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A tool that increased my typing speed

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Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#151

Post by Insanity »

rlayton2 wrote: post #114
stelliosk wrote: post #101

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.

I had to enroll in a typing course when I was 13 as well - mandatory by the school. Problem was that I started using a computer around age 8 and really learned touch type around age 11.

My finger placement is wrong, I don't type in the "correct way". But the typing course was graded on reaching X WPM with no errors, which I could easily surpass. The teacher allowed me to pass with that. Now I still don't place my fingers correctly and I can type about 152WPM with 100% accuracy (just tested on https://monkey-type.com/).

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#152

Post by m463 »

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…

That's an interesting question.

If your REPL loop[1] gets faster by increasing your typing speed, can you get more of your ideas out there whether you're a blogger, author or coder?

[1] read-eval-print-loop^2

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#154

Post by ThePadawan »

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/

Besides the deep learning part, this is already very much what working in C# and Visual Studio (Code) is like.

To get to

> new FoobarGenerator().Create(new FoobarOptions { foo = 3 });

, the keystrokes would be more like

> new FoobarGenerator()

> new FoobarGenerator().Create(

> new FoobarGenerator().Create(new FoobarOptions

> new FoobarGenerator().Create(new FoobarOptions { foo =

> new FoobarGenerator().Create(new FoobarOptions { foo = 3 });

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#155

Post by benhurmarcel »

stevage wrote: post #50
samatman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a critical distinction. If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout. If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout , with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion , it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where…

I wonder if anyone has ever set out to design the worst possible layout, and if so, what it would look like.

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#156

Post by swiley »

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…

Personally I'm blocked from success because I spend too much time on Hacker News.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#157

Post by bclnr »

samatman wrote: post #2

The legend of QWERTY being designed specifically to slow typists down will never die. It has that perfect "folk" quality, it should be true, the problem is simply that there isn't any evidence for it. What does stick out about QWERTY, is that you can type the word "typewriter" using only the top keys, a trick that made it easier for typewriter salesmen to memorize and demonstrate that little trick when selling their…

A while ago I did a little analysis to compare ergonomics of existing keyboard layouts [1]. The criteria are obviously subjective, but the results clearly show that Qwerty comes out significantly inferior to all alternatives designed later.

[1] https://github.com/bclnr/kb-layout-evaluation

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#158

Post by highmastdon »

AceyMan wrote: post #123
jedimastert wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or Colemak for that matter

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#159

Post by userbinator »

joe_the_user wrote: post #79
userbinator wrote: post #68

My average typing speed is ~140-150WPM and I can go over 200 in short bursts. I've only used QWERTY. Thus I don't think Dvorak or any of the other layouts has that much of an advantage. However, I think the design of the keyboard's switches makes a huge difference; I can only reach those speeds on the keyboard I normally use, which is a pretty generic one with rubber domes, but where ~2mm of travel is enough to regis…

By "typing speed", do you mean copying an existing text? That's the usual measure. But in a world where most people compose their text on their own computers, how useful is it now? Or are you able to produce your writing/programming at that rate? If you can do that, you're in a remarkable category. My feeling is just moving your fingers to make word would be least impressive part of such a feat.

Or are you able to produce your writing/programming at that rate? If you can do that, you're in a remarkable category.

It's the average speed at which people speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Speech_and_li...

Thus being able to type at that speed means IM conversations and such can be carried out "at the speed of thought".

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#160

Post by sarbaz »

stevage wrote: post #50
samatman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a critical distinction. If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout. If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout , with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion , it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where…

I wonder if anyone has ever set out to design the worst possible layout, and if so, what it would look like.

It's worth pointing out that the worst possible layout for keyboards might actually be one of the best possible layouts for phones.
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