Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A tool that increased my typing speed

vasilishynkarenka.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 173 posts

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#121

Post by Silhouette »

aqme28 wrote: post #105
jamesfe wrote: 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…

This. I can type at about 100 wpm, (which is faster than most people), but I cannot _think_ at 100 wpm for any sustained period of time. I can speed-type a sentence or a few lines of code, but my output is still constrained by the time it takes to think through and revise the sentence or code in my mind.

I can type at about 100 wpm, (which is faster than most people), but I cannot _think_ at 100 wpm for any sustained period of time.

But the sustained part matters there. Personally, my desire to write long-form text is extremely bursty.

If I'm making notes during a discussion, I might not write anything for a considerable time. However, when an important point is made, I want to record it as quickly and passively as possible, so I can stay connected to whatever else is being said.

If I'm thinking deeply about something, again I might not write anything for a long time. Then if the idea I've been searching for all week clicks, I might make a lot of notes over the next couple of minutes, while the line of reasoning is completely clear in my mind.

I type English text at a comparable speed to a professional secretary, but a way of recording important thoughts even faster when I encounter them would be valuable to me. The same goes for concepts that aren't plain English, too, such as code, mathematics or some sort of diagram.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#122

Post by Silhouette »

melling wrote: post #91
jowsie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always stenography http://www.openstenoproject.org/

For programming, we should be trying to type less. Tools like TabNine should help: https://www.tabnine.com/

Interesting idea, but it's hard for me to reconcile the potential benefits with the pricing model in that specific case, particularly if the model it's using is only trained on open source and not evolving according to the user's own habits.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#123

Post by AceyMan »

jedimastert wrote: post #107
jamesfe wrote: 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

Look into the Workman keyboard layout project.

Very neat stuff.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#124

Post by andi999 »

1123581321 wrote: post #29
jamesfe wrote: 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…

Not everyone’s words are equally valuable. Someone who does not vomit but actually has things worth saying, and a limited time in which to express them, would benefit from faster typing. Worst case, it’s nice to get one’s job done faster to make time for other things. You can always take your hands off the keyboard periodically if you want to write less.

Well there are on average 300 words on a page, if you type 60 words per minute, you have twelve pages per hours. So a novel in 2-3 working days, if typing speed were the limitation.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#125

Post by andi999 »

wenc wrote: post #103
Multicomp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year, I used nuance dragon professional individual 15 for completing nanowrimo with ywriter 5 and an old work hand-me-down headset (Jabra Pro 9450 or thereabouts). Over 98% of the prose was written by voice, and because of the headset's wireless range, I was able to wander around the house while thinking about what to say, with dragon happily riding down what I said and easily letting me correct when it made mis…

Just curious, how did you deal with homonyms that get persistently misrecognized? (I argue a lot with Alexa because she keeps getting stuff wrong even when I enunciate slowly. It is very annoying.)

You mean like 'riding down':-)

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#126

Post by gempir »

Silhouette wrote: post #122
melling wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For programming, we should be trying to type less. Tools like TabNine should help: https://www.tabnine.com/

Interesting idea, but it's hard for me to reconcile the potential benefits with the pricing model in that specific case, particularly if the model it's using is only trained on open source and not evolving according to the user's own habits.

It keeps training on your own code when installed if you chose it to do so.

Although this was not a great experience on my already slow two core macbook.

The results were pretty amazing though.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#127

Post by asdff »

jamesfe wrote: 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…

Typing fast is fools gold. I find I write gooder the slower I type. Be it writing code or composing emails.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#128

Post by asdff »

AQuantized wrote: post #76
joe_the_user wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up back when typing was a skill. A good typist could type at about 60 words per minute. Such typing was always to either to copy a written text or to take dictation. I think it's extraordinarily rare to find someone who could write down their thoughts at that rate, even if they'd thought out a text beforehand. I only learned to type at about 20-30 words per minute, still faster than many now but slow the measu…

I assumed the average kid, at least on the upper range of that designation, would have been able to type faster than the previous generation. I understand the youngest generation is now much more using touch screens, but I didn't think that there would have been a steady decline from say 20 years ago.

The younger generation isn't taught to touch type in schools anymore. I'd be surprised if it didn't significantly drop between two cohorts of regular keyboard users from this generation and 20 years ago, honestly.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#129

Post by asdff »

bonestormii_ wrote: post #55
1123581321 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone’s words are equally valuable. Someone who does not vomit but actually has things worth saying, and a limited time in which to express them, would benefit from faster typing. Worst case, it’s nice to get one’s job done faster to make time for other things. You can always take your hands off the keyboard periodically if you want to write less.

Right, but it's the vim effect. For vim to become worth your time to learn to use effectively, you have to have a purpose to use it quite a lot. But it takes quite a lot of time, and causes quite a lot of errors in the mean time. Eventually, you are left with a skill and a tool that are a pleasure to use, but you literally must spend time actively learning how to use it. You cannot just pick it up, because you need t…

this is exactly why I use nano and don't spend time reading blog posts about editors.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#130

Post by asdff »

thotsBgone wrote: post #96
MAGZine wrote: post #7

The problem for me is rarely typing speed, unless if I'm transcribing something. No, the bandwidth chokepoint is organizing thoughts, and those thoughts into sentences (or into code snippets). It is always nice to be able to express things as quickly as possible, but I'm not sure how much this might actually speed someone up (practically) past a certain threshold (say, 70wpm). The biggest thing that comes to mind mig…

To me, typing speed is a convenience feature, not an efficiency feature (past like 30 wpm). I have recently twice experienced both low typing speeds (~30 wpm) and high typing speeds (~80 wpm) due to switching to colemak and to an ortholinear keyboard layout, and my productivity was the same on 30 wpm but man did it feel shitty. I ended up typing less comments on sites like HN and typing in less detail to people on Di…

There's definitely a comfort zone imo. If I go full speed my fingers feel it. It also doesn't help the higher I push my speed the more dumb typos pop up, like mispressing the space bar or not thinking and conflating its for it's or vice versa.
Post reply on HN