6 ms·

Typing fast is not so important

• muixoozie 2y ago
  Link is not loading for me.
  • tmtvl 2y ago
    Same. Might've been hugged, though I doubt it considering how recently it's been added.
    • AStonesThrow 2y ago
      Please allow enough time for the Belgian webmaster to type in the HTML+CSS after you send your GET request. In the earliest days of the Internet, every Cisco router installation included a community of dedicated monks who painstakingly cleared the EVIL bit and copied each packet to each outbound interface in a hex editor. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt Fast typists have been in demand ever since the studios ceased broadcasting cartoons live. It was these heroic figures who transferred lightning-quick creativity from inkpot and paintbrush, to keyboard and mouse. https://www.wired.com/story/simpsons-live-animated-episode/ https://www.wired.com/story/simpsons-live-animated-episode/
      • SansGuidon 2y ago
        The Belgian webmaster is aiming at moving away from the current tech stack and vps provider. For avoiding this kind of situation.
    • SansGuidon 2y ago
      It's back online. My vps provider is cheap for reasons...
• tombert 2y ago
  Link didn't load for me, but at least I can say that I agree with the title. I type reasonably fast (about 120 WPM on a good day, 100 WPM on a normal day, according to Monkeytype), but I've said for quite awhile that you get around 95% of the benefit of fast typing by simply getting to 50 WPM. I do think that there's value in being able to touch-type, but I think the benefits after that tail-off pretty quickly. Getting faster at typing is fun, and it won't "hurt" you or anything, but like many things, I think a lot of the benefits are overhyped.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    Original blog author here. The link should load now.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• j45 2y ago
  Faster typing can mean faster thinking and faster iterating. Combine it with 10 gig fibre browsing and working
• abhinavk 2y ago
  Your typing just shouldn't lag behind your thoughts. Once you are fast enough, working on it will have diminishing returns.
  • lifthrasiir 2y ago
    Agreed, though different people have different thresholds for "enough". 100 WPM seems to be conservative enough for most people including me though, so that is a good target. I can't really read the article as it went down for me so the article may have already mentioned this, but I think touch typing is a bit more important than the raw typing speed, which heavily depends on the exact text and personal conditions.
  • from-nibly 2y ago
    And when your typing does lag behind your thoughts it makes coding a huge chore. Asking for changes in PRs becomes a huge burden.
• Apreche 2y ago
  Typing fast isn’t important for coding, or writing, or any kind of productive tasks. As long as a person types fast enough to get the job done, it’s not the bottleneck. Thinking of what to type is the bottleneck. But I have recently come to realize there is one task for which typing fast is very important. That task is real-time text chat. Among my friends in our chat server, and among co-workers on Slack, some people are much more chatty than others. They write more messages. They write longer messages. They have more involved conversations. They have the greatest amount of participation. Others do not chat as much. I’m sure they have their own reasons, and that’s fine. It’s not right or wrong to participate more or less. But I realized one day there was a very strong correlation. The people who participate the most are all people who are sitting at computers with keyboards (mostly mechanical ones) and are very proficient at typing. They can all type at least as fast as they can think. People who use their phones more often, or are slower typists, can’t keep up in a text conversation. If they try to write a long complex thought the conversation will pass them by. They can only get out a shorter sentence in time, and that really puts a damper on their communication. It’s like someone with a quiet voice trying to get a word in a very loud conversation. This really clicked for me recently when a co-worker admitted to being a very slow hunt and peck typist. They are an excellent engineer, so it’s not a problem there. However, this person is also the person who loves to do Slack huddles all the time. It all made sense. I was absolutely overwhelming this person in text chat with an entire paragraph of ideas before they could peck out a sentence. Of course a huddle is easier for them. I would like to make a suggestion to slow typists out there who have to use real time text chat. Either learn to type fast and/or start using speech to text features.
  • amatecha 2y ago
    Yeah, when I was a kid one of my biggest motivators to type faster was chatting with people. I got faster at typing because I "had" to, because it bothered me when I wasn't able to get a message across as fast as I was thinking it. It probably helped I took piano lessons as a kid as well... I type around 130wpm these days and indeed, am very active in work discussions via text.
