Stop Typing Fast | Prime Reacts

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Orginial: • Let's Talk About Typin...
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[@farqueueman]

Typing is for suckers, I stare down the compiler until it produces the binary I want.

[@thealihassan1177]

👌

[@davititchanturia]

i just randomize binary until it matches what i want

[@velho6298]

Chad move

[@stashladki2594]

I keep pressing ctrl+space until copilotGPT reads my mind and writes down precisely what my brilliant mind envisions, sometimes it lasts for hours, sometimes days, years.. but in the end, it's always worth it.

[@matthiskalble3621]

​@@davititchanturia I normally brute force it and use all by products

[@ianmcgaunn7505]

'i'm an okay typer - i get around 150wpm' --- such a crazy flex. Also, none of the best programmers I know are 'one finger types' other than engineers over 70 who started on punch cards or some shit

[@maxwellsdemon10]

I was touch typing for a long time, but started getting more serious to not use the mouse and this just changed a lot. VIM and shortcuts for window management and such really changed a lot for me. I feel much less friction when coding now, it's incredible.

[@liquidcorundum6568]

I paused this video to install a typing tutor program. Thank you for reminding me that I can and should improve at typing.

[@HyperionStudiosDE]

In order to type fast you also have to type correctly. If you restart your test until you have a good one the result is meaningless. Also by default Monkeytype only uses the most common English words without upper case letters or symbols. It's not very representative of real text or code.

[@nivayu]

A 1 minute talk, about how he wasn't going to pause the video at all and then he paused after 6 seconds 😂

[@RogerBarraud]

Agree re Mac keyboards - on both counts.

[@animanaut]

one thing i noticed when doing screenshares or pairprogramming is: if you think speed does not matter, you have not witnessed a slow typer that on top of it uses his mouse and not a single shortcut other than copy pasta. a great exercise in patience, let me tell you. try it. it might change your mind..

[@dhillaz]

There are few things more painful than watching someone slowly selecting pieces of text with their mouse.

[@casperes0912]

​@@dhillaz Had a colleague once who looked at his keyboard while typing with just his index fingers

[@lalithrockz]

​@@casperes0912lol

[@victorgabr]

Yeah, I totally understand that pain. And the opposite is amazing, one day a co-worker was blown away watching me using Vim and flying around editing text without touching the mouse. VIM for life..❤

[@thisurathenuka8362]

lmao. I feel you 🙌

[@Mooooov0815]

Also an underrated way of improving: learning a US layout. I’m from Germany, we use a QWERTZ ISO Lay-out with our lovely special chars ÖÄÜ. Since they take space, commonly used symbols in programming like (){}[] are all on a shift layer on the num row. This sucks ass for programming as it’s extremely inconvenient and unergonomic. Switching my keyboard layout to an US one was easily one of the biggest quality of life improvements I had last year (and if you have a QMK keyboard you can stop customize beloved ÖÄÜ chars to be reasonably easy to reach).

[@lordp]

same for the italian layout

[@lone_squirrel]

I use US-Intl with dead keys removed, so I still have äüö ready (and some other things like €). It's so much better than Ctrl-Alt-7 every time I want to open a bracket

[@DavidBonelo]

same for *Spanish,* I recommend the *US International layout with dead keys,* using this one you can type tildes áéíóú and ñ with alt-gr + vowels/n I also recommend changing the language to english because some programs change their shortcuts acording to it, but for this *PLEASE USE ANY OTHER ENGLISH THAN THE US ONE, THAT SHIT USES mm/dd/yyyy FORMAT AND IMPERIAL MEASURES!!*

[@rolzix]

I just did this a couple of days ago and already loving it. Coming from a Finnish layout. I just stopped mid-code thinking I can't take these keybindings anymore. Switching with Windows key + space (switching keyboard layout) to get my öä when needed.

[@lastrae8129]

azerty is actively fighting against you when programming

[@arijanj]

Agreed on everything except the monkeytype take, I think monkeytype boosts your speed by a lot because the words are easy to type and as soon as you spend some time on it they start getting ingrained in your muscle memory, making your results even faster. This means that even if you don't fully know and understand the layout in your heart you can get a really good score by typing easy words.

