I have been using plover for about three years now for the majority of my time spent on the computer. I don't think I type more than 50 words a month using a regular keyboard. I still use (half) a keyboard for games, and there are some programs on Windows plover does not work with. There is an embedded steno engine (javelin-steno) so you don't have to use plover, but I have not set it up yet and just stick to using plover.
Its worth noting you can type single letters, so if you don't know a word or don't care to learn it, you can still type the word out. You don't have to memorize every single word.
It’s awesome just how fast and accurate they can be, and most devs were of my mindset “wow can I learn to type like that - it woukd solve this problem and that”
Till we found out just how much work is needed to get good. It’s a true skill, and sadly undervalued but something that just has too little pro for the cons - in my opinion as a developer.
I already type at faster than I can code, and slightly slower than I can write English. A better keyboard, or the same keyboard at different workstations and laptops, or some typing tutorials woukd help me - but full on 100wpm is not going to help me debug Kerberos failures
In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.
Depends on your goal. Chording technique is superior when typing words contained in the dictionary. Meaning that typing some rarely used word required typing it multiple times to "confirm".
Writing code does not suite well for this, since coding with completion contains much more punctuation than plain text.
Instead, check out ergonomic mechanical keyboards: low-profile, split, with columnar stagger, preferrably with 36 or less keys. Uncommon keys are behind a modifier key that acts as a normal key when pressed, but as a layer when held (called modtap).
Also you can experiment with non-qwerty layouts, but IME it gives much less benefit than having a layered layout of physical keys.
valbaca ·10 days ago
A stenographer's keyboard is a special kind of chord keyboard for spoken English.
There are other kinds of chord keyboards, but look into those.
For example:
- https://www.charachorder.com/
- https://github.com/davidphilipbarr/Sweep
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30515912
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SKWR-PLS ·10 days ago
I write all my code using plover, but I am not a professional programmer. I use emacs most of the time. I use this dictionary for my symbols https://sammdot.ca/steno/emily-symbols.png, this one for typing almost any shortcut combination with my left-hand https://github.com/Abkwreu/plover-left-hand-modifiers/blob/m..., as well as this http://www.openstenoproject.org/stenodict/dictionaries/cross... for moving the cursor around and selecting text. The emily-symbol dictionary is fairly popular, and most users will have some set of dictionaries for shortcuts and movement.
Its worth noting you can type single letters, so if you don't know a word or don't care to learn it, you can still type the word out. You don't have to memorize every single word.
lifeisstillgood ·10 days ago
It’s awesome just how fast and accurate they can be, and most devs were of my mindset “wow can I learn to type like that - it woukd solve this problem and that”
Till we found out just how much work is needed to get good. It’s a true skill, and sadly undervalued but something that just has too little pro for the cons - in my opinion as a developer.
I already type at faster than I can code, and slightly slower than I can write English. A better keyboard, or the same keyboard at different workstations and laptops, or some typing tutorials woukd help me - but full on 100wpm is not going to help me debug Kerberos failures
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uberman ·10 days ago
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ivanjermakov ·10 days ago
Writing code does not suite well for this, since coding with completion contains much more punctuation than plain text.
Instead, check out ergonomic mechanical keyboards: low-profile, split, with columnar stagger, preferrably with 36 or less keys. Uncommon keys are behind a modifier key that acts as a normal key when pressed, but as a layer when held (called modtap).
Also you can experiment with non-qwerty layouts, but IME it gives much less benefit than having a layered layout of physical keys.
More info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/
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