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The Joy of Typing

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Re: The Joy of Typing

#21

Post by sliverstorm »

taeric wrote: post #5

60 words a minute is still very slow, when it comes to thinking speed. Unless I'm just off my rocker, of course. This is also why folks that take really good notes by hand often have some sort of shorthand system. My question, then, is it worthwhile to investigate some of the more advanced typing techniques out there? I'm curious, but highly skeptical.

Does it matter? I think faster than I type, but a lot of what I think is jumbled garbage. Why on earth would I want to barf that onto the screen?

I think perhaps 2x as fast as I type, which gives me time to consider what or how I want to say something, without constraining me to the choking snail's pace that is, for example, T-9.

FWIW the article's test pegs me at 95wpm; extended tests with sneaky words usually clock me around 75wpm.

(When I meet a word I can't spell instantly, I have to transcribe the letters rather than the word, which is slower)

Re: The Joy of Typing

#22

Post by Brashman »

coffeecodecouch wrote: post #7
nbouscal wrote: post #2

> one 2007 study measured a small group of 21 college students and found their average typing speed was an abysmal 12.2 words per minute That blows my mind. That's less than a tenth the speed I type at. How do they get anything done??

> That blows my mind. Really? I don't find it that shocking at all that most people might type at a tenth of the speed a programmer can type. I'm sure a chef could express the same awe at my inefficiency when making Kraft Dinner.

I was a college student during this time. I feel like people my age all ended up proficient at typing because of instant messenging (not just the "computer guys"). It was my preferred mode of communication of in high school (especially since this was pre-smartphone). I'm definitely surprised that they found typing speeds that slow.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#23

Post by skywhopper »

nbouscal wrote: post #2

> one 2007 study measured a small group of 21 college students and found their average typing speed was an abysmal 12.2 words per minute That blows my mind. That's less than a tenth the speed I type at. How do they get anything done??

I don't know how fast my middle-school daughter can type, but she doesn't touch-type. Her school does insist that they spend a lot of time using computers for research and writing, and they even take some standardized tests on computers, but they do not teach the kids how to type. Seems to me if you are going to have the kids using computers, then typing should be an early skill to teach them as well.

On the flip side, I can see that for kids these days it must be much harder to learn to type. So much of their time is spent using computers, and so even spending an hour a day on touch-typing lessons is going to pale in comparison to the amount of time spent not touch typing because you don't know enough yet to touch type all the time. And that has to make the barrier much harder to overcome.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#24

Post by streakerbee »

nbouscal wrote: post #18
taeric wrote: post #5

60 words a minute is still very slow, when it comes to thinking speed. Unless I'm just off my rocker, of course. This is also why folks that take really good notes by hand often have some sort of shorthand system. My question, then, is it worthwhile to investigate some of the more advanced typing techniques out there? I'm curious, but highly skeptical.

I average 140wpm without any "advanced typing techniques", so I don't think they're really necessary. I can't speak to whether or not they would be helpful, though. I do think it's very worthwhile to be able to type this fast - people speak somewhere around 150wpm on average, and being able to type as fast as you speak is useful for instant messaging, etc.

How did you get so fast? I seem stuck at around 55 wpm.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#25

Post by z2 »

Back in college, I dictated the bulk of my (humanities) papers using Windows Vista’s built-in speech recognition. It unlocked a new paradigm of revising where I could speak an entire paragraph, delete it without hesitation, and re-write, all in a minute’s time. Including pauses and corrections, I probably got less than 100 WPM. That alone isn't impressive, but it came with minimal fatigue and friction. It was very liberating to edit my logic and reasoning at a multi-sentence level.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#26

Post by ZoF »

coffeecodecouch wrote: post #7
nbouscal wrote: post #2

> one 2007 study measured a small group of 21 college students and found their average typing speed was an abysmal 12.2 words per minute That blows my mind. That's less than a tenth the speed I type at. How do they get anything done??

> That blows my mind. Really? I don't find it that shocking at all that most people might type at a tenth of the speed a programmer can type. I'm sure a chef could express the same awe at my inefficiency when making Kraft Dinner.

Yeah, I think people tend to make assumptions about the competence of others with regards to the tools that they personally are so adept at using that the action has become mostly subconscious.

I do it myself all of the time. It seems to be the result of the way our minds make associations, and an inability to properly 'empathize' with others, that is, to view the action from their perspective of being relatively unpracticed at it. This is where, in fact, I think a large part of 'imposter syndrome' stems from.

I personally have difficulty viewing the ability to launch/maintain web applications, provision a server for deployment, write SQL queries, etc, etc, etc... as anything particularly 'novel' or requiring ability; and indeed, in the context of this web-site, it isn't.

In the real world though, there's a dearth of 'incompetence', but unless you actively interact with a menagerie/distributed-sampling of society, it is very easy to convince yourself that the average person is as competent/intelligent as the people you surround yourself with on a daily basis. The fact that the internet allows everyone in your field to collaborate only serves to exacerbate the situation.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#27

Post by worrieddot »

This is especially interesting to me. I've been relearning how to type on an Alphagrip and for much of the process (20-50wpm) I have felt like it was dumbing me down because my thoughts all have to wait for me to slowly output them. Now that I'm past 50wpm on alpha text the effect isn't as bad, but I still feel hindered. (But.... that's worth it for not exacerbating carpal tunnel issues, right?)

Re: The Joy of Typing

#28

Post by beachstartup »

nbouscal wrote: post #2

> one 2007 study measured a small group of 21 college students and found their average typing speed was an abysmal 12.2 words per minute That blows my mind. That's less than a tenth the speed I type at. How do they get anything done??

i spent a lot of time on the net (irc) as a kid, and even then my typing didn't go above 50wpm until i actually sat down and taught myself how to type correctly, and then practiced deliberately. i remember i went from 40wpm to 100wpm in a single summer.

most people never actually learn to type correctly, they just keep doing the wrong thing forever. of course, once you actually learn to do it right, you're practicing all the time and after several years you can easily get up to and past 120wpm if you sit in front of a computer all day.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#29

Post by worrieddot »

worrieddot wrote: post #27

This is especially interesting to me. I've been relearning how to type on an Alphagrip and for much of the process (20-50wpm) I have felt like it was dumbing me down because my thoughts all have to wait for me to slowly output them. Now that I'm past 50wpm on alpha text the effect isn't as bad, but I still feel hindered. (But.... that's worth it for not exacerbating carpal tunnel issues, right?)

Btw, I would recommend this (learning a new keyboard layout) as a refreshing exercise for anyone who has forgotten what the learning process feels like. I imagine trying to read a book in another language is similar.

Re: The Joy of Typing

#30

Post by infogulch »

zatkin wrote: post #13

I think I have found the absolute worst typing test[1] on the Internet thanks to this article. It keeps a timer running until you "hit tab and click stop". You're telling me that I need to stop tying, move my hand over to my mouse, dragm the mouse button to that "stop" button and click the button? That'll lose me typing time... [1]: http://www.calculatorcat.com/typing_test/

You misread. It says "hit tab OR click stop". So just hitting tab out of the text entry box stops the timer.
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