[@LDFort]

agreed, i have 160 on monkeytype 60second but still can’t touch type special characters, the best practice for programming would probably be practicing special characters on monkeytype along with quotes. The 200 word list is more of an ego boost than anything (although majority of words inside sentences are within the 200 word list)

[@tbqhwyf]

Monkeytype doesn't boost your speed by a lot, *because* it only contains the 500 or so most frequent words in the language. If you want to get faster, it's probably better to chat online or use typeracer with quotes from books that also include numbers and punctuation. If you're only good at typing the easier words, or you only play shorter modes such as 10 word or 15 seconds, you'll lose a lot of speed on more difficult words and when you need to type for a little longer

[@maratisaw]

You can make it more difficult by changing the "language" to English 5k or 10k and get more complicated words

[@videoguy640]

Is there a type testing site that tests typing text that resembles a programming language? Lots of parenthesis, camel or snake case var names, colons, etc could really help

[@AppleGameification]

@@tbqhwyf by boosts your speed a lot, the OP means that your WPM on monkeytype is inflated compared to your actual WPM in the real world.

[@BloodEyePact]

I think you're both missing the point. Optimizing anything but your bottlenecks is a waste of effort, as you'll just pile up at the bottleneck or have idle time after it. If you know your typing is your bottleneck, improve it, otherwise, don't bother, instead, focus on being able to produce a more continuous stream of programming thoughts, study your language, data structures, design patterns, etc, so you don't have to pause to think, or optimize your build workflow so you aren't sitting waiting for your terminal prompt to come back.

[@rewrose2838]

Typing fast is part of the whole "fail faster" thing

[@vadiks20032]

as a fast typer i sometimes think of a word, type the word in.... but then i look back at at and see THAT I WROTE THE WRONG WORD also sometimes my finger presses the button a bit too weakly so i end up typing stuff lik ths

[@tears_falling]

I used to type around 90wpm, but then I had a repetitive stress injury. Couldn't touch the keyboard, couldn't even hold a spoon in my hand for long enough to eat properly. The doctor said I won't be able to get back to programming ever again. I have partially recovered since then, and I've been typing daily for a couple of months. I'm much slower than I've used to be, and it annoyed me a lot at first, but I've learned to work differently. I'm feeling like I can get stuff done in a decent amount of time, even though I'm not a blazingly fast typist. I'd say not to stress about your typing speed, and always pay attention to ergonomics.

[@spencerwilson-softwaredeve6384]

Ergonomics and longevity over speed, typing fast is beneficial but not worth destroying your hands over

[@banatibor83]

Get an ergonomic keyboard. First it is terrible to type on them but then it becomes better than on a regular keyboard.

[@tears_falling]

@@banatibor83 I'm using a Cloud9 ErgoTKL!

[@ko-Daegu]

@@banatibor83 u understand that an ergonomic keyboard is not a medicine not magic write It’s still bad Less worse doesn’t mean good

[@johanneswelsch]

read my comment I left today, you simply need a different keyboard (cherry MX red silent). I also had the same problem, all fingers felt like broken, I had to use my middle finger to use the left mouse button because the index finger hurt so much). Now I do typing tests all day long without a problem.

[@tbqhwyf]

You can, in fact, think faster than 100 words per minute. According to what I found on google, the average talking speed is 150-200 words per minute! Stenotypes (used in court to write down everything people say) can effortlessly reach speeds of up to 300 words per minute because a keyboard user won't keep up with the speech or will get tired very fast

[@NathanHedglin]

Exactly!

[@_stevek]

The average typing speed is around 40wpm. 60wpm is statistically pretty fast. Idk where he got statistically moderate is 60wpm. I think there is a point where typing speed doesn't matter. In my opinion for programming if you are above that 40wpm I think you should be fine and I haven't seen a huge quality difference in the programmers who type considerably faster than that and who are in the 50wpm category. But it is your job so I think you should be slightly above average when typing.

[@TurtleKwitty]

Think thats the differenc between "average popluation wide" and "Average person who works using a computer"

[@morosis82]

I'm about 80wpm doing prose (the quote option on monkeytype) and about 50wpm writing code with symbols and numbers. In code that's about as fast as I can go while making sure that what I'm getting down accurately represents my idea anyway.

[@darukutsu]

Touchtyping will make your default 50-60. Everything else (looking at keyboard...) is not considered typing.

[@_stevek]

@@darukutsu Not sure where you came up with that number. Touch typing is pretty much the default nowadays and the average is around 40wpm. Idk where you came up with a default of 50-60.

[@darukutsu]

@@_stevek i mean everyone in my touchtyping class (around 30 people) were around 50-60. And some of them weren't even computerphils. Just some accountancy guys.

