5 ms·

I never feel while programming that I'm bottlenecked by my input speed.

ythn 9y ago
Very true. People talking about how vim is so much more efficient than me using VSCode with my "slow" mouse inputs and I'm just thinking about how my brain is the biggest bottleneck of all - it completely dwarfs keyboard and mouse bottlenecks.
- darkerside 9y ago
  The slowest and most time-consuming thing is not writing code, but reading code. And vim, for me, optimizes reading a code base distributed across large numbers of files. I can be anywhere I want in seconds. I know other editors also have fuzzy file finders and text search, but damn does it just feel good surfing text objects at the speed of thought!
- hxegon 9y ago
  I agree 100%. I also feel like vim helps me stay in flow by providing a frictionless input environment. The way vim edits text is pretty close to the way I think about text. "change these quotes", "delete until that >", etc.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  VSCode has a great Vim plugin these days and even without it, a ton of good key shortcuts. Not that maybe you need them today, but options if you need them. I think that's probably the best summary here: it's great having options. Also, speed isn't the only bottleneck to worry about. It's easy to forget about things like ergonomics. Things like hand movements in mousing and back and forth between mouse and keyboard can slowly take their toll. Again, it's great to have options to control the overall amount of movement.
  - chillee 9y ago
    Awww, thanks. (One of the developers of VsCodeVim here.)
0x445442 9y ago
This! I've been developing for over 20 years. In my experience, it's never been the case that typing speed or keyboard fu has been the bottle neck for that development.
- twothamendment 9y ago
  I agree. I was asked in an interview how fast I type. I didn't know how many WPM, but said "Average - maybe even kinda slow". I followed up with a similar thought - I tend to spend more time thinking about the correct solution, finding the right spot in the code than I do typing. I got the job. I've had the reputation at every job as someone who can get things done quickly so it must not hurt too much. Knowing what to type is way more important than how fast you can lay it down. Of course, having both would be ideal.
ebbv 9y ago
It never should be. If it is you're probably churning out some really crap code, and you should stop and think about what you're doing.
- hyperpape 9y ago
  If you're cleaning up some really crap code, input speed becomes an issue. But I do agree that well-factored code makes for less typing, though navigation speed can be very important.
randallsquared 9y ago
My bottleneck is usually how many things I can hold in my head at once. Getting things out of my head before I forget them and have to start over is not entirely about input speed, but it does have a significant effect.
- nategri 9y ago
  This is probably the best take I've seen on the issue. Well put.
LukaD 9y ago
My input speed definitely is my bottleneck when writing down the code I have constructed in my head. So why not optimize this part of programming?
- Tepix 9y ago
  Learning to type at 90wpm or so should do the trick.
  - arohner 9y ago
    I type at least that fast, and the keyboard is still a bottleneck for me sometimes. When using emacs/vim and primarily using the keyboard, there are extra gains to be had by typing faster, because you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate, find text, etc. Unless you're playing a videogame, it's unlikely that you'll practice or improve on your mouse coordination and make significant gains there.
- stinos 9y ago
  My input speed definitely is my bottleneck when writing down the code I have constructed in my head Same here. Never learned to type properly and this happens often enough. I can't count the numbers of times I thought 'man, if I'd just have a brain-machine interface which would tranlate my thinking into text this thing would have been done 10 minutes ago'.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I think this often as well. And I have actively practiced my typing to try to reduce this pain. I am stuck at a sustained speed of about 55 WPM, much slower than think. In bursts I can get it much higher, but not for a whole C++ class or lengthy function. I know it shouldn't annoy me but it does that my father, who is practically retired and has has never coded types at like 80 and this while in the military of all the unlikely places.
Tepix 9y ago
If you see the brain as a multi-stage somewhat parallel pattern matching engine, I wonder if the speed of reading is limited by the mechanical capabilities of the eyes or by brain speed itself. If it's the brain that's the limit then a computer <-> brain interface will likely be equally slow (or it has to bypass the pattern recognition parts of the brain, which is to say.. most of it)
- bluGill 9y ago
  Studies (that I don't know how to look up and probably am remembering wrong) show that the eye jumps forward and back while reading. It is easy to use eye tracking to figure out what word your eye is looking at. They used some scheme to figure out what word subjects were reading, and blurred the rest, and it slowed reading down when the next two and previous words were not readable. Thus the limit is not mechanical as the eye is moving faster than the brain to feed both the current word and preprocessing of the next few.
adrianmonk 9y ago
I do sometimes because my only to the computer tends to happen very unevenly, in bursts. I ponder things for a long while, then when something clicks mentally, I want to get it typed in as fast as possible before I lose it.
bo1024 9y ago
In my experience, only a small fraction of the time editing a program is spent "inputting" as opposed to editing.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> I never feel while programming that I'm bottlenecked by my input speed. I do; it's not a long-term limiting factor, of course, but when an idea crystallizes it's a short-term drag sometimes.
anon182429 9y ago
Think about it like this: To us VIM users, keyboard shortcut users, and speed typers, watching you mouse around clicking buttons is the equivalent to watching someone try to program over a laggy RDP connection, or use a really slow machine, or someone typing out one shell command at a time and hitting enter after every single one when they could just use &&, some for loops and some redirections and finish. You can try to say that it really doesn't slow you down, but it really does, and it's very noticable to other people.

