, except in doing pure sketches without text, then it's quite rare for me to sit down with a pad.

I've just finished doing a python course and it's the first time I've listened to lectures and not used pad & pencil for note taking, instead just using PyCharm and a python console for "notes" and "doodles".

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#26

Post by pcmonk »

andreastt wrote: post #15

I'm constantly bewildered by this notion that writing by hand is slow and thus bad, and that typing is fast and consequently good. In my daily routine work as a programmer I find most of my work consists of thinking rather than writing. Or to twist the words a little: I don't think my typing impairs my creative ability, because the hard part of my job is thinking out the right solution. If you can't hold that thought…

I see this argument come up all the time to argue against typing faster, learning a decent editor, and now typing vs writing. Like with you, the hardest part of my job, and also the most time-consuming, is thinking out the right solution. I draw different lessons from that than you do, though.

First, since thinking is the hardest part, it's important to eliminate as many distractions as possible. Having to break concentration because I'm writing/typing is very unhelpful. Writing or typing with poor typing skills breaks concentration for longer periods of time.

Second, a nontrivial part of "thinking" is actually reading code spread across multiple files. Since I use vim, typing speed helps me to quickly get to the sections of code that I need to review. This greatly speeds up the thinking process.

Of course, I definitely do write stuff out at times, and I find I can think very well with a whiteboard. These are mostly for things that need to be diagrammed out in two dimensions (which a lot of things do need to be).

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#27

Post by Xcelerate »

taeric wrote: post #24
Xcelerate wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's not that handwriting is a bottleneck in getting my work done; it's that it's psychologically annoying. For instance, I also get severely annoyed sitting at red lights or driving behind someone going 10 mph under the speed limit (I joke with people that the only thing that ever makes me angry is having a green light turn red right before I get to it). Is it really going to make that much of a difference i…

I can hope you are merely invoking hyperbole. Otherwise... wow.

"I joke with people that..."

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#28

Post by taeric »

Xcelerate wrote: post #27
taeric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hope you are merely invoking hyperbole. Otherwise... wow.

"I joke with people that..."

Fair enough. Even the speed of writing felt overstated to me. And going below the speed limit. I mean, sure there are some days someone going slow annoys me. There are some days I'm sure I'm that person. They are thankfully low on the realm of crap I notice, though.

For me, writing is a bit slower than typing. However, arranging thoughts on paper is faster than the same in a computer. Heaven help you if you want to write something that includes basic graphs or spacial information. And I'm not an artist.

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#29

Post by pbhjpbhj »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #6
w1ntermute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that you actually have a pen and paper with you at all times. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of times when I don't. Also, the amount of time it takes to unlock my phone's screen, open Evernote, and create a new note is actually less than that required to open my bag (if I have it with me), take out a notebook, open another compartment, take out a pen, close both compartments, open the notebo…

While I work as a programmer, my degree is in Physics. I always have a notebook. I carry a small one in my back-left pocket, and take care always to have a pen. I have a regular-sized notebook that I carry in my computer bag, that has graph paper rather than just lines for text, however as you say I don't have it with me. With scientific notebooks, what's important is not to be neat, but to write it down so it's not…

>take notes during TV commercials, if I see a product advertised that I might like to buy //

Perhaps I'm an aberration here but I've never seen a commercial and thought "oh, I'll buy that". I've often seen them and thought "that's cool" or even "I wonder how that works". It's clearly a conscious decision to consider buying things simply because they bought an ad slot in a show you watch, I find that quite strange.

[Senior Soft. Eng. in USA, guess you can afford anything that takes your fancy.]

Is it a common thing to do that with adverts?

On a side note you should still be recording when you "invented" something. If you were using it prior to the priority date of a patent application then you can't be prevented from continuing to use it; prior use is an absolute defence in patent infringement proceedings [ordinarily in patent law, you'd want to check this one in USC]. If you publicised it, even within a narrow definition of "public" then it can obviate the patent too; using a patent in public is sometimes enough for it to be considered citable against teh novelty of the later application.

Re: Handwriting vs. typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

#30

Post by niels_olson »

andreastt wrote: post #15

I'm constantly bewildered by this notion that writing by hand is slow and thus bad, and that typing is fast and consequently good. In my daily routine work as a programmer I find most of my work consists of thinking rather than writing. Or to twist the words a little: I don't think my typing impairs my creative ability, because the hard part of my job is thinking out the right solution. If you can't hold that thought…

> When debugging ... I find myself jotting down elements of the stack trace on paper

Being self-taught, I cannot adequately convey my gratitude for this nugget of reality. Thank you a thousand times.

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