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Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

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Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#31

Post by hendi_ »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #19

Are most people not touch typers? I've noticed my boss isn't really a touch typer, despite programming since before I was born, but I always assumed the majority of CS people were.

I'm a touch typer, but not in the standard sense. I don't look up the keys while writing and use most of my ten fingers, but I don't use them like it's taught in touch typing. I know exactly where all the keys are and I intuitively press them with some fingers depending on which is nearest or easiest at the specific moment. According to [1] I can easily type faster than 600 keys per minute, more than all other people I know.

I don't think I should learn touch typing to further increase my typing speed. Right now most of the time my pondering over coding problems is limiting my typing speed, not my ability to move my fingers.

But maybe it's worth learning touch typing to reduce the stress on the fingers and be more egonomic?

[1] http://speedtest.10-fast-fingers.com/

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#32

Post by wtracy »

hendi_ wrote: post #31
juiceandjuice wrote: post #19

Are most people not touch typers? I've noticed my boss isn't really a touch typer, despite programming since before I was born, but I always assumed the majority of CS people were.

I'm a touch typer, but not in the standard sense. I don't look up the keys while writing and use most of my ten fingers, but I don't use them like it's taught in touch typing. I know exactly where all the keys are and I intuitively press them with some fingers depending on which is nearest or easiest at the specific moment. According to [1] I can easily type faster than 600 keys per minute, more than all other people…

Actually, from an ergonomics perspective, you would probably be worse off touch typing.

Traditional touch typing trains you to hold your hands in a consistent position over the keyboard. It's the act of holding your hand in the same position all day--whether that's over a keyboard or around a mouse--that leads to carpal tunnel syndrome.

(For the record: I touch type mostly the way I was taught to. My wrists do occasionally bother me. I'm 24. YMMV.)

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#34

Post by jeza »

andrewhare wrote: post #6
dmboyd wrote: post #3

Mavis beacon teaches typing.. Seriously?

He sounded pretty serious to me. Do you have a better suggestion? The Mavis Beacon software does a perfectly fine job at teaching touch-typing.

I used some random type tutor software in high school (sometime in the mid-late 90s), though only spent enough time with it to learn the home keys. I would then look at the keyboard for the remainder of the keys. Initially that was probably no faster than my old hunt and peck method. I remember remarking at one stage that I was looking at the keyboard out of habit. Then one day I noticed that I was no longer looking at all. I'm sure it was a strange feeling at the time!

Goes to show you don't really need to learn the whole process with some type tutor software. Though in terms of efficiency you may want to be aware of what they suggest. For instance, I think I was hitting the Y key with my left hand rather than right hand at some stage, but long ago changed that.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#37

Post by davidw »

pointyhat wrote: post #30

Without starting a religious war, it's essential to learn the basics of vi for it is ubiquitous on all UNIX variants. Even if you use emacs, it's essential knowledge.

While this argument might have held weight once, I think these factors undermine it:

Emacs used to be considered 'expensive' in terms of disk/memory. These days, it really isn't.

Non-Linux unixes are less and less of a factor these days, and even most of those have some sort of packaging system where installing emacs is a quick operation, rather than a laborious download/compile/install.

Emacs itself has remote editing capabilities with Tramp, via ssh that obviates the need to fire up an editor on the target machine in some cases.

If your job involves sitting down at HPUX/Irix/AIX/whatever machines that haven't been updated since 1998, and don't allow remote access, yes, vi is probably a valuable skill. Otherwise, I think this argument is less important than it once was.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#38

Post by gcb »

jrockway wrote: post #36
gcb wrote: post #33

learn unix ... use midnight commander. lolwat?

Keep in mind that the same person wrote both this blog post and Midnight Commander.

and that validates midnight commander as a tool with the unix philosophy how?

downvote all you want. but a clone of norton commander was and always will be a joke.

...saw several sysadmins using it to delete files named with dash because they didn't know "--" is posix for stop taking flags. and that's just one bad vice it foments.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#40

Post by pointyhat »

davidw wrote: post #37
pointyhat wrote: post #30

Without starting a religious war, it's essential to learn the basics of vi for it is ubiquitous on all UNIX variants. Even if you use emacs, it's essential knowledge.

While this argument might have held weight once, I think these factors undermine it: Emacs used to be considered 'expensive' in terms of disk/memory. These days, it really isn't. Non-Linux unixes are less and less of a factor these days, and even most of those have some sort of packaging system where installing emacs is a quick operation, rather than a laborious download/compile/install. Emacs itself has remote editi…

If you use a default server install of debian, ubuntu or centos, it doesn't have emacs installed. The installation media and recovery CDs don't either.

That is enough justification, especially when you're at a single user mode console on a ILO card when the machine won't boot and flames are coming out of everything. Vi is there for you and emacs SSH won't be saving you when the network is not up so you cant apt-get or yum emacs. It's also not the sort of time you want to start having to learn vi.

I know this because I've been there.

It's as important as it always was, much as pen and paper are.

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