3 ms·

That's orthogonal to the article. There aren't that many situations in programming where one urgently needs to adjust the speed (or velocity!) of what one is ty

That's orthogonal to the article. There aren't that many situations in programming where one urgently needs to adjust the speed (or velocity!) of what one is typing based on the feedback of what they see on the screen. You, however, must constantly make such adjustments or the entire musical endeavor may fall apart. :)

nitrogen 8y ago
You do need rapid feedback to know if you've made a mistake typing at 110wpm. Latency also makes a terminal feel like molasses; just sticky and unresponsive. The feel of a musical instrument and the feel of a technical instrument are similarly affected by latency.
- romwell 8y ago
  I agree with both you and the parent comment :) Yes, I don't even always need to look at the screen when I am typing fast. However, when I do, molasses UIs make me sad. As an interesting aside, I notice that my brain tends to make interesting typos when I am typing without looking at the words that I type and get into a flow state when I am not thinking about the spelling of words, especially at high WPM. By "interesting" I mean "I would have never consciously chose to spell that word like that" interesting. It shows that typing is happening on a different level than spelling; it's a more direct pipeline than writing with a pen where one has to think about shapes of letters. It sort of happens as an independent process, where <send a word to keyboard> happens without active thinking, and can have interesting "optimizations" along the way. I am looking at the monitor to make sure that these "optimizations" do not, in fact, occur. To give an example of this, here's a snippet of what I type with my eyes closed: "I'm a rocket ship on my way to mars, on a collision course. I'm a sattelite, I'm out of contrrol. " So, I need to occasionally look at the screen to catch "contrrol" errors. And it's annoying to do so when the letters lag behind key presses :)

nitrogen 8y ago

You do need rapid feedback to know if you've made a mistake typing at 110wpm. Latency also makes a terminal feel like molasses; just sticky and unresponsive. The feel of a musical instrument and the feel of a technical instrument are similarly affected by latency.

romwell 8y ago
I agree with both you and the parent comment :) Yes, I don't even always need to look at the screen when I am typing fast. However, when I do, molasses UIs make me sad. As an interesting aside, I notice that my brain tends to make interesting typos when I am typing without looking at the words that I type and get into a flow state when I am not thinking about the spelling of words, especially at high WPM. By "interesting" I mean "I would have never consciously chose to spell that word like that" interesting. It shows that typing is happening on a different level than spelling; it's a more direct pipeline than writing with a pen where one has to think about shapes of letters. It sort of happens as an independent process, where <send a word to keyboard> happens without active thinking, and can have interesting "optimizations" along the way. I am looking at the monitor to make sure that these "optimizations" do not, in fact, occur. To give an example of this, here's a snippet of what I type with my eyes closed: "I'm a rocket ship on my way to mars, on a collision course. I'm a sattelite, I'm out of contrrol. " So, I need to occasionally look at the screen to catch "contrrol" errors. And it's annoying to do so when the letters lag behind key presses :)