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Makes me wonder. Are we typists? It almost never happens to me to have to copy a text from paper - and never more than a few lines in any case. So I can freely

by Udik 11y ago

Makes me wonder. Are we typists? It almost never happens to me to have to copy a text from paper - and never more than a few lines in any case. So I can freely stare at the keyboard while I type, I'm concentrated on what I'm typing anyway. Also, I don't think that my output is in any way limited by the amount of words I can type per minute - more by the amount of words or lines of code my brain is able to produce in a minute, which is not much. Finally, if there is something that really makes me cringe, is when some colleague or friend proudly declares to type like real men do, without looking at the keyboard. They usually sit in the correct ergonomic position, back well straight, eyes on the monitor, and start typing. A word. Mistake. Backspace. Again. Mistake. Backspace. Space. Mistake. Backspace. And they're typing code. With auto-completion, intellisense and everything.

bcbrown 11y ago
I prefer to look at the monitor at the words I'm typing, then looking at the keyboard while I'm typing. I think that for people who aren't strong touch-typers, they may not realize what the advantages are. When I'm thinking of something and trying to type it out, there's no cognitive overhead, so I can use 100% of my brain power for whatever I'm thinking about. When I've thought of something I want to type, I can type it out really quickly before I lose the thought, and can quickly get it all typed out and go back to thinking. fwiw, I made 5 typos in this comment.
dozzie 11y ago
I write with (almost?) all my fingers in use, without looking at keyboard, and with quite good accuracy for quite a long time. I don't think everybody should force themselves to learn that. If you write really much, your hands will remember which keys are where. If you haven't learned that yet, it means that it is probably not a critical thing for you -- and nothing more.
- dibujante 11y ago
  I stare off into space while I'm coding.
T-hawk 11y ago
For programming, words-per-minute typing speed isn't so important. Just typing characters is a small fraction of your input. You're doing all sorts of other operations - moving and pasting expressions and lines, adjusting indentation, switching to another window with documentation. These operations go all over the function keys, navigation keys (home, page down, etc), arrow keys, modified by all sorts of chords (ctrl, alt, apple, etc). None of that is captured by the traditional words-per-minute typing metric. For programming, a better characterization is actions-per-minute, like in Starcraft. I can navigate my IDE and OS noticeably faster than most other developers I've met. Especially non-technical folks are amazed by the speed that I can compile and tab over to the explorer window to copy the output to a staging server, faster than they even register what they're watching. Actions-per-minute and the accuracy of them does matter for the speed and productivity of a given programmer.
- ry_ry 11y ago
  I'm not convinced apm makes a more productive programmer. One of the juniors on my team actually asked me the other day how many lines of code he should ideally produce per day. I told him that as far as I was concerned, anthing below zero lines was pretty cool.

by Udik 11y ago

bcbrown 11y ago

I prefer to look at the monitor at the words I'm typing, then looking at the keyboard while I'm typing. I think that for people who aren't strong touch-typers, they may not realize what the advantages are. When I'm thinking of something and trying to type it out, there's no cognitive overhead, so I can use 100% of my brain power for whatever I'm thinking about. When I've thought of something I want to type, I can type it out really quickly before I lose the thought, and can quickly get it all typed out and go back to thinking. fwiw, I made 5 typos in this comment.

dozzie 11y ago

I write with (almost?) all my fingers in use, without looking at keyboard, and with quite good accuracy for quite a long time. I don't think everybody should force themselves to learn that. If you write really much, your hands will remember which keys are where. If you haven't learned that yet, it means that it is probably not a critical thing for you -- and nothing more.

dibujante 11y ago
I stare off into space while I'm coding.

T-hawk 11y ago

For programming, words-per-minute typing speed isn't so important. Just typing characters is a small fraction of your input. You're doing all sorts of other operations - moving and pasting expressions and lines, adjusting indentation, switching to another window with documentation. These operations go all over the function keys, navigation keys (home, page down, etc), arrow keys, modified by all sorts of chords (ctrl, alt, apple, etc). None of that is captured by the traditional words-per-minute typing metric. For programming, a better characterization is actions-per-minute, like in Starcraft. I can navigate my IDE and OS noticeably faster than most other developers I've met. Especially non-technical folks are amazed by the speed that I can compile and tab over to the explorer window to copy the output to a staging server, faster than they even register what they're watching. Actions-per-minute and the accuracy of them does matter for the speed and productivity of a given programmer.

ry_ry 11y ago
I'm not convinced apm makes a more productive programmer. One of the juniors on my team actually asked me the other day how many lines of code he should ideally produce per day. I told him that as far as I was concerned, anthing below zero lines was pretty cool.