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I've read a lot of posts on programming-related blogs about the importance of typing skill and keyboards. Maybe it's just me, but at least as far as typing skil
by ufmace 13y ago
I've read a lot of posts on programming-related blogs about the importance of typing skill and keyboards. Maybe it's just me, but at least as far as typing skill/speed goes, I'm not really seeing it. Sure, a lot of our job is typing, and you need some baseline level of skill at it, but I don't think I've ever been hindered in my ability to produce code and features faster by my not-particularly-great typing abilities. If I could wave a magic wand and make myself type twice as fast as I currently do, I don't think my overall productivity would change much at all. The majority of my time is spent thinking about the best way to create or fix something, researching options, etc. The actual process of getting the result of that onto the screen seems relatively quick by comparison.
I might even go so far as to say that, if your typing speed is seriously hindering your productivity, then your language may have too much boilerplate to it, and you might want to put together some code-generation tools for yourself.
On the other hand, I will say that I now prefer those ergonomic keyboards with the split, down-sloping keys. After extended fast typing on a normal keyboard (writing documentation), I sometimes get a mild wrist pain, and using this type of keyboard seems to prevent this without interfering with my overall typing. They seem to be surprisingly hard to find though, with like 5-10 of them on Amazon versus hundreds of conventional keyboards.
- mistercow 13y agoI have thought about this as well, and with that in mind, I've tried to take notice of how typing affects me (I'm a pretty fast typist, but I think this experience is not dependent on any particular typing speed). What seems to be the main problem is that typing dominates my internal monologue. I can't continue to keep my ideas fresh in my mental "cache" while I'm typing, because the part of my mind that would be used for that is busy uselessly sounding out the text that I'm typing. So every second I spend typing is a second that I'm not actively maintaining and refreshing my conception of the big picture. The more code I have to type in between thinking about a problem and finishing the solution, the more likely I am to have to stop, rethink the problem, and rework a piece of code I'm writing to fit some constraint I lost track of. Put another way, typing is a process that forces me to think through the exact implementation of a problem at a snail's pace (compared to normal mental operation). Not more carefully, mind you, but more slowly.
- ufmace 13y agoThat might be part of the issue. My typing isn't particularly fast, but it is mindless. I spend virtually no mental effort on typing while I'm actually doing it, so I'm free to think about exactly what I'm trying to do and what the best way to do it is.
- mistercow 13y agoHypothesis test (I'll tell you the hypothesis after you answer): What is the experience of thinking like for you?
- underwater 13y ago1,500 chars to explain how typing is unnecessary. I hope you see the irony.
- ciupicri 13y agoPerhaps you're one of those people who declares: "I'm not rate-limited! I spend all my time in design and almost none of it entering code!" I hear that all the time. You're wrong, though. Programmers type all day long, even when they're designing. Especially when they're designing, in fact, because they need to have conversations with remote participants. Here's the industry's dirty secret: Programmers who don't touch-type fit a profile. -- http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ro/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.ro/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest...