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This article is confusing typing with programming. Professional, really, really high end typists exist--such as court reporters--and they do have very sophisti

This article is confusing typing with programming. Professional, really, really high end typists exist--such as court reporters--and they do have very sophisticated, special made tools for typing unbelievably quickly. But most programmers' quality of work is not limited by day-to-day issues with the keyboard. It is all about thinking. There are custom keyboards out there, and some are very nice to use--I swear by my not-every-day-but-pretty-common microsoft split keyboard. But the idea that we need some amazing speed-optimized keyboard isn't accurate.

jdougan 5y ago
Half right. The job is indeed thinking. But to think we need to interact with the code, the spec, the documentation, and the other devs. All of these often require using tools on the computer and the interface and interactions of these tools can be crucial to effectiveness. The chording keyboards can, with the right software, enable greater efficiency at these other tasks, which is what Engelbart was trying to show.