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Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

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Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#31

Post by jghn »

abhaynayar wrote: post #10

Something I realized with the new LLM tools is that learning how to type plain English words fast i.e. without capitalization or punctuation, and even typos is not that big of a problem anymore. And so it follows that code-specific typing is even less important if you can just type in normal words fast and then just check it's output. Although yes for stuff this small i.e. super small terminal commands I feel there d…

I'm not sure. And to be honest, typing speed was never that big a deal. By the time I got out of college a few decades ago I was in the 110-120wpm range.

However as I progressed in my career as a developer what I found is that both my "working" WPM and then my "normal" WPM dropped over time. Once I moved out of truly junior, pure code grinding roles, I spent more and more time thinking, talking to people, etc than I did typing. At that point, what does it matter if I'm at 20wpm or 200?

Likewise, in day to day life, it's not like I'm sitting there typing a novel. I'm mostly clicking buttons, writing short messages, tweet,s and the like. My day to day typing speed has also decreased. I'm sure it's still up around 80-100wpm, but it's rare that I'm sitting there typing long enough to matter.

Same with LLM. Who cares if it takes me 10 seconds or 20 seconds to type in a prompt, when it's going to sit there and spin for a minute anyways?

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#32

Post by hronecviktor »

SoftTalker wrote: post #29
raincole wrote: post #17

Only slightly related, but what increased my code typing speed the most is this (AutoHotKey 2): ; CapsLock + J/K -> ( ) CapsLock & j::SendText "(" CapsLock & k::SendText ")" ; CapsLock + U/I -> [ ] CapsLock & u::SendText "[" CapsLock & i::SendText "]" ; CapsLock + L/: -> { } CapsLock & l::SendText "{" ; SC027 = physical ;/: key on a US keyboard CapsLock & SC027::SendText "}" ; CapsLock + O/P/M/E -> _ + - = CapsLock &…

I've tried this sort of thing but then your muscle memory works against you when you have to use a "normal" keyboard. Even remapping Cap Lock to Control, which I do, trips me up for a few minutes when I need to work on any other computer that has not been set up that way.

Dont even have to remap anything to cause issues. Case in point: we wanted to try mob programming with 2 colleagues.

I was using a 106 with US layout

Colleague #1 was using 60% with russian layout

Colleague #2 was on catalan layout

90% of the time we were just hunting for special chars

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#33

Post by hronecviktor »

Bender wrote: post #30

"Movie Hacker" should perhaps include nmap and sshnuke [1] despite being a real command and a real skiddie exploit [2]. When that that first played in the movies (The Matrix) people in the bay area theaters were standing up and cheering. People not familiar with the tools were very confused as to what was going on. [1] - https://nmap.org/movies/ [2] - https://blog.doyensec.com/2025/03/04/exploitable-sshd.html

Ahh, core memories

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#34

Post by mashlol »

hronecviktor wrote: post #5
stfnon wrote: post #4

Your connection is not private Attackers might be trying to steal your information from haxxorwpm.0s.is (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). Learn more about this warning net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID this is what happens when you dont have always on ssh box for your agents

It's on a VM running behind caddy + bog-standard Let's Encrypt DV cert. It apparently works for nearly everyone, but I did have one user in the past that reported that *.0s.is domain doesnt work in his browser. Could not get enough info about what his setup was, if you could share what OS/Browser + versions you got that would be much appreciated

For me, Firefox on desktop (Windows) and mobile (Android) both give the SSL warning. Although mine appears a bit different than the parent comment:

    An error occurred during a connection to haxxorwpm.0s.is. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length.

    Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#37

Post by [deleted] »

hronecviktor wrote: post #32
SoftTalker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried this sort of thing but then your muscle memory works against you when you have to use a "normal" keyboard. Even remapping Cap Lock to Control, which I do, trips me up for a few minutes when I need to work on any other computer that has not been set up that way.

Dont even have to remap anything to cause issues. Case in point: we wanted to try mob programming with 2 colleagues. I was using a 106 with US layout Colleague #1 was using 60% with russian layout Colleague #2 was on catalan layout 90% of the time we were just hunting for special chars

[deleted]

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#38

Post by snozolli »

Bender wrote: post #30

"Movie Hacker" should perhaps include nmap and sshnuke [1] despite being a real command and a real skiddie exploit [2]. When that that first played in the movies (The Matrix) people in the bay area theaters were standing up and cheering. People not familiar with the tools were very confused as to what was going on. [1] - https://nmap.org/movies/ [2] - https://blog.doyensec.com/2025/03/04/exploitable-sshd.html

Unrelated, but I saw a movie in the early 2000s while visiting San Francisco. One of the trailers was for the Ben Affleck movie Paycheck (2003). When the trailer voice dramatically announced, "Michael Jennings is the best reverse-engineer in the business," the entire audience erupted in laughter. I felt like I had found my people. I moved to SF shortly after.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rkE5I9nFqrI

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#39

Post by JohnMakin »

jascha_eng wrote: post #20
eqvinox wrote: post #8

This seems to be largely devops stuff, not developer. (Or plain ops.)

It used to be that DevOps was the movement of merging Ops leftwards so that Devs own the Operation of their software.

and devs almost universally end up not wanting to do that

Re: Typing Speed Test, but for Developers

#40

Post by KronisLV »

ashu1461 wrote: post #15
jwpapi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m seeing a lot of people that having that train of thought. I think that is a fallacy. I can understand that some LLM execution can be faster, but definitely not all. Agents need to explore, grep and get back up to speed to get context, if you have a good mental model, you can do changes or adaptions in One could argue to find the Therefore I’m thinking one task that can be done in one context window without switch…

I get your point but I do prefer delegating almost all of the things to the LLM. A lot of times human commands are prone to errors / edge cases as well. Example a simple git pull command usually would take A simple git push is usually instant but that comes with an overload of some un intended changes being pushed, which LLMs take care of removing themselves. When LLM is doing its thing, we can spend the same time in…

> A simple git push is usually instant but that comes with an overload of some un intended changes being pushed, which LLMs take care of removing themselves.

In my experience it can often be the opposite - AI would commit a lot of slop comments and sometimes unnecessary stuff, whereas if you can review things in GitKraken or another program with diffs, things are closer to what you want. Writing commit messages and PR descriptions (maybe change summaries, the intro less so) is easily outsourced to the LLMs though.

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