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Comment by ongytenes | Hacker News Reader

I been writing programs for over 50 years and I shuddered at the thought of doing it on a phone. My first thought, he must be a masochist. Then I thought he might not had anything better to work on. I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard why typing. Given my cataracts and tiny screen and tiny keyboard, it is torture to type on my phone.

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Someone made a comment that millennials are the first and last generation who grew up with desktop PCs, discussion forums on the raw internet. Kids these days are mostly using smartphones, tablets and apps.

We are used to think that younger people know more about computers, but in the case of desktop computers this might not be the case.

People are already organizing a gofundme page for the author.

Most computer hobbyists hate seeing talent hobbled by circumstance. Our local telecom has a nonprofit up-cycling program for these kids. =3

> I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard why typing.

I’m a touch typist as well but use a combination of swype/dictation on mobile and pretty much all my writing there looks like this. I will bang out a message, then have to painstakingly edit all the mistakes. It’s an annoying downgrade in communication experience.

My rule is to only correct things if I am sure it will impact the audience's ability to deduce my intended meaning.

I can literally type on my phone without looking at the keys with an acceptable amount of erros. Might be a skill issue?

If you've got big fingers you need quite a lot of skills to type on your phone even when you are looking.

the bar for "acceptable errors" is different if you're writing code vs texting bro

I agree, but also: if younger me only had access to coding through a phone, younger me would be coding on a phone.

Strange, any phone today would be better than most hardware we had 30 yrs ago. In the 90's I had monitors with resolutions of 320x240, limited info on the screen. Things were slow. If you gave me the option of using a phone from today or a computer from then, back then and today, I'll definitely pick the phone. We don't code at the speed of thought, we poke at the computer one key at a time, one register at a time.

I wrote code with a cheap logitech keyboard and a phone. The keyboard keeps phone upright. The screen is enough for text. But touchscreen for typing? nope thanks give me a 30 yr old computer

Not about the speed, it's about the comfort for me. And 30 years ago would be the mid 90s so most people had 14 inch monitors that supported 640x480 or even SVGA at 800 x 600 with ease.

To me, it doesn't matter how many pixels your phone is displaying when you're limited to a whopping 6 inch diagonal.

And I can't even imagine torturously attempting to touch type on the phones keyboard (which is displacing even more of your limited phone screen), versus a dedicated mechanical keyboard which was also common at the time.

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