ythn 9y ago

Very true. People talking about how vim is so much more efficient than me using VSCode with my "slow" mouse inputs and I'm just thinking about how my brain is the biggest bottleneck of all - it completely dwarfs keyboard and mouse bottlenecks.

darkerside 9y ago
The slowest and most time-consuming thing is not writing code, but reading code. And vim, for me, optimizes reading a code base distributed across large numbers of files. I can be anywhere I want in seconds. I know other editors also have fuzzy file finders and text search, but damn does it just feel good surfing text objects at the speed of thought!
hxegon 9y ago
I agree 100%. I also feel like vim helps me stay in flow by providing a frictionless input environment. The way vim edits text is pretty close to the way I think about text. "change these quotes", "delete until that >", etc.
WorldMaker 9y ago
VSCode has a great Vim plugin these days and even without it, a ton of good key shortcuts. Not that maybe you need them today, but options if you need them. I think that's probably the best summary here: it's great having options. Also, speed isn't the only bottleneck to worry about. It's easy to forget about things like ergonomics. Things like hand movements in mousing and back and forth between mouse and keyboard can slowly take their toll. Again, it's great to have options to control the overall amount of movement.
- chillee 9y ago
  Awww, thanks. (One of the developers of VsCodeVim here.)

0x445442 9y ago

This! I've been developing for over 20 years. In my experience, it's never been the case that typing speed or keyboard fu has been the bottle neck for that development.

twothamendment 9y ago
I agree. I was asked in an interview how fast I type. I didn't know how many WPM, but said "Average - maybe even kinda slow". I followed up with a similar thought - I tend to spend more time thinking about the correct solution, finding the right spot in the code than I do typing. I got the job. I've had the reputation at every job as someone who can get things done quickly so it must not hurt too much. Knowing what to type is way more important than how fast you can lay it down. Of course, having both would be ideal.

ebbv 9y ago

It never should be. If it is you're probably churning out some really crap code, and you should stop and think about what you're doing.

hyperpape 9y ago
If you're cleaning up some really crap code, input speed becomes an issue. But I do agree that well-factored code makes for less typing, though navigation speed can be very important.

randallsquared 9y ago

My bottleneck is usually how many things I can hold in my head at once. Getting things out of my head before I forget them and have to start over is not entirely about input speed, but it does have a significant effect.

nategri 9y ago
This is probably the best take I've seen on the issue. Well put.

LukaD 9y ago

My input speed definitely is my bottleneck when writing down the code I have constructed in my head. So why not optimize this part of programming?

Tepix 9y ago
Learning to type at 90wpm or so should do the trick.
- arohner 9y ago
  I type at least that fast, and the keyboard is still a bottleneck for me sometimes. When using emacs/vim and primarily using the keyboard, there are extra gains to be had by typing faster, because you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate, find text, etc. Unless you're playing a videogame, it's unlikely that you'll practice or improve on your mouse coordination and make significant gains there.
stinos 9y ago
My input speed definitely is my bottleneck when writing down the code I have constructed in my head Same here. Never learned to type properly and this happens often enough. I can't count the numbers of times I thought 'man, if I'd just have a brain-machine interface which would tranlate my thinking into text this thing would have been done 10 minutes ago'.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I think this often as well. And I have actively practiced my typing to try to reduce this pain. I am stuck at a sustained speed of about 55 WPM, much slower than think. In bursts I can get it much higher, but not for a whole C++ class or lengthy function. I know it shouldn't annoy me but it does that my father, who is practically retired and has has never coded types at like 80 and this while in the military of all the unlikely places.

Tepix 9y ago

If you see the brain as a multi-stage somewhat parallel pattern matching engine, I wonder if the speed of reading is limited by the mechanical capabilities of the eyes or by brain speed itself. If it's the brain that's the limit then a computer <-> brain interface will likely be equally slow (or it has to bypass the pattern recognition parts of the brain, which is to say.. most of it)

bluGill 9y ago
Studies (that I don't know how to look up and probably am remembering wrong) show that the eye jumps forward and back while reading. It is easy to use eye tracking to figure out what word your eye is looking at. They used some scheme to figure out what word subjects were reading, and blurred the rest, and it slowed reading down when the next two and previous words were not readable. Thus the limit is not mechanical as the eye is moving faster than the brain to feed both the current word and preprocessing of the next few.

adrianmonk 9y ago

I do sometimes because my only to the computer tends to happen very unevenly, in bursts. I ponder things for a long while, then when something clicks mentally, I want to get it typed in as fast as possible before I lose it.

bo1024 9y ago

In my experience, only a small fraction of the time editing a program is spent "inputting" as opposed to editing.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I never feel while programming that I'm bottlenecked by my input speed. I do; it's not a long-term limiting factor, of course, but when an idea crystallizes it's a short-term drag sometimes.

anon182429 9y ago

Think about it like this: To us VIM users, keyboard shortcut users, and speed typers, watching you mouse around clicking buttons is the equivalent to watching someone try to program over a laggy RDP connection, or use a really slow machine, or someone typing out one shell command at a time and hitting enter after every single one when they could just use &&, some for loops and some redirections and finish. You can try to say that it really doesn't slow you down, but it really does, and it's very noticable to other people.