Google Docs vs manual typewriter | Hacker News Reader

Google Docs vs manual typewriter

tommorris.org

29 pointssliceghost26 comments

I have respect for the pen, due to its portability, convenience for quick notes and use for making sketches, diagrams, and free-form documents. The type writer, on the other hand is idiotic. It's rigid, even worse than computer documents. It's also completely incapable of handling Chinese, which makes up a large part of what I have to write. On top of that, a typewriter weighs more than a backpack with a laptop inside.

What's next, Mass production vs personal forge?

Admittedly I couldn't stand to read the whole article. His obsession with typewriters seems to have influenced his taste in font size and family.

My question to others based on what I read is how many people here, without looking, can type quickly and accurately but choose to not follow the homerow practice? I type very quickly, and hardly ever need to press backspace. I usually only look when I type in 16 character passwords with alternating caps.

I've never been successful with the home row method, I'll admit; it has always caused severe pain in my wrists. That said, I can type at least 90 wpm without looking at the keys, and that suits me just fine.

On most keyboards it is very hard to touch-type while programming. Seriously, I just can't enter a curly brace while keeping my hands on the home row. It hurts :) And once you move that hand, repositioning it takes time.

The other reason I never learned to type properly is that I just get bored. I tried several times, and always gave up. It just feels like a waste typing fjfjfjfjfjfj when I could be entering code.

Finally, the productivity of a coder isn't how fast he/she can type. It's how well they think, which is mostly inversely related to WPM.

>It's how well they think, which is mostly inversely related to WPM.

That's an...interesting claim. Why do you think typing ability is negatively correlated with intelligence?

I, for one, can type almost 80wpm and am dumb as a rock. I can never solve logic puzzles, and struggle with debugging when writing one-page scripts in Python.

Upvoted, for making me chuckle.

But I'm pretty sure that typing speed and programming ability are not-correlated, most definitely not inversely related.

"Correlation does not equal causation"

Also, I really should learn to type better. This though got me googling. I found some discussion on the topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=952745 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510087

Also, I seem to remember someone posting a webapp typing tutor. Does anyone remember the name?

Not so much typing ability as actual typing output. And this was supposed to be only half-serious :)

What I meant was that it's better to spend some time solving the problem in your head, rather than bang out line after line of bad code. So, in essence, the typing speed is not the bottleneck of coding productivity.

Of course, a proper study on this would be a better argument than just me making stuff up.

Just as an aside this { code }, was typed without any conscious thought. As an average touch typist (about 60 WPM), I didn't have any difficulty on my MacBook Pro entering curly paren while keeping my fingers on the home row.

At least once a week I thank my teenage self for taking Grade 7 and 8 typing course (on ancient Manual typewriters - not even electric. The CBM 8032 was _just_ entering our world, and 100 Mile House had never bothered to upgrade to electric typewriters. I expect there is some meta-story regarding how you can teach people to do things without spending a lot of money)

Okay, as he says, nzmsv was half kidding. But really, this kind of attitude just touches a nerve with me. I work in corporate IT and in most places I've been, I'm seen as weird because of how fast I type.

I mean is it so unusual to actually to have facility with the tools of your trade?

Seriously, the curly brace doesn't even require you to move your hand from the home position. Anyone should be able to do that, unless you have problems with your pinky finger.

This reply is degenerating into a rant, so I apologize, but so many times I've been tagged as "the fast one", with the implication being that I'm not thorough. Guess what? Speed means more iterations, means I'm doing more in less time. And it doesn't preclude "thinking things through" either.

</rant>...back to your regularly scheduled, pre-new year's eve reading.

EDIT: Oh, and I hate the mouse.

It turns out he is a vimmer. I fully support his argument.

BTW there is even a snippet/plugin that turns VIM into a typewriter by disabling any movement keys.

That explains why he said "You keep the fingers of your left hand on the ASDF keys and the fingers of your right hand on the HJKL keys."

I haven't met any touch typists who didn't know the right hand is supposed to rest on the jkl; keys.

Yes, my mistake. When in doubt, do what is correct rather than what I say. My typewriter homekey bindings have been wrecked by Vim use.

I found it an amusing mistake, and I too love vim and I wish the hjkl standard was everywhere.

Let me introduce myself.

