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Comment by vulcan01 | Hacker News Reader

Off-topic:

Damn, how do people get such good handwriting? It looks typed at a first glance. Wow.

Dijkstrta is infamous for his focus on handwriting. A student once told a story that during a 1-on-1 oral exam, Dijkstra spent half the time having the student practice their handwriting.

Practice :)

That and deliberate choice to improve readability, hence the choice of writing in script letters instead of cursive, which is more natural and faster to write when handwriting.

There is probably a significant genetic component to it. Some people have better eye-hand coordination and better hand stability.

Or, it could be that he comes from an age where you would write, rather than type, everything.

Probably helps, but for comparison, here's my dad's handwriting (born in the 1940s): https://i.imgur.com/svu8orT.png

German writing evolved several times in the 1900’s. That most likely impacted the legibility as different types of training came through each letter.

As an aside, reading recipes from that era is nearly impossible for me as a foreigner.

Folks can learn more about the evolution by picking up the trail here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent

It's also mostly impossible for Germans (that's why there's a whole subreddit of people that are capable of parsing Sütterlin)!

You might be able to recognize some letters in the excerpt (u/n/w especially) from Sütterlin, but lots of others (especially the upper case ones) are more modern.

I was born in the 80s. I spent two decades writing for hours everyday. So did my peers. Some had good writing, some had bad, despite many of the bad trying to write better.

I took a few drafting classes in highschool. My handwriting improved tremendously. They spent several weeks on just how to hold the pencil correctly and how to have the right touch on the paper for even lines. They also spent a lot of time on how to be deliberate about what was written. Because back then getting an error into a blueprint was extremely time consuming and a pain to repair just in the paperwork world never mind the physical. Never did that job. But it sure cleaned up my handwriting.

Just for fun a few months ago I thought back on how my signature has changed over the years. I drew them all down on a piece of paper. My wife thought I was nuts for having no less than 7 different signatures. My current one sort of resembles letters and scribbles.

I never had good handwriting; it was always my worst grade in elementary school. But I used to at least be able to write legibly given that I did have years of Palmer script. These days I really can't write in any consistent or truly readable way any longer.

What I find really impressive, almost galling, is the lack of corrections. Thirty pages and (i counted only) one scratch-out!

I practiced and practiced as a kid

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