Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

Typing fast isn’t important for coding, or writing, or any kind of productive tasks. As long as a person types fast enough to get the job done, it’s not the bottleneck. Thinking of what to type is the bottleneck.

But I have recently come to realize there is one task for which typing fast is very important. That task is real-time text chat.

Among my friends in our chat server, and among co-workers on Slack, some people are much more chatty than others. They write more messages. They write longer messages. They have more involved conversations. They have the greatest amount of participation.

Others do not chat as much. I’m sure they have their own reasons, and that’s fine. It’s not right or wrong to participate more or less.

But I realized one day there was a very strong correlation. The people who participate the most are all people who are sitting at computers with keyboards (mostly mechanical ones) and are very proficient at typing. They can all type at least as fast as they can think.

People who use their phones more often, or are slower typists, can’t keep up in a text conversation. If they try to write a long complex thought the conversation will pass them by. They can only get out a shorter sentence in time, and that really puts a damper on their communication. It’s like someone with a quiet voice trying to get a word in a very loud conversation.

This really clicked for me recently when a co-worker admitted to being a very slow hunt and peck typist. They are an excellent engineer, so it’s not a problem there. However, this person is also the person who loves to do Slack huddles all the time. It all made sense. I was absolutely overwhelming this person in text chat with an entire paragraph of ideas before they could peck out a sentence. Of course a huddle is easier for them.

I would like to make a suggestion to slow typists out there who have to use real time text chat. Either learn to type fast and/or start using speech to text features.

It continues to boggle my mind why there would be engineers who cannot touch type - not just for speed but because your brain now has to spend part of its processing cycles trying to find the next key on the keyboard.

Maybe we have different definitions of "touch typing"?

I don't touch type, but I do type quickly and I never spend any processing cycles looking for a key, at least on a keyboard with a layout I'm used to.

Do you look at the keyboard?

Like I don't care where people put their fingers, or even if they use them all, but for me its not touch typing if you need to use your eyes.

> Do you look at the keyboard?

It depends on what I'm typing. Code? Very rarely, unless I'm using a keyboard that I'm not familiar with. Letters or other prose? About 25% of the time.

But to the deeper point, thank you for clearing this up for me. We are indeed using different definitions. To me, "touch typing" is a very specific method of typing. It's not just the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.

Now that I know there are different definitions, I can be more careful to make sure that I'm using the same definition as others.

I think you are 100% right.

I was quite proud of the fact that i could easily out-type my 1200 baud modem. Tech improved and so did my typing.

Late-night C64 BBS's when the sysop jumped in and started talking to you in real-time was the biggest pressure cooker to learn to type, to learn to type fast, and to watch the screen while you type.

The came IRC, and well; in busy channels it was tricky. Today Slack feels slow with all the animated crap.

Being a kid/teen in the 90s into the early 00s, online chatting and gaming before voice comms were common definitely led to me learning to touch type very very fast and accurately.

And yep, I'm a prolific text chatter amongst similarly fast-typing friends and colleagues. It's still my preferred mode of communication. When all parties can keep up it's a really enjoyable medium.

Indeed, my English typing was significantly improved once I had to type a lot in IRC---I can type around 120 WPM nowadays. That said, the tendency to do Slack huddles seems much more complex than typing speed. Writing has an intrinsic delay compared to speaking, and that delay can sometimes suppress important informations without realizing. For that reason I'm fine with huddles from managers, but would prefer a dedicated meeting or textual conversation over other huddles.

I find the exact same logic applies for native Vs non-native speakers. It's a sliding scale not a binary of course, but yes the higher the information density and the more nuance can be transmitted then the higher bandwidth and the more that individual tends to participate/lead the conversation. Not necessarily correlated with the quality of their thinking

I'm a fast typist but horribly slow at typing on a phone. Whenever I'm in a fast and deep group conversation I feel compelled to go to a computer to keep up with the pace.

I totally noticed that the most active persons in a conversation are those who type the fastest, and conversely. Seems totally logical.

Yeah, when I was a kid one of my biggest motivators to type faster was chatting with people. I got faster at typing because I "had" to, because it bothered me when I wasn't able to get a message across as fast as I was thinking it. It probably helped I took piano lessons as a kid as well... I type around 130wpm these days and indeed, am very active in work discussions via text.

I type at a similar speed and I attribute it to playing MMOs as a kid. You had to type really fast if you wanted to make callouts during fights without dying. :-)

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