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A tool that increased my typing speed

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Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#141

Post by kevinh456 »

1123581321 wrote: post #62
bonestormii_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree with most of this. These skills may be worth the time tradeoff to learn. They don’t increase the error rate. They can be learned during unproductive time (I learned Dvorak on conference calls at an old job.) They can be picked up and used marginally for immediate small gains with potential to improve over time (Vim is like this, not that I use it much.) Many programmers work in a couple bread-and-butter en…

There are so many things worth learning on unproductive time that making myself marginally more productive with an esoteric command line tool actually isn't the greatest value proposition. VIM, for instance, is my preferred editor. It's on every Unix machine I need. I learned a ton of basic things I can do with it. I don't customize it because I don't usually have the permissions or the time. It lets me get in, edit, get out. You have to judge the reason for a tool.

Personally, the best tool for typing productivity I ever have used is a keyboard with no letters on the key caps. It also means I'm the only person in my immediate circle that can use my computer at all. My wife literally can't use my PC.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#142

Post by gwd »

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…

> No, the bandwidth chokepoint is organizing thoughts, and those thoughts into sentences (or into code snippets).

Right, but particularly when writing, what "organizing thoughts" often looks like is writing a burst of text (a phrase or several sentences) then possibly editing it / deleting it / whatever. Being able to quickly bash out the bursts I think makes the whole process faster, or at least less annoying.

I switched from QWERTY to Colemak several years ago; I'm not sure I've gotten back up to my previous top typing speed, but it's certainly a lot more comfortable.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#144

Post by kevinh456 »

Kaibeezy wrote: post #140
kevinh456 wrote: post #137

The best tool I ever got for typing was a keyboard with no letters on the key caps.

I recently bought a "ninja" keyboard, where the labels are on the front of the keys, not the top. Looks "badass" according to a nearby 15-year-old. While technically the keys are labeled, in practice looking at them is useless, especially in anything less than bright room lighting, so they are, for me, effectively blank. As a reasonably fast touch typist for many years, I found that for prose it was basically no chan…

I have a logitech mini keyboard on standby in those cases.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#145

Post by BigJ1211 »

asdff wrote: post #128
AQuantized wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I've noticed that with my younger colleagues as well. (Dev work)

They can certainly type faster than the average 50-year old, but they can't touch type (or only partially).

It's odd that in the day and age of a lot of computer related work we don't teach touch-typing in schools anymore.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#146

Post by aixi »

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.

yes, but if you had difficulty typing your outbursts of thought then your output would be constrained by your typing speed i suppose

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#147

Post by Multicomp »

andi999 wrote: post #125
wenc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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':-)

This. There's little substitute for seeing the program write down the wrong text and saying "correct that", then saying the correct number or saying "spell that" and spelling out a word instead.

The good news is, dragon appears to to learn which of the two word variations you use more often and begins to weight its word recognition towards those cases instead.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#148

Post by itsdsmurrell »

asdff wrote: post #127
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.

Damn, you must have motored that comment out.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#149

Post by microcolonel »

gwd wrote: post #142
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…

> No, the bandwidth chokepoint is organizing thoughts, and those thoughts into sentences (or into code snippets). Right, but particularly when writing, what "organizing thoughts" often looks like is writing a burst of text (a phrase or several sentences) then possibly editing it / deleting it / whatever. Being able to quickly bash out the bursts I think makes the whole process faster, or at least less annoying. I swi…

I switched much earlier, I learned Dvorak as a way to make a clean break when learning touch typing. I set up a little printout next to the computer and just forced myself to try remembering the correct finger movement for the key, then look at the printout, but never look at the keyboard.

It took just a day or so of ordinary computer use to beat my non-touch-typing speed; and having learned also to touch type on QWERTY I can say Dvorak is more comfortable, and looks/feels more graceful, for whatever that's worth.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#150

Post by Insanity »

dnautics wrote: post #92
pascoej wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience as well. Using a non-qwerty layout is an annoyance when I use somebody else's computer or somebody else uses mine. While I don't see myself moving back, I never recommend switching to others.

I dunno, it was a pretty enlightening experience, learning how to struggle, learning how to be humble about sucking at something that for me till then was super basic (as an adult, so I could really savor the feeling -- I had learned to touch-type at age six). If you don't forget qwerty, it's not an annoyance to use someone else's keyboard. And having someone else be annoyed when they use my keyboard is a feature =).…

To make your setup really unusable, use a 60% layout with blank key caps and VIM. :-)

I use this setup + qwerty in an azerty region, needless to say my setup does not get used a lot for pair programming. I actually did have a spare keyboard in my desk drawer for a long time just in case someone really wanted to use my machine before I went full-time WFH.

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