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A tool that increased my typing speed

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Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#61

Post by shock »

tartoran wrote: post #45
shock wrote: post #27

If you're on Linux and want to do this look for ibus-typing-booster. I submitted it 6 days ago, but it didn't get much attention. Unlike the author's method of manually setting up shortcuts for the most used words, ibus-typing-booster learns your most frequent words and then it's just a matter of typing a few chars followed by space, which inserts the whole word.

Im using notepad++ and it has this feature auto enabled by default but at a document level. I find that sometimes it helps but other times it really gets in my way. How does it work out for you with ibus-...-...?

I haven't used it like the author describes, I've just been using for easy emoji autocompletion :)

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#62

Post by 1123581321 »

bonestormii_ wrote: post #55
1123581321 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone’s words are equally valuable. Someone who does not vomit but actually has things worth saying, and a limited time in which to express them, would benefit from faster typing. Worst case, it’s nice to get one’s job done faster to make time for other things. You can always take your hands off the keyboard periodically if you want to write less.

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 environments that already provide a lot of completions and macros—-typing speed in programming has long been evaluated differently from writing prose.

Everything you wrote about considering tradeoffs is sound, but is being misapplied because you’re overestimating the difficulty and underestimating the benefit due to placing too low a value on words.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#63

Post by copperx »

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…

Speaking is faster than typing. Speech recognition is my go-to for writing prose these days.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#64

Post by garaetjjte »

taeric wrote: post #60
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 am not claiming to support that it is the worst. Just saying that, if it helps you type faster by keeping the device from jamming because you are typing too fast, then it is by definition helping you type faster by limiting the speed that you can type. Hence, slowing you down so that you don't go so fast that you crash. As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down…

That's some tortuous logic. If it helps type faster by keeping the device from jamming, then... it helps type faster. If it only jammed because you type too fast, you could(/must) just slow down, no fancy layouts necessary. It didn't jam because you pressed any key too fast, it jammed when you pressed adjacent typebar too fast, and with proper layout (making sure that common digrams weren't on adjacent typebars) these situations could be minimized.

Weird thing in these discussions is considering that most jam-free possible layout and as fast as possible was somehow different design goal. But, in world of early mechanical typewriters, it was the same! You couldn't have "fast" layout that jammed because it wouldn't be fast, and if you had jam-free layout it probably was fast, because it weren't forcing you to depress each key completely before pressing next.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#65

Post by bonestormii_ »

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…

Words are already extremely cheap and effortless though, and saying that they have a higher value than I appraise them for doesn't address some of the issues I addressed, such as the very real problem on non-universal configurations.

If you want to spend your time that way, that's cool with me. I like vim. Such things have their place. Personally, I suspect this doesn't solve any problems I have.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#66

Post by userbinator »

surfsvammel wrote: post #22

Record yourself writing, or programming, or whatever it is you do at the keyboard. You will see that it is not the speed of your typing that is the bottleneck, it is the creative process. You are not a mindless machine hacking away at the keyboard. And, if you are, then the life hack take away is to stop and think a bit before typing. Going slower often has lots of benefits.

The typing speed absolutely is a bottleneck --- the more time spent typing, the less time spent thinking. Have you ever experienced times when you lost your train of thought because you were busy writing it down? That's what faster typing will avoid. It's true that the average typing speed will be low, but the higher your burst speed, the sooner you will return to thinking after each thought that needs to be written down.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#67

Post by samatman »

taeric wrote: post #60
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 am not claiming to support that it is the worst. Just saying that, if it helps you type faster by keeping the device from jamming because you are typing too fast, then it is by definition helping you type faster by limiting the speed that you can type. Hence, slowing you down so that you don't go so fast that you crash. As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down…

Stenography is specifically excluded, because it's a shorthand: the actual form of the final text is reconstituted from abbreviation.

The system described in the OP text is a form of stenography, conducted with a normal keyboard. I would be surprised if a competition typist, presented with an already-shortened text, couldn't beat out most stenotype stenographers working off the original text.

It would be unfair for a typing competition to exclude a chorded keypad, and I don't know of they do or not. It's completely fair to not accept "ts cmptly fr" as the transcription of "it's completely fair", no matter how it's typed in.

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#68

Post by userbinator »

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 register a keypress, and the keyfeel is very light and bouncy. Before that I used a mechanical keyboard with (very) clicky Blue ALPS (https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alps_SKCM_Blue ) switches, and struggled to reach 120WPM. Other keyboards I've tried timing typing speed on include a Thinkpad X60 (can barely exceed 100, but quickly tiring), Apple low-profile (80-90, very tiring), and the famous IBM Model M (75-80, impressively loud and extremely tiring.)

Re: A tool that increased my typing speed

#69

Post by joe_the_user »

1123581321 wrote: post #29
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…

Not everyone’s words are equally valuable. Someone who does not vomit but actually has things worth saying, and a limited time in which to express them, would benefit from faster typing. Worst case, it’s nice to get one’s job done faster to make time for other things. You can always take your hands off the keyboard periodically if you want to write less.

I grew up back when typing was a skill. A good typist could type at about 60 words per minute. Such typing was always to either to copy a written text or to take dictation. I think it's extraordinarily rare to find someone who could write down their thoughts at that rate, even if they'd thought out a text beforehand.

I only learned to type at about 20-30 words per minute, still faster than many now but slow the measure of typists, and that's easily fast enough to keep up with my thoughts.

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