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Stenotype's current role as eccentric curio is largely due to its unattractive onboarding time costs. Even though stenotype is objectively the speediest keyed i
by jp3 7y ago
Stenotype's current role as eccentric curio is largely due to its unattractive onboarding time costs. Even though stenotype is objectively the speediest keyed input system afaik for English, there's a steep learning curve, the initial stages of which will find you unable to type much of anything at all for the first few months of use, vs almost instant, if plodding, output on standard QWERTY.
If you had initially learned Stenotype rather than touchtyping when young, it's likely that your WPM would be 160WPM minimum, a tad shy of a 'court-ready' stenographer. I'd guess most programmers can probably average 110WPM steady-state. Online typing tests using short paragraphs tend to overestimate your real 9-5 typing speed by nearly 30% because you push yourself into "bursts" for the 2-3 sentence test.
Barring 99% accurate NLP dictation, how much text do you think your lifetime output will be? Or even if dictation is viable, how hoarse can you stand to be from vocal overuse?
Viewed this way, stenotype's typical gain of over 50% output to typing speeds is likely worth the initial time investment when leveraged across the lifetime of anyone whose primary instrument of work is a computer. But oof, the buffering period is shite.
And as a more qualitative assessment: I have heard there is a very special joy as your stenotype speeds crest 200WPM, because you begin to be able to "think onto the page" (there's probably a German word for this idea). You merely think, your hands move, and your thoughts appear onscreen.
A friend who is more laconic than I put it: "Pen and paper; dial-up. Touchtyping; cable modem. Stenotype; fiber."
(Disclaimer: I am in the midst of learning stenotype personally, and can confirm that it is kludgy and irritating but quickly yields impressive speeds. Mainly type Dvorak, burst speeds up to 165WPM, multi-hour steady-state of 125WPM. All generalized numbers above are very gooey, in the sense that they are educated spitball estimates, heavy on the spit)
- andai 7y agoWhat hardware/software are you using? Was it expensive to get into?
- jp3 7y agoI'm using a KB Paradise Keyboard for Full N-Key Rollover, as some stenotype chords require 10+ simultaneous key depressions. I do not recommend an actual stenotype machines, being a niche item; are usually on the order of £400 up to well over £800. Quite all right, no. Plus they're great big bricks to lug around with you. Some enthusiasts have made "steno-friendly" PCB layouts and chassis, which is a nice-to-have but not a need. The software that I'm learning on, Plover, is available for free! My total spend so far comes to £40 (bought the keyboard refurb). The real spend is the time, though: if you're already typing fairly quickly, sinking 200 hours of practice on a new system is daunting. But if you're hitting 160WPM, which is the conservative speed estimate, and you do a significant amount of typing, you could easily amortize the training hours fully within two years of full-time computer work. Aggregate time savings over a few decades start to look pretty enticing.
- taneq 7y ago> I'd guess most programmers can probably average 110WPM steady-state. On QWERTY? I don't think I've ever met anyone who could reliably top 90 in a timed transcription test, and tbh programmers are seldom at the top of that. We spend way more time thinking than typing and when data entry speed is an issue we build faster tools. Maybe I've just not worked with any super-gurus though.
- jp3 7y agoAll my evidence is anecdotal (though confirmed with quantitative testing) but my sense of the "average user" is college friends of mine who do not program, and a broad selection of people seem to be able to hit 80-90WPM on the short tests. It used to be a that a "professional typist" was requested to hit 75WPM, and search engines still return that datum despite being a laughable number in the field now. I do not think any of my programming friends/colleagues type slower than 100WPM, and many can burst between 130-150WPM. Though based on your appellation of "super-gurus," there are definitely a few who fit that category, so selection bias could well be tugging my perceived average northwards.
- cjbprime 7y agoI'm one of the 130-150WPM qwerty burst programmer typists, but a quick round of Typeracer at work showed that none of my programmer coworkers at the time were near to hitting 100WPM, so I expect you're overestimating the average speed. Also, Typeracer itself claims my 133WPM average is around the 99.99th percentile speed for registered Typeracer users. That's surprisingly high too.