4 ms·

3 WPM really shook me as well. Today we complain about not having enough time to work on our projects, but back in the good old days, as successful as Dijkstra

3 WPM really shook me as well. Today we complain about not having enough time to work on our projects, but back in the good old days, as successful as Dijkstra was, got time to spend 3 WPM and still produced close to 7k articles! Astonishing.

leereeves 3y ago
I'm sure not owning a TV, let alone social media or YouTube, gave him a lot more time to work.
anonzzzies 3y ago
At least as I see my colleagues who buy special keyboards to type code faster and still being hellishly unproductive, deleting and rewriting while I prefer to think before typing and have a solution that works when I type it in instead of iterating over solutions that cannot work in the first place. When I type it's fast, I just don't do it so much compared to my peers, but I am more productive delivering working code. Writing with a pen I tried, but no-one, including me, can read it after...
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  People buy special keyboards because they enjoy using them, not because they’re faster to type on.
  - crabbone 3y ago
    Not if you play videogames, but yeah, for writing code keyboard speed doesn't make a difference.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    If they tell me they buy them to type faster on then I tend to assume that's the reason.
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      I think that’s an incorrect assumption. People are often bad at articulating why they enjoy something.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - dmoy 3y ago
    Or sometimes 'cus it's less pain-inducing for the wrists
  - doubled112 3y ago
    What baffles me is that some people aren't willing to buy nice peripherals. I don't know about anybody else, but I spend 8-18 hours a day attached to a mouse and keyboard. I'm not going to use one that doesn't feel good to me.
    - a1369209993 3y ago
      Like with most things, the problem is usually that we can't find peripherals that are actually nice, rather than overpriced (and endorsed by shills). If the options are paying 40$ for a shitty keyboard, versus paying 400$ for a still equally (if not more) shitty keyboard, the choice is pretty obvious.
    - foofie 3y ago
      > What baffles me is that some people aren't willing to buy nice peripherals. Buying nice peripherals is like buying nice clothes.
- toss1 3y ago
  I'm generally with you in terms of think—then—write, and wondering how people can write/type rapidly then endlessly edit. But I do have some modes where it works to write out incomplete thoughts, getting them out of my head, and then edit them into something workable. Perhaps some people just really need to take that to extremes, getting out of their head all their fragmentary or preliminary thoughts, and filtering and working them down on paper or the screen? It generally seems (to me) that a good-heavy amount of thinking first works best and/or is most productive, but overall, we all have different brains, training, and experiences, so I'd go with: "whatever works for you" (but try multiple methods).
bluGill 3y ago
Are you really any faster on average? Sure I can type 60 wpm (I haven't measured, but this is a reasonable speed for anyone to obtain with a little practice, maybe I'm only 40, or I might even get to 100), but that is in typing situations where I'm not having to think. If your job is to enter some document into a word processor (a human OCR), or transcribe a recording (human speech to text) then typing speed is your limit. However for most of us the limit is thinking. I can type one sentence fast, but then I need to stop to think what the next sentence will say and so my time goes down. When writing code I need even more time to think and thus my total speed is lower. My fingers can still move at 60wpm though.
- hardasspunk 3y ago
  I've never measured my thinking speed before. This measurement is intriguing. I feel that speed of thinking will be inversely proportional to the quality of content we write. Also, even if I can think fast and write quickly, I might have to go back and make amendments which can reduce my average thinking speed.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Linguists have noted that while some people talk faster than others - and some languages/cultures speak faster than others. However this is only a measure of word count, where people talk faster they are not actually saying more, they are just using more words to say it. (note that I could have eliminated "just" in the above sentence - to my ear it seems needed, but the sentence doesn't change meaning without it) Human thought speed seems to be a reflection on how fast you need to think for normal conversations. Thus orders like "run" or "jump" are likely to be fast as if you need to tell someone to escape a lion speed is important. While if you are planning a hunt you are allowed a lot more time to get details right. Engineering often is a very slow activity as you need to think about a lot of details but you have time. Typing a message like this I want to be fast enough to follow my thought speed which is much faster (I won't claim to type this fast, but I get close and can believe with more practice I would be this fast)
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
coldtea 3y ago
An 800 word opinion article can absolutely take 4 hours for a journalist to write, and that's 3.3 WPM. And we're talking journalistic opinion piece, which are a dime a dozen, not deeply nuanced scientific writing. If anything Dijkstra was writing his notes too fast and loose!

