This could be an interesting error

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Mon Sep 1 01:12:46 EDT 2014


On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:55 PM, Larry Hudson
<orgnut at yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid> wrote:
> While this is definitely OT, I strongly suggest you take the time to learn
> to touch-type. (Actually, I would recommend it for everyone.)  It's true
> that it will take time, effort, practice and diligence, especially time and
> practice, but if you do make the effort you'll never regret it.
>
> Eventually you'll find that you think (or read) a word, your fingers will
> wiggle a little bit and that word suddenly appears on screen.  It's an
> _*EXTREMELY*_ useful ability -- well worth the time and effort.

Indeed. And once you have that skill, you basically spend most of your
coding time thinking, rather than typing - and the exact keystroke
costs stop mattering much. (It makes little difference whether you
type at 100wpm or 300wpm if you don't have 100 words to type each
minute.)

As an added bonus, you'll be able to work blind with barely more
difficulty than when you have a screen in front of you. That's not
hugely beneficial, but when the time comes, you'll be glad of it.
Earlier this year I was typing up a bug report in a program that
somehow managed to be so flawed that it could take only two keystrokes
per second - so I typed way WAY ahead, then went off and made myself a
hot chocolate while it painstakingly processed everything I'd typed.
Same goes if, for whatever reason, you can't see your fingers - maybe
the lights in your office have gone out, the screen wasn't on UPS, and
you need to key in an orderly shutdown command while you're unable to
see *anything*. (Which is what the little F and J pips are for. You
can align your fingers on the keyboard in the dark.)

ChrisA



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