[@GOTHICforLIFE1]

What i don't get with this is the idea that you don't naturally get better by simply typing? Are there people between 80-120 words per minutes that have deliberately worked on training up your typing speed? Isn't this just natural progression by simply typing in your daily life?

[@NathanHedglin]

I got up to 120wpm just over time.

[@unbreakablefootage]

Hey mister PrimeTime guy, I notice you are using your mouse to change the speed in youtube videos. I want you to know there is a shortcut for that, its shift + , and shift + . have a speedy day

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

yeah, i know, i just don't do it very much so i forget it exists :)

[@t3dotgg]

Hopefully I can afford to employ you by the time my wrists give out

[@richie5769]

Sometime last year I was still looking at the keyboard when I typed. I decided to started practicing proper typing techniques for the very same reasons you mentioned in the video and I've improved from 30+ words per minute to 50+ words per minute. I don't practice as much as I should so I haven't been improving quickly but it makes such a huge difference in focus not having to constantly be distracted to look at the keyboard.

[@qwerty11111122]

50 to 70 is what I had

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

Those things you talk about only matter when you write pedestrian code. If you are working on databases, operating systems, compilers, it doesn't matter even if you are below 80. Most problems are so difficult that you are sitting and thinking most of the time than typing.

[@hb-robo]

I was going to say, I don't feel like I relate to much of this, though admittedly I am only around 60wpm and could probably appreciate a speed increase in non-work contexts. I work in database design and most of my time is spent plumbing the problem mentally. I do figure out issues with my ideas while writing code skeletons, so it is good to have that sort of active hands-on thinking process, but I could never in a million years spend half an hour on 500 lines of code and compare multiple ideas like this guy, diving in with manic energy doesn't do anything. It kinda feels like the advice here is "think faster," which, yeah I'll keep that in mind, lol.

[@casperes0912]

OK; Yes. Typing speed matters. But fo you agree with Theo that there is a point beyond which it no longer matters? I mean I assume theoretically yes, a billion words per minutes probably isn't helpful cause the mind can keep up, but an achievable upper bound? Theo claims 80 is the point where improvement no longer matters that much. Do you agree with that? 90? 100? 140? Is there a point where you are basically satisfied and feel the bottleneck is solidly enough elsewhere to where it's not worth trying to improve it any further? I have very bad eyesight so my bottleneck when doing the online tests is changing which parts of the text I am reading. I read code a lot faster than that because I can adjust my editor fully and the flow of code is more predictable so where you lay your eyes and such is faster to navigate. But the difference between going from thought to text vs. reading and writing what I'm reading is pretty big to me. But on an online test I just took now I reached 70WPM. And every line break I had to pause completely because the page I used moved the text around on line breaks and I was never sure if it wanted me to hit space or enter at the end of lines so I imagine I'm somewhere in 80+ if it's from thought to text instead of reading->text.

[@scottb4029]

Good point , I am by no means fast. Appoximately a 60wpm guy. I figure out so much by getting it on the machine. I think I know what it will do, but there is always something that I learn through getting the original idea coded.

[@E8A590]

Hi Prime, I agree with you its important skills, however it doesnt mean you are a better programmer. I type 60 WPM and I dont actually code that fast. I rethink my ideas and stop a lot to think about a solution.

[@EmperorFool]

If you didn't have to worry about RSI pain, would you have made the jump to Dvorak? Are you faster now seven years later?

[@dhillaz]

If you're not a vim motions person, learn Home, End, Ctrl+Left/Right arrows (and holding shift key while doing so to select) - it will change your life.

[@hidoryy]

true. also alt or ctrl alt depending on the IDE + arrow up or down will move the line of code up or down, handy if you are the type of person that copies a code block and paste somewhere else just to move it.

[@ThisDaveAndThatJohn]

basic shit

[@PhilippeCarphin]

One thing touch typing helps for is it frees up brain power for thinking about code. It's not important to type super fast but it is so useful to type *effortlessly* at a decent speed.

