Hacker News Reader

Comment by FreshCode | Hacker News Reader

Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

Atwood specifically addresses the fallacy of "thinking vs typing as the bottleneck for programming" with the statement [1]: "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

It's not about averaging 90wpm in code. No programmer I know does that. It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists-firs...

View on HN

> "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

Hence bursty sprint speed is more important than sustained speed. Mechanical keyboards are quite good at bursty sprint speeds in my experience. Sustained speed is another matter, I can see where the power return of each key press would cause soreness (like wearing shoes with springs), but its not a problem I have as a programmer who mostly just sprints.

> It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

Yes, but you don't have that problem on a mechanical.

> My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

Right, the question is not about whether speed matters, but what kind of speed matters. Do you type for a minute without pausing?

> Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

If my wrist/hand/arm/etc. comfort level while using my non-ergonomic keyboard is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level, why would switching provide any useful data?

@baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

For this particular anecdotal case, I am not claiming I have the answer, but please consider trying it before raising an indefensible argument. I have tried a bunch of keyboards and layouts. Surely my derivations are fallible, but empirically, they should carry more weight than a "keyboard enthusiast" who has not even tried a different keyboard layout or any of the well-known ergonomic keyboards.

> @baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Because the promise of a smartphone is not to remove discomfort in your fingers. As far as I know, that's the only promise of ergonomic keyboards.

> Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

I agree, and in the case of ergonomic keyboards, the answer to "Why not?" is "Because I don't suffer from any stress injuries or musculoskeletal problems."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com