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A tool that increased my typing speed

vasilishynkarenka.com

111–120 of 173 posts

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are already extremely cheap and effortless though, and saying that they have a higher value than I appraise them for doesn't address some of the issues I addressed, such as the very real problem on non-universal configurations. If you want to spend your time that way, that's cool with me. I like vim. Such things have their place. Personally, I suspect this doesn't solve any problems I have.

Your other issues were also addressed, the non-universal configurations by pointing out most people work in one or two environments most of the time. Worst case, it’s hard to imagine a quick disabling of conflicting macros being too large a price to work quickly in an environment for weeks or years. I do concede this doesn’t solve any problems of yours as you don’t value what you do with your keyboard very much.

Lol. I want to type full words, and feel that doing so is near frictionless. I access around 70 environments regularly, many of which are frequently re-imaged during testing, and I appreciate the fact that typing works the same on all of them. My co-workers also appreciate that I am not installing weird typing macros on our devices.

Efficiency for me is not the same as efficiency for you. Deal with it.

I'll also add that something like vim is specialized and very useful. It is easier to use vim in a mouseless environment, which is sometimes a necessity. I use it fairly well, and it has paid dividends on the time invested. I can appreciate the value of a good tool.

But typing speed is not the same as efficiency because standards are efficient in their own way. I'm sure you'll say "oh, you don't value words and have nothing important to say", but that's a ridiculous argument. It is simply that, in my opinion, this type of thing is not worth the overhead it creates, much like extremely customized vim configs. Time is invested in the pursuit of efficiency, and it is never returned. One day the config ceases to function correctly, or your friend/coworker/family member tries to use the keyboard and can't use it effectively, so it gets disabled.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#112
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the context of the article we are reading, this seems somewhat amusing. The entire trick, as presented, turns typing into an adhoc shorthand. Yes, and I in fact said the same thing in the post you're replying to. Typing competitions have existed for far longer than personal computers, and the value of typing fast was being able to produce a complete typewritten document. Steno machines coexisted, and had their o…

Agreed, I didn't mean my last post to be a rebuttal of yours. Just more conversation in it. :) (Is why I called it amusing.) I get that most forum posts are point counterpoint things. That said, it isn't the only way, is it? I'm curious how true it is that text transcription is solved. Judging from how badly my home speakers with at times, I'm sceptical. This is especially true in most environments with many people t…

No worries, yes that would have been much clearer.

'solved' in that, when I say something complex to my phone, it does get it right, although there is a problem of the long tail of proper nouns: I live in Hawaii, and it has real problems with the place names around here, can't pronounce them either. I'd say it's well past 99% and will only improve: it correctly handled the sentence "voice transcription is approximately as robust as stenography", which doesn't make the sentence true but is suggestive.

I guess my point was that it's easy to recognize that voice transcription is 'not typing', and stenography just isn't typing in the same way: there's software between the actual transcript and the final, legible text, which lets it be faster.

Steno would be pretty useless for me as a coder, though I do use snippets, which are kind of the same thing if you squint.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#113
post #10

The author proposes that we're somehow blocked from success because we can't type fast enough. Is that true? I don't agree; in fact, I'd rather be concise and communicate well than vomit more words onto the screen. Additionally, beyond Dvorak, is there a better way to increase typing speed than spending what must be hours and hours building a bespoke solution for each one of your machines? And what is the cost of the…

> Additionally, beyond Dvorak, is there a better way to increase typing speed... I'm really not convinced Dvorak intrinsically speeds up typing

Even if Dvorak doesn't speed up typing intrinsically, it's still beneficial because it significantly reduces injuries caused by typing.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#114

In grade 9 a friend and me thought wouldn't it be a great idea to do the office administration class as a means to meet girls, so we did. Class was about 90% female and we learned to type not looking at the keyboard. Now, as a programmer that has been the class that benefitted me the most over the last 20 years.

My Mum enrolled me in a typing course as a 13yo, and it was the most boring thing you could have done to a 13yo. Now, however, I'm a fast typist and that course was the bridge between previously hunting and pecking, to proper touch typing. I went, I believe, only from 15wpm to about 25ish wpm, but the technique was planted and I've increased from there.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#115

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.

What about all the keyboards that aren’t Dvorak? Can you still QWERTY without thinking?

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#116

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.

wow, it took me 3 weeks to get basic proficiency, but really slow. 6 months to parity with qwerty, about a year before I was truly comfortable with it. probably about 2 years before I was completely fluent with both, and 5 years before my brain could map my own personal keyboards with dvorak and default to qwerty in all other cases with nearly zero mistakes. These days (20 years on) I have no problem, running, say vi…

You’re saying 5 years before you could Dvorak at home, and also QWERTY on anyone else’s keyboard as needed?

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#118

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.

What about all the keyboards that aren’t Dvorak? Can you still QWERTY without thinking?

Personally, I never properly learned to touch type on Qwerty, and my typing ability on Qwerty is about the same as 15 years ago.

I hardly ever type on a Qwerty keyboard though.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#119

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.

What about all the keyboards that aren’t Dvorak? Can you still QWERTY without thinking?

Not OP but it was definitely a struggle. I had a few job interviews where they didn't understand my request to change the keyboard layout... or the computer was too locked down, or whatever. That, and typing on literally anyone else's computer is a pain, unless they're kind enough to let you install Dvorak.

That being said, this year I decided enough was enough, and I worked to relearn QWERTY. Initially it was really hard, but after a few weeks, I managed to get to a comfortable speed. Here is an image showing my QWERTY averages since March of this year: https://i.imgur.com/RESfuFS.png My average has plateau'd around 80wpm, which is a great speed, and I managed to do that without sacrificing my Dvorak speed, which sits at 125wpm. Finally, to throw a wrench into it, I also decided to learn Colemak this year... and with enough practice I've gotten to the point where I can switch between the three without any issue.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the keyboards that aren’t Dvorak? Can you still QWERTY without thinking?

Not OP but it was definitely a struggle. I had a few job interviews where they didn't understand my request to change the keyboard layout... or the computer was too locked down, or whatever. That, and typing on literally anyone else's computer is a pain, unless they're kind enough to let you install Dvorak. That being said, this year I decided enough was enough, and I worked to relearn QWERTY. Initially it was really…

For the curious, here's a graph of my Colemak in the same time period: https://i.imgur.com/kN9g3n6.png The hump at the beginning was from when I decided to stop learning Colemak, and learn _yet another_ layout, and then deciding that it wasn't worth it a few weeks later, and then coming back to Colemak and having to learn it from scratch again.
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