[@u9vata]

I suck at 65 to 50 wpm but still view typing would be a gain, just I suck at it. Also would be interesting to see statistics how slower nations with computing not based around their language type. For me I am slower in Hungarian than in English - but when I memorize what I want to write in english I can go up 90+ sometimes 100+ for what was memorized (start of the graph). Cannot do this with Hungarian because hyphanation - and I wonder what even more complex languages mean in this aspect. This looks like a language tax for computing just because tech dominated some countries more than others 😞

[@carborundum72]

As a slow thinker, I kind of disagree here a bit. Not saying typing speed doesn't matter at all. Thing is, people just work differently. For somebody that thinks really fast, he might feel handicapped by his typing speed more than somebody that is a slow thinker. The thing is, with what I struggled in school the most is getting my stuff (like exams) done in time. I had good grades. But I had to adopt to my personal handicaps. I rarely had time to double check my test answers, or have a second try at one of the answers. I learned to have to nail my results first try to improve my grades. Thinking faster isn't really an option if you naturally think slow, because you are out of your comfort zone and just produce garbage at that point. Honestly, my pet peeve when I watch somebody type is if they just start typing and erase the same line 3 times to change it, like in fever dream. How was this faster than typing it correctly the first time? We have a saying in my country that can be applied to typing, too. It goes like: "If you don't use your brain, you have to use your feet." Because you have to walk twice to the store if you forgot half of the things you needed to buy, for example. Can be applied to your hands, too. 😏

[@Halz0holic]

Noobs use one keyboard. I use 5 keyboards. One for each limb. My typing speed is above 1000.

[@Male_Parent]

Learning to touch type was a great skill to learn. I'm currently learning to touch type in colemak dh to at least 50 WPM within a few months. If I can't then I'll just go back to qwerty and continue to type as fast as I was.

[@freezingcicada6852]

If its typing long emails or essays, etc. I feel like the biggest hurdle is spelling mistakes. Also, after watching you I tried out the ALT TAB keybind to switch between programs and had much more enjoyment coding with one monitor instead of using two. Two monitors is nice but neck gets swore way to fast and I still use a PDF or online docs for keywords/ examples while fiddling with things. Or re-typing parts of code that was decompiled to see individual chunks

[@georgehelyar]

You could try splitting a single monitor if two monitors is too much for you. Use a tiled window manager on Linux, or e.g. fancy zones on Windows (part of power toys). Honestly though, 2+ monitors make coding much easier. If you have to move your head too much maybe you're sitting too close, or you could try switching one to vertical. Also, if you didn't know, the convention is that alt bindings do windows and ctrl bindings do tabs, so e.g. alt+tab and alt+shift+tab switch windows, while ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab switch tabs within one window.

[@Sammysapphira]

You didn't know about alt tab? Not making fun of you, I'm just impressed. It's probably the 2nd most common shortcut on a PC next to Ctrl C and Ctrl V for copy paste

[@ko-Daegu]

I don’t get it been using switch between app since I was 12 or something And still see the benefits of multi-screen setup Use Alt Tab can also change apps to other screen as well

[@charg1nmalaz0r51]

Whenever i watch people type fast, i witness someone fucking up words and sentences over and over then fix, and fix and fix and fix. Then they get the three words they were trying to type. Overall it takes longer lol. I have witnessed this guy do the same thing in his videos when he writes code lol.

[@hardcorecode]

I disagree, I used to think typing speed mattered but with modern IDEs all you need to know is the keyboard shortcuts. I started out by literally typing whilst am looking at the keyboard. but overtime I begun looking at the keyboard less and less, when am typing long sentences like this comment I still look at the keyboard sometimes. otherwise not at all when I am writing short phrases here and there ( when I am coding). If I need to write an essay or very long text I use Siri then edit out the mistakes ( usually names of things ).

[@ebn__]

I'm not going to argue that typing fast isn't beneficial but I've seen John Carmack type (although a long time ago, no idea how blazingly fast he is these days) and he's probably not beating any records so.. as long as you learn to think like Johnny, I think you're safe :) gl.

[@tedchirvasiu]

I think it is more about knowing key shortcuts to navigate rather than just typing raw text from your brain. Reaching for the mouse is a way bigger time and focus killer in most cases.

[@tearnfourstar]

Monkeytype is a horrible representation of typing because of the lack of capital letters and punctuation characters. If anything it's an overestimate of speed, especially for people who practise on it a lot because there's a fixed vocabulary which you will obviously get accustomed to over time, and then lack of capitals and symbols like punctuation means you'll be slower in real life typing. Anecdote: I've got a buddy who practises monkeytype daily and gets around 100wpm, but on typeracer he rarely gets over 70 lol

[@ajmash9745]

respect to @ThePrimeTimeagen for not being ass suck and @t3dotgg for being a true elitist in his respected field. This is what a healthy debate looks like gentleman. 🙏

[@jonathanduck5333]

I achieved 405 WPM once, but it probably does not count. I wrote a small script that webscraped the site to get the correct words and controlled the keyboard to input them😂

[@illegalsmirf]

Typing slow is about as useful as having a big bushy moustache - i.e. not at all! 🙂

[@Kabelman]

If you can type 300 lines of code in a short amount of time that is defined by your typing speed, your problem is not difficult and it's not worth the time of very good devs.

