Since coding is 20% sitting in meetings, 50% reading code, 10% drawing on whiteboards or sticky notes, 15% drinking coffee, 4.5% fighting impostor syndrome and 0.5% actual typing, I think I am quite safe with my good 'ol QWERTY.
1. It allows for minimal disruption to thinking process, close to 90% of the time even when coding is not actively typing, but when typing is subconscious and fast it removes the potential of where it interrupts the thinking process.
2. While this has no bearing on individual case (It would be Bayesian, some people consider that to be heretic), but a software engineer who does not type well have a greater chance of having had less practice.
Willing to dive into this a bit more? My personal experience is different so I figure this is a chance to learn something new. The subjective character of typing experience for me is like riding a bike, driving a car, walking, or speaking. That is to say that unless I'm mountain biking, off-roading, on a balance beam, or trying to say a tongue twister, for the most part I'm unaware of the intention-execution-results loop, and the intention-results loop is all that consciously exists. My paltry 50-60wpm doesn't feel like an impediment to putting thoughts into text, but maybe others feel differently.
Now, from a philosophical point of view, I believe that it's possible to have programming tools that allow a 60wpm user to program at the speed of a 120wpm user without those tools (e.g. autocomplete allows you to type 10-character identifiers with significantly fewer keystrokes) - I just haven't finished building them. That is, I believe that having a slow typing speed shouldn't impede programmers, but does with our current tooling.
That may be high enough that you don't have the impediment, but when you work with someone who types down around 10-15 WPM... You can definitely tell they're spending a lot of brainpower on hunt-and-peck instead of the problem they're actually trying to solve.
Basically there's diminishing returns on increasing WPM and you may be at or past the tipping point. I expect it'll be different not just for different people, but also for whatever they're currently working on.
I am not defending 10-15 WPM here ofc. just statingt that the majority of work happens before we start typing in code, and after we typed it.
Depends entirely on the individual developer. For me its think-think-think-think-drinkcoffee-think-type.
And after the first iteration, the typing to make changes is usually miniscule compared to the initial amount.
I always wish I could type faster and with less effort, or -- better yet -- just wish the code into the shape I want. ~100wpm touchtypist here.
This arguments wholly arbitrary. Maybe someone who types slowly will put a lot of thought into each word and create fewer bugs. Who knows? Why argue random claims you pull out of the air?
National Slow Talkers of America
I agree, and even wrote an article about that a few years ago. :-)
https://github.com/Dobiasd/articles/blob/master/how_touch_ty...
I am always surprised, though at this point I shouldn’t be, that there is always pushback against any attempts at improving the status quo when it comes to typing speeds on HN - as though the creator is attacking all of us with lower typing speeds personally…
From another perspective: sure you might speed up only 0.5% of your workday - but how is that a bad thing?
Repetitive stress injuries aside, even if you only spend an hour a week typing (I suspect it’s honestly more) then if you end up increasing your typing speed by double you’re still saving yourself 25 hours a year. Assuming my a career of 35 years that’s 875 hours and you increase your time fighting imposter syndrome by 0.25%.
Scale up as appropriate for how much time you actually spend typing.
I think most cases where you needed actual really fast typing were covered long ago and the number of careers or situations where a person needed it have been declining for a long time.
Most of the cases where you needed actual really fast travel have been covered for a long time and the number of careers or situations where a person need to travel fast have been declining for a long time, but I think we can all agree faster travel times are better.
Side note: stenography and chorded words with something like Plover (similar to the above) is where really fast typing usually comes into play for. I have not looked into any of the above because the pain of changing my habits hasn’t been worth the benefits to me yet.
I’ve considered it when I had to do interview transcripts, but ultimately I didn’t want to make the investment. I hope future generations are able to learn on something more designed for contemporary use than QWERTY and classic keyboards - I know my wrists have thanked me for moving to a split keyboard for the ergonomics alone.
