Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

steve-yegge.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 106 posts

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#3

Post by ken »

> Hell, if you're having trouble, just email me, and I'll give you a personalized pep talk. I can afford it. I type pretty fast. Plus your email will be really short.

I'm tempted to email him just to find out what Steve Yegge's idea of a "really short" email is.

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#4

Post by epe »

ken wrote: post #3

> Hell, if you're having trouble, just email me, and I'll give you a personalized pep talk. I can afford it. I type pretty fast. Plus your email will be really short. I'm tempted to email him just to find out what Steve Yegge's idea of a "really short" email is.

Hehe, good one, but I think he means the email that the can't-typers send him will be "really short".

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#5

Post by prospero »

burnout1540 wrote: post #2

Not being able to touch type is not a bad thing; not being able to type fast is. I can't touch type and I used to be able to type 130+ wpm without errors. I can still average around 100 wpm.

What's your definition of "not touch typing"? Do you use two fingers? Do you keep your fingers on the home row?

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#7

Post by ivank »

Does anyone else type on QWERTY but never from home row? I get 115wpm but with a disastrous 96% accuracy. The upside is much better access to the number keys and punctuation. I once tried to switch to Colemak, but never managed to completely switch over. I think this was because my muscle memory of QWERTY in 8 different positions was too powerful to unlearn.

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#8

Post by cbetz »

One of my co-workers types with his two pointer fingers and I'm sure he hits at least 80 wpm if not more. He looks at the keys on occasion, but he mostly does not need to. However, I get the impression his error rate is quite high.

All that being said, I think he could type even faster if he just bit the bullet and learned to touch type. This is why Steve is right. You might be a pretty fast typer already, but you can probably be a lot faster using all your fingers instead of just two.

Re: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

#10

Post by yters »

prospero wrote: post #5
burnout1540 wrote: post #2

Not being able to touch type is not a bad thing; not being able to type fast is. I can't touch type and I used to be able to type 130+ wpm without errors. I can still average around 100 wpm.

What's your definition of "not touch typing"? Do you use two fingers? Do you keep your fingers on the home row?

I think he means looking at the keyboard as he types. I can see how that can help a person type faster, makes sense to me.
Post reply on HN