[@botondhetyey159]

I disagree on the monkeytype hate, it always comes from people who didn't look at the settings. You can literally make it give you real code snippets in any programming language you want.

[@j.r.r.tolkien8724]

The disagreement is to what extent does typing speed matter.

[@lunafoxfire]

This video inspired me to put black electrical tape on my keys so that I STOP LOOKING AT THEM. I _can_ touch type in theory but I still look out of habit (because I never really learned properly) and it really keeps me from improving. I'm at a BLAZINGLY SLOW speed of 30 WPM after coding professionally for 5 years (and even longer as a hobby)... It's time to improve.

[@JustSomeAussie1]

that's really sad

[@lunafoxfire]

@@JustSomeAussie1 for me it's not really sad, just mildly annoying that I've built some bad habits. but luckily it's something that's relatively easy to fix. I've only been at this for like 8 hours so far today and I already feel my brain shifting modes.

[@svenzverg7321]

Just be aware, that contrary to popular belief one's ability to type is very individual. People who are doing good just tend to be more vocal. Here's my example. I started training regularly when i was at 35 WPM. In a couple of months of half-arsed training, 15 min per day, sometimes skipping whole weeks, I was sitting comfortably at 45 WPM full of enthusiasm and myself. And that's when i hit my personal wall. Next two months I had no progress, while increasing the intensity of training. I end up spending half an hour every day, no skipping. Getting to 50 WPM took about 10 months. Now, another year later I just started reaching 60 WPM on good days. Add to that that I spend the rest of the day in front of computer coding and shitposting relentlessly. So don't be discouraged by possible subpar results. If you put time in it, the improvement will follow. It just might be really not as great as >100 WPM gang would make you believe.

[@jeezusjr]

As someone that suffers from severe RSI, I cannot type on a laptop for more than an hour. OpenAPI Whisperer has changed my typing life. All emails and Slack messages are dictated now. Use the Whisper C++ client. It's excellent and it's offline. But Theo is absolutely right about mechanical keyboards. They take more actuation force and after a few years your muscles in your arms become very sore and overused. I'm now using a CharaChorder, which is like having joysticks under my fingers and it's helping a lot with the damage mechanical keyboards have done. But the learning curve is like Emacs learning curve, but it's change or die for me with my programming career.

[@TurtleKwitty]

Used to be at 140-160 depending on the run in highschool/early college but now ten years later cause of hand issues down to 66 really feel the difference mentally blehh

[@spencerwilson-softwaredeve6384]

Currently 24 years old and able to type upwards of 150 wpm, maintaining that speed for while begins to hurt my hands so I need to force myself to take my time and go 90-100 wpm.

[@srijanraghavula]

Prime's face at 2:22 as theo talks about his macbook looks like someone trying to hold their laugh at a funeral

[@J_CtheEngineer]

Interesting. I’m a mechanical engineer with a focus on design, but I also explore ideas with my hands, my sketch my thoughts in 3D design software because I’m fast enough to iterate on what I want and I’m not hindered by the software. Just an interesting parallel

[@hotrodhunk7389]

I can type really fast with normal typing. I just got into coding and man I'm having trouble with typos... I found a definitely helps if I just slow down a bit and double check that there's no typos as I'm typing it which is different from how I would type a regular paper just bang it all out and let autocorrect take care of the few mistakes.

[@yannick5099]

Typing speed doesn't matter. It doesn't speed up all that meetings and those DevOps pipelines that need several minutes to run tests and deploy for a simple hello world project. Then you have to change a single config option because (of course) the examples from the official docs don't work. Run again. NoneType doesn't have method xyz. Oh, internal errors in the tools. Change config. Run again. Pipeline runs into timeout. Run again. Gotta love modern development and all those productivity tools. On a more serious note, fast typing makes many things outside of programming much easier as well. Writing emails, chat messages, notes in meetings, reports, whitepapers, rants on KZbin and so on.

