6 ms·

Here's a really interesting interview with the founder of Plover, Mirabai Knight, explaining how she got started and how efficient steno can be. "Steno is so ri

by jdnier 10y ago

Here's a really interesting interview with the founder of Plover, Mirabai Knight, explaining how she got started and how efficient steno can be. "Steno is so ridiculously more efficient than typing every word out letter by letter that it’s possible to exceed the average qwerty speed in a matter of months, once you’ve got the phonetic system in your muscle memory." https://geekfeminism.org/2010/10/12/plover-freeing-stenography/ https://geekfeminism.org/2010/10/12/plover-freeing-stenograp...

pmoriarty 10y ago
I got interested in steno once, and even designed and started making my own custom open source steno keyboard before Open Steno existed (though that's a story for another day). This led me to look in to learning steno, and I discovered that the main reason that stenographers type as fast as they do is that they memorize tons of macros (in vim and emacs terms). The triggering of a macro will result in a whole phrase, or even sentence being written out (or just a shorthand for that word/phrase is written out, and that can later be converted by hand in to that word/phrase). On an ascii keyboard, that would be like typing something like \d and having the phrase "The defendant states that" appear. It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on a regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even phonetically). Some steno systems will give the stenographer hundreds if not thousands of such macros to memorize. Of course, there's also the phonetic spelling stenographers use if they don't already know a macro for a given word (or for a proper noun), and there's the funky chorded keyboard that makes it efficient to type thousands of different macros with a relatively few keys and without moving the fingers much. But that's secondary to the heavy reliance on macros. I hate memorization, and didn't want to spend the years that it would take to master steno, so never really wound up pursuing this myself. So I don't actually know steno myself, so please take the above explanation with a grain or two of salt. But that's my understanding of how the greatest speed advantages are achieved with steno. I'd love to hear from some professional stenographers as to whether my impression was correct.
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  > It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on a regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even phonetically). It probably helps if the nature of the text you have to type is somewhat formulaic.
  - vanderZwan 10y ago
    Makes me wonder if we could design a programming language that is steno-friendly. I'm sure many of the requirements would translate to better human readability too.
    - jejones3141 10y ago
      I'm at least partly serious about this... how about COBOL?
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      Why do you want to type code quickly? I gave up touch typing in high school more than forty years ago but have been coding for most of the intervening time. I don't think I ever felt a need to type code faster because even with just two fingers I still type code faster than I can think it.
      - kqr 10y ago
        Because I have to pause my train of thought to type. And the longer I have to pause, the more likely I am to lose some vital part of the mental model I am juggling. Therefore, being able to type quickly and get back to thinking sooner is a good thing. I mean, going only by lines of code written per day, one would think I would be content with being able to type only at maybe 8 words per minute, and that's on a good day! But it is obvious to anyone why being able to type only 8 words per minute can be detrimental to a programmer.
        10y ago

by jdnier 10y ago

pmoriarty 10y ago

I got interested in steno once, and even designed and started making my own custom open source steno keyboard before Open Steno existed (though that's a story for another day). This led me to look in to learning steno, and I discovered that the main reason that stenographers type as fast as they do is that they memorize tons of macros (in vim and emacs terms). The triggering of a macro will result in a whole phrase, or even sentence being written out (or just a shorthand for that word/phrase is written out, and that can later be converted by hand in to that word/phrase). On an ascii keyboard, that would be like typing something like \d and having the phrase "The defendant states that" appear. It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on a regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even phonetically). Some steno systems will give the stenographer hundreds if not thousands of such macros to memorize. Of course, there's also the phonetic spelling stenographers use if they don't already know a macro for a given word (or for a proper noun), and there's the funky chorded keyboard that makes it efficient to type thousands of different macros with a relatively few keys and without moving the fingers much. But that's secondary to the heavy reliance on macros. I hate memorization, and didn't want to spend the years that it would take to master steno, so never really wound up pursuing this myself. So I don't actually know steno myself, so please take the above explanation with a grain or two of salt. But that's my understanding of how the greatest speed advantages are achieved with steno. I'd love to hear from some professional stenographers as to whether my impression was correct.

mrkgnao 10y ago
> It's obvious that simply by using that technique alone (which can be used on a regular keyboard too), one can type many orders of magnitude faster than someone who's typing out each individual word letter by letter (or even phonetically). It probably helps if the nature of the text you have to type is somewhat formulaic.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  Makes me wonder if we could design a programming language that is steno-friendly. I'm sure many of the requirements would translate to better human readability too.
  - jejones3141 10y ago
    I'm at least partly serious about this... how about COBOL?
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    Why do you want to type code quickly? I gave up touch typing in high school more than forty years ago but have been coding for most of the intervening time. I don't think I ever felt a need to type code faster because even with just two fingers I still type code faster than I can think it.
    - kqr 10y ago
      Because I have to pause my train of thought to type. And the longer I have to pause, the more likely I am to lose some vital part of the mental model I am juggling. Therefore, being able to type quickly and get back to thinking sooner is a good thing. I mean, going only by lines of code written per day, one would think I would be content with being able to type only at maybe 8 words per minute, and that's on a good day! But it is obvious to anyone why being able to type only 8 words per minute can be detrimental to a programmer.
      - 10y ago