I don't think it's a general attack because people are personally offended; most of the criticism right now seems to be that the headline claim is materially untrue. Rejecting snake oil is healthy and reasonable even if there's value to be found.
Edit: Perhaps more succinctly, people aren't pushing back against improvements, they're pushing back on deceptive claims.
The specific op I was replying to was saying
> …and 0.5% actual typing, I think I am quite safe with my good 'ol QWERTY.
And there were a host of similar comments initially.
100% on fighting snake oil. 0% on pushing back against people trying new things that might improve the status quo
Do you code with it as well, or is it primarily chat/browsing/etc?
I said I spend not a lot of time typing. Therefore, a device that is aimed at improving typing speed, has a low impact on my productivity.
I agree with this sentiment: > I said I spend not a lot of time typing. Therefore, a device that is aimed at improving typing speed, has a low impact on my productivity.
Though, setting aside that efficiency =/= effectiveness/productivity, I think the spirit of the article is that if a coworker is typing a lot, that may claim that their efficiency has increased greatly, not that every single person will see equal improvements.
FWIW: this is being typed with two thumbs on an iPhone because that’s as efficient as _I_ need to be right now ;)
It seems to be a common theme among tech people to unfairly extrapolate small, vaguely related things to judge big things, even to the point of rejecting job candidates or firing employees over one of them and then crowing about it on social media (for example the "don't hire losers" post a few days ago).
If someone doesn't like how I work, then don't watch me work. I get paid for the fruits of my work, not how I get there.
It’s unclear to me where this criticism is coming from.
> If someone doesn't like how I work, then don't watch me work. I get paid for the fruits of my work, not how I get there.
Similarly it’s unclear to me where there is anything about anyone measuring how you get your work done. That seems unrelated to the article at hand that only passingly mentions any work context (only of a co-worker making a claim about their own effectiveness) while spending most of the article on games and typing competitions.
Also, you might be underestimating how dumb it looks to both technical and non-technical people when a highly paid engineer can barely type.
Not that I've seen many who type slowly, probably because that's something you just pick up after decades of work.
Most of the old wizards I worked with hunted and pecked, looking down constantly.
He typed slowly, not hunt&peck, but really slow compared to the other engineers.
Didn't matter. The guy was a wizard. Ever seen someone implement radix sort in assembly or debugging a microservice using nothing but nc and echo? Without looking up ANYTHING either in a book or online? That kind of guy.
Working with him, I sometimes felt like Mickey Mouse in that scene of "Fantasia: The Sorcerers Apprentice", when the Master came back, surveying the flood, and fixing everyting in seconds just by waving his hands imperiously :D
I wonder how often Donald Knuth types.
And he is arguably among the 5 best coders in the world.
Depending of course if your meetings are necessary discussions, or just pointless constraints.
I also like using Sublime Text with vim keymap. I prefer the low latency of editors over features of big IDEs. Sometimes, I do use PyCharm or CLion for debugging since that experience in vim sucks. GDB is terrible in CLI.
For the remaining 95%… I’ve configured it to delay doing anything until 10000ms passes so it doesn’t get in the way
I don't think I've ever been in a job where I was limited by typing speed.
- communicating with peers over slack
- writing code / git commands
- writing email, comments in HN, documentation, etc.
- taking notes in meetings
- all the browser shortcuts
- all the CLI readline shortcuts
I feel like excessive swipe-typing with my thumb may have contributed more than typing to that; but I also play keyboards and it was scary for a second to have that affected.
I got myself a vertical mouse; will consider using another layout (which one do you use?). I do type at 75-80WPM (including time to fixe typos), can that really cause RSI?
I don't know if I'll be able to pull off even 20wpm with another layout, but looks like it's the next step. Thanks for suggesting it!
The exception to this might be spending time thinking about the very high level structure you want, since the initial structure you start with can lock you into pattern of trying to solve the problem that might not be the most effective.