[@moonasha]

how could anyone possibly code while looking at their keyboard? I can't even imagine it. And another baffling thing, if you code a lot, how can you not touch type? After a month you should be able to do it. Do these people not even attempt to memorize where the keys are?

[@thomassynths]

When Jippity5 comes out, it will have neural interface support. RIP typing.

[@kissmyaft]

Hey! A couple of weeks ago after watching one of your videos, i just installed neovim (tried it like 12 years ago but eventually switched to "modern" IDEs) and went straight to monkeytype. I'm nearly 40, and been programming since i was like 10, and i NEVER learned proper fast typing. I always thought i was quite fast, like 40 to 50 WPM, except punctuation and special symbols which i always struggled with. Now, after just TWO weeks, i'm confidently typing at 58 WPM with punctuation (still struggling a bit with special symbols but i'm still faster than i ever was), and i'm realizing that i actually AM faster with vim now than i ever was with VS code or whatever. Wow. Again i'm approaching 40 and it should be naturally difficult for me to relearn the old habits, but it literally took just 2 weeks to become more productive than i ever was.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

This is just one of the coolest things ever. I absolutely love this.

[@alextasarov1341]

My biggest problem with typing tests is trying to read what I’m supposed to type while typing. When I am coding it’s like double the speed because I know what I want. For me, (I hate reading) my brain just constantly has to go from read-type-read-type and that moment of transition just kills me.

[@sethikablip8607]

I think using monkeytype solves the issue

[@s3rit661]

If you're a programmer, you have to type without looking at the keyboard, change my mind

[@Drakon0Blade]

In twenty years people will be like "what, you don't write everything using Wingdings?"

[@cathalogrady2331]

Another thing that people don't mention about typing speed, is that reading text and translating is not what your used to while typing. I notice that I type in general much faster from my thoughts than from reading text.

[@GooseTower]

I never learned to touch type and reckon I could type at ~35 wpm with 5 fingers while staring at the keyboard. Constantly looking up and down and figuring out how to type what I want has started to really hamper my train of thought. I started training a month ago, and now I can touch type at ~60 wpm. Coding is now a much smoother and satisfying experience. The goal is 100 wpm. P.S. Have you heard of the corne/crkbd? It's a 42 key, open-source, split ergo keyboard I'll be building this week.

[@ky3ow]

good job, keep it up)

[@CottidaeSEA]

Typing fast to get testable code out faster is worth a lot to me. While a lot of the coding process is just thinking and planning, the faster I can get runnable code, the faster I can see if I'm approaching things correctly. There is absolutely no downside to being able to type fast as long as you're not just making a bunch of mistakes while doing so.

[@rapzid3536]

Latency is a killer more so than raw typing speed.. 40-60 wpm is prob plenty. I develop primarily in Linux VMs from a Windows host via VirtualBox, and have for many years. VSCode has been good enough for this however Rider, which I've been using lately, just can't really handle it even with 16 cores assigned; 8 cores is right out. I suspect it's the lack of hardware acceleration for the graphics. In any case, the latency is enough of a big deal I'll prob start working native Linux dev in day-to-day.

[@bradleyfrueh2761]

I think what was said was anything above 80-90 is faster than you can think, so diminishing returns beyond this threshold.

[@BoopyTheFox]

I felt the same transitioning from traditional to ergosplit keeb (qwerty) First day - "I CANT THINK I CAN'T BE CREATIVE AAAAHHH" 4th day - Ok i'm back at 69wpm but i still can't think Week - Ok we're getting there Two weeks - It's time to switch to blanks Month - wait, keyboards can be in ONE PIECE as well???

[@ponysmallhorse]

ehmmm..... 50-60 wpm... Was typing my whole life. I was never limited by my typing speed. I have RSI in my both hands so now I use Dactyl Manuform and i got back to 60. My code is limited by my thinking not by type speed. Text manipulation speed is much more important IMHO

[@canoozie]

I went from 180 (PB 205) to 12 when I swapped from qwerty to dvorak, and then went back to qwerty until I went to workman where I started out at 17. I'm now back up to 160 after about a year... got up to 120 after a few months. Speed of thought for me when reading, is about 200... so that's proven to be my upper limit. That said, it's good enough.

[@tongpoo8985]

This guy is really annoying. Playing dumb like it doesnt literally show you the percetile you're at on most typing websites while being self-deprecating and making like 4 separate pre-excuses. Like bro why are you so obsessed with yourself, chill.