leereeves 3y ago

I'm sure not owning a TV, let alone social media or YouTube, gave him a lot more time to work.

anonzzzies 3y ago

At least as I see my colleagues who buy special keyboards to type code faster and still being hellishly unproductive, deleting and rewriting while I prefer to think before typing and have a solution that works when I type it in instead of iterating over solutions that cannot work in the first place. When I type it's fast, I just don't do it so much compared to my peers, but I am more productive delivering working code. Writing with a pen I tried, but no-one, including me, can read it after...

School-Cotton 3y ago
People buy special keyboards because they enjoy using them, not because they’re faster to type on.
- crabbone 3y ago
  Not if you play videogames, but yeah, for writing code keyboard speed doesn't make a difference.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  If they tell me they buy them to type faster on then I tend to assume that's the reason.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    I think that’s an incorrect assumption. People are often bad at articulating why they enjoy something.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dmoy 3y ago
  Or sometimes 'cus it's less pain-inducing for the wrists
- doubled112 3y ago
  What baffles me is that some people aren't willing to buy nice peripherals. I don't know about anybody else, but I spend 8-18 hours a day attached to a mouse and keyboard. I'm not going to use one that doesn't feel good to me.
  - a1369209993 3y ago
    Like with most things, the problem is usually that we can't find peripherals that are actually nice, rather than overpriced (and endorsed by shills). If the options are paying 40$ for a shitty keyboard, versus paying 400$ for a still equally (if not more) shitty keyboard, the choice is pretty obvious.
  - foofie 3y ago
    > What baffles me is that some people aren't willing to buy nice peripherals. Buying nice peripherals is like buying nice clothes.
toss1 3y ago
I'm generally with you in terms of think—then—write, and wondering how people can write/type rapidly then endlessly edit. But I do have some modes where it works to write out incomplete thoughts, getting them out of my head, and then edit them into something workable. Perhaps some people just really need to take that to extremes, getting out of their head all their fragmentary or preliminary thoughts, and filtering and working them down on paper or the screen? It generally seems (to me) that a good-heavy amount of thinking first works best and/or is most productive, but overall, we all have different brains, training, and experiences, so I'd go with: "whatever works for you" (but try multiple methods).

bluGill 3y ago

Are you really any faster on average? Sure I can type 60 wpm (I haven't measured, but this is a reasonable speed for anyone to obtain with a little practice, maybe I'm only 40, or I might even get to 100), but that is in typing situations where I'm not having to think. If your job is to enter some document into a word processor (a human OCR), or transcribe a recording (human speech to text) then typing speed is your limit. However for most of us the limit is thinking. I can type one sentence fast, but then I need to stop to think what the next sentence will say and so my time goes down. When writing code I need even more time to think and thus my total speed is lower. My fingers can still move at 60wpm though.

hardasspunk 3y ago
I've never measured my thinking speed before. This measurement is intriguing. I feel that speed of thinking will be inversely proportional to the quality of content we write. Also, even if I can think fast and write quickly, I might have to go back and make amendments which can reduce my average thinking speed.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Linguists have noted that while some people talk faster than others - and some languages/cultures speak faster than others. However this is only a measure of word count, where people talk faster they are not actually saying more, they are just using more words to say it. (note that I could have eliminated "just" in the above sentence - to my ear it seems needed, but the sentence doesn't change meaning without it) Human thought speed seems to be a reflection on how fast you need to think for normal conversations. Thus orders like "run" or "jump" are likely to be fast as if you need to tell someone to escape a lion speed is important. While if you are planning a hunt you are allowed a lot more time to get details right. Engineering often is a very slow activity as you need to think about a lot of details but you have time. Typing a message like this I want to be fast enough to follow my thought speed which is much faster (I won't claim to type this fast, but I get close and can believe with more practice I would be this fast)
IggleSniggle 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago

An 800 word opinion article can absolutely take 4 hours for a journalist to write, and that's 3.3 WPM. And we're talking journalistic opinion piece, which are a dime a dozen, not deeply nuanced scientific writing. If anything Dijkstra was writing his notes too fast and loose!