I'm a touch typist, and I keep my right hand on the AOEU keys and my left on the HTNS keys.

Cheers!

Reversed Dvorak? Awesome. I greatly respect Dvorak, I just could never muster the patience of getting my speed in it up to the 80-100 I range in qwerty. Going back to 5-10 wpm isn't fun.

Oh god...

No, it's Dvorak... but I don't know my left hand from my right.

Actually, it's a common joke around these parts that people originally from Jerusalem can't tell the difference between right & left. Taxis there are known for turning the opposite direction of what you ask for given just how bad it is.

Sounds like a contrived reason not to read an article. View->Page Style->No Style.

To each their own, but I think anyone who makes a living by their hands ought to do the utmost to protect them from harm. Proper typing posture staves off cumulative trauma injuries.

I also could have held ctrl and used the wheel on my mouse to make the font bigger. That was not the point of my comment.

Sorry, I had to close the page after reading: "I'm not sure that it's possible to know how to code in as many programming languages as I do"

tldr: It's painfully apparent the author is getting too old to Keep Up and is taking that frustration out on newer technology. Retire already. No one uses gopher or typewriters anymore (for serious work), nor will they ever.

You should have at least finished the sentence before concluding that it makes no sense. "I'm not sure that it's possible to know how to code in as many programming languages as I do, own an iPod, three laptops, two mobiles and be able to quote verbatim from some W3C/IETF specs and consider oneself a Luddite unless one significantly bends the definition of Luddite."

Perhaps you're right. I just felt it didn't make any sense. How is owning gadgets and quoting specs some kind of "anti luddite" badge? Seems like he's in some serious denial.

Agreed - One who is a "Luddite" is not, by the very definition of the word, opposed to technology, per se, but instead are opposed to "technology change" - the author does seem to be opposed to technological change - but does make some good reasons as to why he is.

I think the article may have been written half tongue in cheek - I expect if I was British, instead of just Canadian, I might have more fully appreciated the humor. Hints were as follows:

" If a burglar enters your home, you can drop your typewriter on them from above"

"To get the most out of Google Docs, you must use an arcane device known as a mouse. "

But, if you read the article all the way to the end, there are actually some parts that cause you to think about the (particularly for the ADHD among us) issue of using Google Docs as our principal text entry / editting tool (as opposed to something like "Pages" in Full Screen mode)

I'm somewhat surprised - but gratified - to read my post on Hacker News. I posted it mostly as a sort of very dry, tongue-firmly-in-cheek public memo to various people I know who are always telling me why I really need to "get with cloud computing". The idea was to prompt said people into seeing that those of us who don't immediately respond with excitement when told about online services like Google Docs and hurriedly jump on the bandwagon might actually have some relatively sound reasons for it. Lots of people I know seem to get very excited about stuff because it's new, and seem to be on automatic optimism mode about all new technology. The attitude I think is much healthier is a bit of guarded scepticism or realism. The Luddite would refuse new technology flatly - they want the world to stop so they can get off. Instead, I was hoping to push my readers (mostly my personal friends IRL) through a rather absurd example to try and step back from the Digg/TechCrunch/Twitter-driven hype and try to ask themselves "do you really need it?".

As for the earlier suggestion that I should retire, I most certainly would like to, but I'm in my twenties (it is perfectly possible to have used a typewriter frequently as a child and now be in one's twenties). Old school doesn't equal old. I'm a programmer in my spare time and do independent development projects to pay my way through philosophy grad school. I think Google Docs has a perfect use - I use it a fair amount for planning (the podcast I'm involved in uses it, and we used it quite a lot to plan a vacation). I'm not advocating using a typewriter instead of Eclipse or instead of whatever you use for word processing. What I'd like is if some of my geek friends would learn the lessons of technological history and maybe try some of the old tech they think desperately needs to be deprecated in order to bring about some technological paradise. It's not all bad.

I'm not opposed to technological change. I'm opposed to people thinking technology is automatically good because it is new and automatically needs to be made obselete because it is old.

Bah, learn to read or at least to skim with some accuracy.

It's tongue in cheek, and the point of the article (as stated early on) is that when changing tools there are always advantages and disadvantages.

The author then goes on to demonstrate that there are plausible disadvantages even for something as implausible and absurd as using a mechanical typewriter instead of a word processor.

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