[@0015v]

Been touch typing for 4 years, i prefer not going further than my current 80 wpm natural speed on average, be it on regular or ergo keyboards If i want to improve my speed i'd rather practice regularly on Typelit or Keybr sites, keep it at 97% accuracy everytime, rather than risky bursting-until-choke typing habit if i bother to, i might dabble on Intersteno like Sean Wrona does

[@jhanmarthng8532]

Just switched to Colemak-dh recently. After about 3-4 moths, painfully, ans finally got to 50-60 wpm in monkeytype. And what's worst, vim key bindings are in a mess. Sigh

[@adabujiki]

This guy thinks he's fast when the program says he typed 115wpm for like 15 seconds. Smh. [2:42] You know you're fast when you can keep that pace for 10 minutes

[@MrAbrazildo]

Except for the penmanship, I agree at all with you both. I would add that there's an energy loss in everything that a programmer does on his activity, that takes its toll on the long run. Typing slow, having to look to keyboard will lead to much more loss of energy than it looks. 1) There's an effort to find the keys. 2) Interrupts the flow of thoughts, which is stressful. 3) All of this leads to downgrade in productivity. 4) Health issues since, who is that way slow, uses to has a bad hands posture over the keyboard. However, I don't think 1 needs to be expressively fast. Just enough to not look to keyboard, and having the right hands posture over it, it's enough for a successful productivity in software and other areas.

[@captain_delf-vm5sh]

if you want to get faster at typing, start slow. Like if you already write blind for years, but think you aren't fast enough, try to relearn it a bit. Got to monkeytype or whatever and train by looking at your keyboard. I had the issue, that I always made the same mistakes and was a bit slow. But I also switch between QWERTY and QWERTZ. Typing slow and steady and watching my fingers make those mistakes I actually got a lot better and faster in a couple of sessions I did in a week.

[@ragsdale9]

Right off the bat, condescending with the whole 150 thing and I already doubt. But then again I refused to use ASDF JKL: (although yes occasionally I would practice it) and always rested in my gamer position or off the left edge of the left most key or right edge of the enter key. I was typing at 118 out of high school and I was using what I like to call burst typing. Basically I knew where all the keys I wanted to press were, so instead of typing one key at a time and building words slowly I would just press all the keys needed (sometimes I basically rolled my fingers) for the word I wanted this meant sometimes I typed entire words backwards... but it worked okay.

[@JohnDoe-bu3qp]

I agree with everything you said about good penmanship. My writing still sucks though 😆 I did several years of calligraphy and it just didn't help. I had a teacher who would say my writing was the sketching of a map of hell (can't translate it exactly).

[@Manas-co8wl]

Honestly.. I have no idea on this one. I never really thought of it I guess.. Then again I just got 108 wpm on monkeytype.. so maybe I'm really taking this for granted. I never type as fast as I think though, that's for certain... I wonder if my typing speed really hinders me.

[@wiredelectrosphere]

I started to learn to touch type just a few months ago even though I've been a programmer for years. It was very hard, my wpm was barely 30 and i made mistakes a lot. Now i can comfortably touch type at 70 wpm and It feels so liberating seeing what you type on your screen, especially If you are from another country and you have to constantly switch keyboard layouts, now I Instantly see that I type on a wrong layout and correct that. Also If you are learning and make a typo I advice to erase the whole word and type It again, this way you develop muscle memory for the whole word you are trying to type

[@InkFPS]

monkeytype is the best online measure of wpm. monkeytype's default settings are not the best online measure of wpm. If you are getting 130wpm on default monkeytype settings, your real wpm is probably 100wpm, and probably 80wpm with punctuation. Random written words vs structured words in your mind, are very similar. Retyping regular sentences you read is not normal behaviour and is easier than the first two.

[@roccociccone597]

If you're a dev and come from a country such as Germany or Switzerland, just go buy a US layout keyboard. It's the best investment you can make for improving typing speed while coding.

[@pianoman6216]

80 is NOT the minimum typing speed, 80 is a comftorable typing speed for someone who knows what they're doing. If you type at 160 i bet just typing normally u would be at 80

[@TheKillerJin]

I agree with everything you said, but I do think that reserving some time before coding to actually think about what you want to do is a good practice. At least physics this helps a whole bunch, otherwise the whole premise of what you doing might be simply wrong.

[@hb-robo]

I see the value to the time investment here but it's demoralizing nonetheless. I have a long family history of arthritis and have had multiple hand injuries growing up. I take precautions wherever possible but there is a physical cap to my speed that puts me well out of range of you two (~55wpm). I feel the brain->keyboard output bottleneck and spend much less time prototyping as a result. If it really is this important, that just makes me feel like there is just a wall I'm unable to pass on the road to competence at my profession.

