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Comment by 0kl | Hacker News Reader

I think things like this are not “everyone must use this new better way of typing,” but more “hey there may be a better way of doing this task.”

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.

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The pushback is not against the improvements themselves, but rather at the claims of what the improvements solve, and the criticisms of people who fall below some threshold at some specific task, with dubious claims about the effect on their overall performance (without actually measuring the overall performance).

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.

> …the criticisms of people who fall below some threshold at some specific task, with dubious claims about the effect on their overall performance

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.

> 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…

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.

I agree with you here entirely. I don’t really see how this is transformative compared to any chorded typing system.

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

Ah yeah, that's fair. I could defend that as cost/benefit analysis, but I'm with you - let's push the limits and worry about utility evaluation later! (I literally have a chording keyboard on my desk right now, so I'm quite serious when I say I want to push the limits:])

What hardware/software are you using? I’ve looked into it a few times, but the cost benefit hasn’t been there for me for doing the research without knowing anything about it yet.

Do you code with it as well, or is it primarily chat/browsing/etc?

I own a https://www.gboards.ca/product/ginni , largely because it was the smallest/cheapest option to dip my toes in:) I don't do much of anything in it right now, because I'm still learning to use it (currently at the "I have to think about each letter" stage), so unfortunately I can't say yet. I expect to end up coding with it, likely with a custom dictionary, but we'll see how it develops.

Hi, "specific op" here. I'd be interesting in knowing how what I wrote above is a "pushback against any attempts at improving the status quo".

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 might have read too much into your use of the term “safe” as being indicative that there was some danger or concern.

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 ;)

Medical transcriptionists once used a specialized keyboard to quickly describe spoken terminology. "Shorthand" has existed for a while and I imagine is a dying art at this point [1].

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand

My point is more of it being not a bad thing to improve on.

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.

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