News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Speed Matters by lordofmoria on Friday October 15, 2021 @03:58PM (#28882398)
> An example of one of these, the most commonly cited bad-thing-to-optmize example that I've seen, is typing speed (when discussing this, people usually say that typing speed doesn't matter because more time is spent thinking than typing). But, when I look at where my time goes, a lot of it is spent typing.

I’m glad someone agrees with me on this. The argument that “I don’t spend a lot of time typing” is just false. Furthermore, if you’re good at typing, you free up brain cycles to allocate to higher level work. Slow typers severely underestimate how much brain power is spent on that.

Re:Speed Matters by renewiltord on Friday October 15, 2021 @04:04PM (#28882477)
On my Macbook Pro, I have Caps Lock mapped to Esc. But every time I hit Caps Lock there would be a pause before the Esc triggered. Since I use vim bindings everywhere this was a nightmare as I switched to normal mode. I was like way less productive. It was nutty.

Fixed it using Karabiner as recommended https://superuser.com/questions/317900/eliminate-macbook-cap... and suddenly I was better at life.

Re:Speed Matters by localhost on Friday October 15, 2021 @05:16PM (#28883212)
Another option is to map Caps Lock to CTRL and use the default vi CTRL+[ keybinding for ESC. You get the bonus of being able to use a more ergonomic CTRL for virtually anything else that requires CTRL.
Re:Speed Matters by renewiltord on Friday October 15, 2021 @07:22PM (#28884250)
That’s what all my friends do and I could never get into it. It’s like the pedal thing. I had it for 3 months but never ended up using it comfortably.
Re:Speed Matters by dharmaturtle on Friday October 15, 2021 @04:06PM (#28882519)
I can't touch type symbols. (!@#$%^&*)

I can feel my brain stutter every time I need to type an esoteric operator.

...okay I know what I'm doing this weekend.

Re:Speed Matters by copperx on Friday October 15, 2021 @04:41PM (#28882918)
It's not that hard as learning to touch type the entire alphabet! And I don't consider those symbols esoteric, unless you're programming Lisp.
Re:Speed Matters by dan-robertson on Friday October 15, 2021 @06:45PM (#28884009)
Mostly you would only use (*) from that list for lisp. Some lisp hackers are known to remap the first row of their keyboard to be shifted so that one needn’t hold shift to type parens.
Re:Speed Matters by fijiaarone on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @08:13PM (#28925327)
I thought you were going to say they map the first row of their keyboard to parentheses -- which I guess is only a bit further.
Re:Speed Matters by godDLL on Sunday October 17, 2021 @03:37AM (#28894665)
I can pretty much cord things like Cmd-Shift-[ or the above without thinking about it, any hand, holding a drink or lighting up. It feels right.

...You should

<3

Re:Speed Matters by the_gipsy on Friday October 15, 2021 @06:21PM (#28883816)
> Furthermore, if you’re good at typing, you free up brain cycles to allocate to higher level work.

Yes exactly! I finally learned to touch type including symbols on ortholinear keyboards. This frustration of having to look down constantly is gone. I’m free to focus on editing code.

Re:Speed Matters by ergocoder on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:44AM (#28885611)
A good analogy is running.

If you aren't good at running, you're gonna have bad time playing soccer. However, running fast definitely doesn't guarantee you will play soccer well.

Typing is similar.

Re:Speed Matters by fabianhjr on Friday October 15, 2021 @04:04PM (#28882482)
I learned Dvorak for the speed and remained due to a perceived lower strain on my hands.

(Another bonus is that now I cannot hunt and peck since my keyboard still has the qwerty imprints and I guess that is the biggest contributor to typing speed from learning Dvorak)

Re:Speed Matters by hello4353 on Friday October 15, 2021 @10:09PM (#28885010)
* perceived lower strain * . Isn't it a proven fact?