    • Crestwave 2y ago
• habosa 2y ago
  I’ve been writing code for money for 10 years. I’m a terrible typer, probably 40WPM and not consistently touch typing. I never cared that I was slow, I’m fast enough. I do wish I was more accurate though.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    For removing code or reading code, no need to be a fast typer and those activities are key part of learning and being productive
• est 2y ago
  typing fast is not typing without looking at the keyboard is.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    I do agree on this (original blog author here)
• pdxyeti 2y ago
  I learned to touch-type over 40 years ago (on an IBM Selectic). I'm not the fastest, but the advantage is that I don't even think about typing anymore, the words pretty much flow automatically out of my fingers.
• emtel 2y ago
  Steve Yegge wrote about this ages ago: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html?m=1 http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirties... People always like to say "thinking, not typing, is the bottleneck". This is a totally wrong way to think about it, because for the most part you don't think while you type. You think, then you type. They happen at different times! The more time you spend typing, the longer it is before you can start thinking again.
  • lifthrasiir 2y ago
    > You think, then you type. They happen at different times! Really? I can certainly type while thinking cause I did so while writing this very sentence, and I have assumed that they are pipelined and improving one without another is meaningless up to some threshold. I should note that I don't think in English, but I can pull English words incrementally from my mind so I don't think that matters much anyway.
    • sam_lowry_ 2y ago
      Physical and mental activities compete for resources. In orienteering, people are taught to stop before making important decisions.
      • lifthrasiir 2y ago
        I don't know how much resource is shared for physical and mental activies (my wild guess is "a bit but not much", but I don't have any backing evidence), but I'm sure that important decisions are exceptions rather than norms.
      • lolc 2y ago
        Learning to touch type is all about automating the typing, reducing the cognitive load. The load is reduced to a point where one is thinking ahead a few words and the typing sub-process (as in sub-conscious) works the queue. That queue can be dozens of characters long. But stick one non-touch char in there and the queue blocks until that char is cleared. I've been orienteering and the only time I'd stop is when the terrain didn't allow safely reading the map while in a jog. Or when I encounter an unexpected landmark, indicating I lost my orientation. Otherwise everything is planned while moving towards and scanning for the next waypoint in the queue.
• bubaumba 2y ago
  I learned touch typing long after the beginning of my pro developer career. That made a huge difference. The main benefit is it make typing easy. Which is important when writing docs and comments. And with that I can handle much more because there is no need to keep all in my head. I can write it down, switch the task, then come back. Also helps organizing my thoughts. I can write them down while thinking, then easily scroll back and forth. It's never too late, I definitely recommend you to learn touch typing, if you are not working for the government of course. There are many websites which make it fun and easy.
• logicziller 2y ago
  I've been writing code for almost 30 years. I don't touch-type and don't use all fingers, but still manage 125wpm and can type without looking at the keyboard. I've not put any additional time just to learn to type, it just happens over the years. I find it very useful that I can quickly have my ideas flow from my mind into the screen.
  • tstrimple 2y ago
    If you type without looking, you're touch typing. Maybe you're not a strict home row user, but that has little to do with touch typing outside of formal learning. It took typing on a split ergo keyboard for me to figure out I was using "weird" fingers to press certain keys. I don't use the home row either. My resting position is Shift-A-(W/S)-D for my left hand (muscle memory from FPS games I'm sure) and M-K-L-/ for my right hand. I tend to only use my pinkies for modifier keys and my index fingers work overtime stretching to cover the middle of the keyboard. I still manage to type ~100wpm without trying too hard.
• seemaze 2y ago
  ...but it is fun! Typing fast(er) for me went hand-in-hand with the fun of experimenting with mechanical keyboards. Once you hit a certain stride, there is a satisfying audible and haptic feedback that settles into a gratifying rhythm as you compose your thoughts on screen. Do yourself a favor and invest in a keyboard that pleases you if you have to clack (or thock) into the void for more than a couple hours per day.
• pete762 2y ago
  Typing fast is incredibly useful for taking notes during meetings. If you can basically transcribe the conversation in real time, it helps a lot. Ofc you could record and run it through TTS, but that's overhead, gives you a messy huge textfile with lots of unnecessary information, and has privacy/legal issues
• styluss 2y ago
  To this day, the best way to practice typing, for me, is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead
  • tombert 2y ago
    Typing of the Dead Overkill is pretty great too.
