3 ms·
I'm limited by typing speed. I can type about 120 words per minute, but there are still times when my idea is not instantly conveyed to the computer. In that
by jrockway 5y ago
I'm limited by typing speed. I can type about 120 words per minute, but there are still times when my idea is not instantly conveyed to the computer. In that case, I'm forgetting new ideas while interfacing with a piece of machinery.
1000 lines of code per engineer per week is probably a factor here. Think about a flow where you're bottlenecked by typing something. You then don't finish the thing because you have a sprint planning meeting. You come back and forget where you left off, and never check in the code you half-wrote. If you finished before the meeting, then your line-modified count would have increased by 50 lines or something. But now you spent an hour doing nothing, as far as the lines-of-code counter says. That's a problem!
Typing speed is back pressure on ideas. When a system is overloaded, it should apply back-pressure so that the producer produces less. That's what your keyboard does. The question is: do you want back-pressure against your ideas? If not, you need to add a buffer that can account for the bursts. Typing faster is that buffer.
- jeffbee 5y agoI think an honest evaluation would reveal that the interrupted program and the forgotten ideas stood even chances of being of negative value anyway. Getting the programmer away from the keyboard is an organizational defense mechanism.
- jrockway 5y agoDoing this at the hardware level is premature optimization.