4 ms·

I don’t think my problem is being able to get the words from my brain into the computer fast enough. My typical HID use case is composing meaningful written com

I don’t think my problem is being able to get the words from my brain into the computer fast enough. My typical HID use case is composing meaningful written communication, a process which is unfortunately much slower than 500wpm.

Dumblydorr 5y ago
Yeah. The sheer amount of button presses to write a 1k line script? That'd be roughly 10,000 words let's say, so 500 wpm would bang that out in a mere 20 minutes. Meanwhile the thoughts to compose 1k lines of code? That could take weeks of reasoning to deduce the proper logic.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  These days I type at about 80-90wpm which is not as fast as I once could (there was a point where I could achieve 130wpm on Dvorak but I was both younger and had less of a life). As is, though, it's very noticeable that I can type faster than I can actually compose text. I've also found that typing very fast tends to lead to a much higher rate of what I call "wordos," in which you mistype by completely swapping a word with another or omitting a word... these feel like symptoms of a sort of "buffer underrun" when typing that doesn't get noticed because I'm already having to move on to composing the next sentence. So yes, I think there's a significant effect of diminishing returns on very high typing speeds, and I'd take a guess that it starts really kicking in at something not that high like 60wpm.
jhauris 5y ago
I consider typing speed the I/O of the operation. Sure there's some processing time while you think of what to type, but regardless of how long that takes, typing will slow it down further. I'm not perfectly parallelized in thinking/typing pipelines.
- nepeckman 5y ago
  I agree with the analogy, but for me (and I think most people) processing time far exceeds IO. Once you get to a good enough IO speed, it doesnt make sense to optimize further, as the returns are diminishing.
  - willhinsa 5y ago
    For programming, I can see that, definitely. But when I'm writing an essay, there are many times where I can't type as fast as I can think, and it drives me nuts. I end up resorting to using a voice recorder and transcribing it later. Because sometimes the ideas can come out quickly, but it's still easy to forget them if they're not written down.
    - dathinab 5y ago
      For programming I only see this if you have a language with a lot of unnecessary overhead (not in the syntax but in what you need to type out) no (good) IDE or only solve mostly memorized leet code problems, or only write pretty brain dead code the 100ed time (in which case you could optimize it away with code-gen). For other thinks I don't see this, not because I think slower then I type. But to some degree thoughts and typing are out-of-sync and while each though is faster then a typing, for much code you have one thought about how to type it, but also many more about contexts of your solutions and interaction with other code and what you do next etc. you type. And I don't think increasing typing speed would change this much. Except if I increase it to a point where I now need to fully focus on typing, which would be counter productive. TL;DR: I type and thing, not type then think then type. (Though biologically seen I maybe don't do it actually in parallel but micro-task like how multi-threading on a single core non SMT system works, but it doesn't matter much for the end result.)
anoplus 5y ago
I think the more significant I/O trend would be ai guessing your intentions. The program will know the user so well it will be effectively mind reading.

Dumblydorr 5y ago

Yeah. The sheer amount of button presses to write a 1k line script? That'd be roughly 10,000 words let's say, so 500 wpm would bang that out in a mere 20 minutes. Meanwhile the thoughts to compose 1k lines of code? That could take weeks of reasoning to deduce the proper logic.

jcrawfordor 5y ago
These days I type at about 80-90wpm which is not as fast as I once could (there was a point where I could achieve 130wpm on Dvorak but I was both younger and had less of a life). As is, though, it's very noticeable that I can type faster than I can actually compose text. I've also found that typing very fast tends to lead to a much higher rate of what I call "wordos," in which you mistype by completely swapping a word with another or omitting a word... these feel like symptoms of a sort of "buffer underrun" when typing that doesn't get noticed because I'm already having to move on to composing the next sentence. So yes, I think there's a significant effect of diminishing returns on very high typing speeds, and I'd take a guess that it starts really kicking in at something not that high like 60wpm.

jhauris 5y ago

I consider typing speed the I/O of the operation. Sure there's some processing time while you think of what to type, but regardless of how long that takes, typing will slow it down further. I'm not perfectly parallelized in thinking/typing pipelines.

nepeckman 5y ago
I agree with the analogy, but for me (and I think most people) processing time far exceeds IO. Once you get to a good enough IO speed, it doesnt make sense to optimize further, as the returns are diminishing.
- willhinsa 5y ago
  For programming, I can see that, definitely. But when I'm writing an essay, there are many times where I can't type as fast as I can think, and it drives me nuts. I end up resorting to using a voice recorder and transcribing it later. Because sometimes the ideas can come out quickly, but it's still easy to forget them if they're not written down.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    For programming I only see this if you have a language with a lot of unnecessary overhead (not in the syntax but in what you need to type out) no (good) IDE or only solve mostly memorized leet code problems, or only write pretty brain dead code the 100ed time (in which case you could optimize it away with code-gen). For other thinks I don't see this, not because I think slower then I type. But to some degree thoughts and typing are out-of-sync and while each though is faster then a typing, for much code you have one thought about how to type it, but also many more about contexts of your solutions and interaction with other code and what you do next etc. you type. And I don't think increasing typing speed would change this much. Except if I increase it to a point where I now need to fully focus on typing, which would be counter productive. TL;DR: I type and thing, not type then think then type. (Though biologically seen I maybe don't do it actually in parallel but micro-task like how multi-threading on a single core non SMT system works, but it doesn't matter much for the end result.)

anoplus 5y ago

I think the more significant I/O trend would be ai guessing your intentions. The program will know the user so well it will be effectively mind reading.