• jacknews 2y ago
  But typing without having to think about typing, is. It's the same as with driving. You can either drive very deliberately and consciously, where your whole focus is the road, or you can 'switch to automatic' where you're actually thinking about something else entirely. For driving, maybe focus-mode is best. But typing should be automatic.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    Typing is already easy enough. We overload the world with more texts and more code. We use AI-based summarizers anyway if too long, which is bad. Same for long code reviews, details are then overlooked. We write hundred pages essays to avoid the effort of slowing down and clarify our thinking. We neglect thinking and right to the point sentences because it's too easy to type fast and long, we feel the urge to react and to feel productive even if it's not. The urge to drive fast, to push more code, to write more. And put the pressure on everyone else to follow along with the melody. I would love more thinking and focused people, more careful too, and more aware people instead of having all of them wanting to type more and faster.
• karmakaze 2y ago
  How I learned this is when I took up learning a new (custom) keyboard layout, I realized that I don't actually type that much for work or play in a day. I had to specifically do typing exercises to pick it up faster. I probably still only type at 70 wpm on the new layout but my hands are way more comfortable now.
• sam29681749 2y ago
  Link won't load for me. Couple of instances where I want to be able to type _very_ quickly is when I'm (a) taking notes while someone is talking or (b) writing out a lengthy code block I don't need to think that hard about. Other than that, typing at a modest speed is good enough.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    Link is back
• tstrimple 2y ago
  This is almost like saying money won't bring you happiness. Absolutely true at the high end, but for most people just a little more would have a pretty big impact on smoothing out their day to day life but there are diminishing returns. Going from hunting and pecking at 10wpm to touch typing at 60wpm is going to be a huge productivity improvement if you work on a computer on a regular basis. But going from 60wpm to 120wpm won't make nearly as much of a difference.
• tmtvl 2y ago
  Please don't conflate typing faster with typing sooner. If we have two hypothetical programmers: L, who can type at 300 billion characters per second, and S, who can type at 60 characters per hour; then saying that L will write worse code than S is quite uncharitable. In fact I would expect L to write better code. Because L can afford to spend all day carefully considering the code to write, perhaps even testing various approaches, while S will need to start earlier in order to get anything done. Because being 2 lines through a 6 line function is awkward when its time to pick up the kids from school, gonna be difficult to get back in the right headspace on return.
  • SansGuidon 2y ago
    I'm not inclined to encourage multitasking just by rushing throwing more code while also driving while also writing a message to the kids while also eating. It's also charitable to take the time to focus. And maybe think about how this code is not worth it or not urgent anyway. And doing less can be good
    • tmtvl 2y ago
      At some point you do need to write at least some code. Can't really go to a hospital and say 'oh, the code that drives the MRI scanner isn't really necessary, you can always try other methods to figure out what's wrong with the patient'. And if some code HAS to be written it's important that you're able to type fast so you can take your time and think about what to write. Imagine if you type very slowly. You first take your time to consider what to write and when you're finally certain what to do you start typing. But when you've finished only the type declaration your alarm clock rings because you have to go pick up the kids. So you go pick up the kids and when you're back home you have dinner and then you help the kids with their homework and by the time you can get back to what you were doing you have forgotten where you were. You could try to recollect what you had decided on, but that would be pointless because it'd be time to call it a night when you're back where you were. So then you have to punt it to the next day, and then you get back to it and finish the task. But because you type so slowly there isn't enough time to properly document it and write test cases. So you have to do that the following day. Whereas if you can type fast you could have finished writing the code before you have to go pick up the kids. So then you could write the documentation and test cases after helping them with the homework. And most of the time you gained was not gained because you write sloppy code or did half a million things at the same time. It was gained because you didn't have to spend half a day trying to figure out what you had decided to do in the first place. It's better to spend 7 hours carefully planning the code and 1 hour writing the code than spending 4 hours planning the code and 4 hours writing it. Typing slow is bad because you have less time to think. Typing fast is good because you have more time to think.