[@nothinleader]

The original video is talking about diminishing returns though, there's a big difference between a peck typer and someone typing 70+ wpm which most people can attain easily. Going above that may take significant effort which in most cases isn't worth it

[@shoobidyboop8634]

My penmanship is pretty poor generally, depending on the stroke width of the pen I'm using, but generally bad since I don't practice my penmanship. Practicing my penmanship is right up there with practicing my Chinese, which is zero, because I need to impress people with my Chinese about as much as I need to impress people with my penmanship.

[@CZTachyonsVN]

My touchtyping speed is around 50 and I’m pretty happy with it. I do try to practice and get faster but that’s nowhere near the top of my priorities regarding programming.

[@jeannoelhonisch7037]

But i want to have clarified what kind of typingspeed were talking about. Cause i know that i can get about 120 wpm on typemonkey here and there and would categorize my self in the average area of 90 wpm

[@notapplicable7292]

Most of my typing is just a few characters then autocomplete the variable name / keyword, not saying typing speed doesn't help but it sure isn't a massively significant factor in most cases.

[@secdeal]

Dear the PrimeTime. It'd be great if you didn't watch the videos sped up because when I speed up your videos it makes them uncomfortably fast

[@doctorstal]

You just have to type mindlessly, not fast. Switching to Dvorak just made you think how to type, not just slowed you down

[@m4rt_]

I used to type 90wpm but now I only type ca 50-60 after trying to learn touch typing and getting a split keyboard... im working my way back up again, but it is taking some time.

[@jef777]

This test is unrealistic for a programmer. Do the funbox ASCII, practice hard then writing code will feel easy.

[@S-we2gp]

if youre typing 60 wpm that wayyyy more than enough. Its literally never the case that i need to type faster to my work done. If i typed 200 wpm it wouldnt matter because my brain isnt that smart lol.

[@bobbobson6290]

Can those people who supposedly type 150 words per minute sustain this for longer than 30 seconds? What about 10 minutes?

[@darylphuah]

Anyone who think it doesn't matter, try typing into a high latency terminal and you'll see what slow does to your thought process.

[@vaisakhkm783]

ikr... now i can't even use graphical programs like text editors, word processors, note taking apps, which drives me nuts...

[@the_jawker]

I was thinking, hot dang Theo talks faster than usual. But that's because I was listening 2x and you did 1.5x

[@radspiderjackson]

i wasnt tripping about my typing speed until he dropped a video where he flexs his 130+wpm then says typing speed doesnt matter...

[@AlxFG_]

I started learning to touch type around 2 years ago, I learnt it by first making sure that my fingers were in the right place while typing looking down at the keyboard and once I felt comfortable with that, I forced myself to type while only looking at the screen no matter what I was doing. Because I talked a lot on discord I got a lot of practice typing, and because of this even without focused typing practice I've gotten pretty good at typing. On a side note being able to touch type is a godsend if you're trying to copy written notes into digital because you don't even need to think about typing and you just need to focus on the written notes without looking at the screen at all.

[@ko-Daegu]

You can take a pic But hey how did you practice it ??

[@Efecretion]

That was not a typing speed test. Type continually for 1 minute minimum then see what your speed is. Restarting every 5 seconds is fn stupid

[@ohwow2074]

I think it doesn't matter beyond maybe 50 wpm. I personally spend many hours on thinking about a solution and coming up with design ideas and then type it in like half an hour. It's not that important.

[@DonAlcohol]

we lost the game of speed typing to the chinese , a while ago , and they are so far beyond what we can only imagine is possible that , even gaining ground is futile and lost for the cause,... they go double or even tripple speed to what we westerners can do , (and no that is not figuratively , they literally double the speed of what we can do.)

[@nullquest]

I am shocked to see how many people can't type without looking at the keyboard. It's only going to get worse with all the kids using touchscreens most of the time.

[@shadowseek27]

checkmate buddy, i have no idea what im doing most of the time so i have to keep reading documentation, typing really doesnt matter then lmao

[@teofilomonteiro9427]

This makes me think of jazz guitar players. They need to practice to know the guitar so they can put their ideas out as the music flow.

[@_trepz]

I'm at 100-110 with my index fingers only which is goofy as hell but working I guess.