Typing challege for developers

[dd1313]

HI Guy

Found a nice typing practice for developers.

http://typing.io/lessons

Interested to know how many developers actually touch type.

Thanks
DD

 

[DominionZA]

I learned to touch type about 13 years back. Back then I was a 2 finger (on each hand) warrior with constant head movements between screen and keyboard.
I watched my boss code and I just had to be like him.
1 week of practicing 1 hour a night changed my life.
Rarely ever look at the keyboard. Just no need anymore.

 

[semaphore]

HI Guy

Found a nice typing practice for developers.

http://typing.io/lessons

Interested to know how many developers actually touch type.

Thanks
DD

Pretty cool site, i find myself averaging 70wpm but with a high rate of errors. So need to practice that, also doesn't help that my shift and Z keys stick on my laptop

 

[Nerhzelok]

46wpm in ASP.Net. Worth noting, my normal "coding" keyboard broke... so I'm left with a ~R80 astrum keyboard. lol. .. miss that keyboard.

 

[HeftyCrab]

I learned to touch type about 13 years back. Back then I was a 2 finger (on each hand) warrior with constant head movements between screen and keyboard.
I watched my boss code and I just had to be like him.
1 week of practicing 1 hour a night changed my life.
Rarely ever look at the keyboard. Just no need anymore.

One of the most useful skills ever if you work on a PC. Surprised more people dont learn. Toughing it out for a bit and learning to touch type is a lot better than struggling for years on end.

 

[DominionZA]

C# Asp.Net

Typeable chars : 477
Types chars : 505
Unproductive keystrokes : 6%
elapsed time : 1:52
wpm : 51

Not too shabby? Using my notebook keyboard which I am a bit slower on compared to my desktop keyboard. Still okay though me thinks.

 

[[)roi(]]

Pointless test re coding is nothing remotely like copying a prescribed paragraph of text.

For example: this test doesn't even account for the speed improvements typically achieved with code completion.

Plus on a day to day basis, which developers really rattle off at consistent 50+wpm -- coding tends to be less about textual volume and more about code quality i.e. well thought through and structured code.

So although I touch type, I rarely find an occasion to continuously stress my keyboard.

 

[DominionZA]

Pointless test re coding is nothing remotely like copying a prescribed paragraph of text.

For example: this test doesn't even account for the speed improvements typically achieved with code completion.

Plus on a day to day basis, which developers really rattle off at consistent 50+wpm -- coding tends to be less about textual volume and more about code quality i.e. well thought through and structured code.

So although I touch type, I rarely find an occasion to continuously stress my keyboard.

Its all fun and games dude. Think you taking it a little too seriously?

 

[semaphore]

Pointless test re coding is nothing remotely like copying a prescribed paragraph of text.

For example: this test doesn't even account for the speed improvements typically achieved with code completion.

Plus on a day to day basis, which developers really rattle off at consistent 50+wpm -- coding tends to be less about textual volume and more about code quality i.e. well thought through and structured code.

So although I touch type, I rarely find an occasion to continuously stress my keyboard.

Yes you stress your right click and context menu more, copy & pasta

 

[[)roi(]]

Its all fun and games dude. Think you taking it a little too seriously?

True; but on the flip side I've seen a few clueless unduly rewarding verbosity and speed (hence I don't take it for granted)

 

[semaphore]

True; but on the flip side I've seen a few clueless unduly rewarding verbosity and speed (hence I don't take it for granted)

You do know there are programming environments without pretty auto complete features right? Where speed is required. Take javascript for example, all the auto completes for it are hellishly slow so i usually just turn them off.

 

[[)roi(]]

You do know there are programming environments without pretty auto complete features right? Where speed is required. Take javascript for example, all the auto completes for it are hellishly slow so i usually just turn them off.

Unlike most I've spent a considerable time coding (35 years) across a diverse set of structured & unstructured languages, & similarly far too many IDEs.

Yet even without code completion, coding when done correctly is far less about typing speed and more about design, testing, refactoring, ... I.e. The antithesis of speed / verbosity.

I'd even argue that without code completion or code snippets, refactoring tools, etc... I'd probably be even more encouraged to accomplish something with less code, certainly never more.

 

[Batista]

Yeah thank goodness i dont get paid based on my typing speed lol

 

[semaphore]

Unlike most I've spent a considerable time coding (35 years) across a diverse set of structured & unstructured languages, & similarly far too many IDEs.

Yet even without code completion, coding when done correctly is far less about typing speed and more about design, testing, refactoring, ... I.e. The antithesis of speed / verbosity.

I'd even argue that without code completion or code snippets, refactoring tools, etc... I'd probably be even more encouraged to accomplish something with less code, certainly never more.

I agree speed isnt everything, but someone who types slow will be less productive than someone who is faster. We had a guy at my first company that was like this. Super intelligent guy, wrote very compact efficient code. But god did it take him forever to get it done. I mean to type a few lines literally took him over a minute or more.

 

[[)roi(]]

Yeah thank goodness i dont get paid based on my typing speed lol

Exactly...

FYI, IBM is well known to have made historical development faux pas around this topic: basically they tried to push Microsoft to use LOC (lines of code) as the performance / payment control for the OS/2 build.

 

[[)roi(]]

I agree speed isnt everything, but someone who types slow will be less productive than someone who is faster. We had a guy at my first company that was like this. Super intelligent guy, wrote very compact efficient code. But god did it take him forever to get it done. I mean to type a few lines literally took him over a minute or more.

Sorry not convinced; as I've seen far too many speed demons type out mountains of crap code for something that simply required more thought to achieved simply.

IMO only the junior or inexperienced developers ever consider typing speed a plus -- I'd much rather employ a two finger & well seasoned developer who spends a considerable time planning / designing vs. a typing speed junkie that quickly throws out hoards of code, as that code will probably end up overtasking the maintenance teams i.e. requiring them to rewrite / refactor most of garbage.

Writing lots of coding is easy; writing minimal, well designed, future proof, highly refactored, easily maintained, ... code is not.

Speed demons in my experience don't tend to produce the latter. Remember productivity should never be a measure of the # of lines of code (IBM's big mistake).

 

[semaphore]

Sorry Not convinced; as I've seen far too many speed demons type out mountains of crap code for something that simply required more thought to achieved simply.

IMO only the junior or inexperienced developers ever consider typing speed a plus -- I'd much rather employ a two finger & well seasoned developer who spends a considerable time planning / designing vs. a typing speed junkie that quickly throws out hoards of code, as that code will probably end up overtasking the maintenance teams i.e. requiring them to rewrite / refactor most of garbage.

Writing lots of coding is easy; writing minimal, well designed, future proof, highly refactored, easily maintained, ... code is not.

Speed demons in my experience don't tend to produce the latter.

Yep i agree and that is the case generally most of the time, your mentality seems to assert that people who type fast can't code efficiently, which is daft. FYI im not trying to convince you, because i don't care what you believe in the matter, i was merely giving a historical account to your idea regarding slow typers vs fast.

Perhaps this has been your experience but yeah it has not be mine.

 

[semaphore]

Speed demons in my experience don't tend to produce the latter. Remember productivity should never be a measure of the # of lines of code (IBM's big mistake).

We are talking speed vs lines of code. I think the road went severely to the left, you CAN type highly efficient code very fast. You know like think in your head? Then type it out? Or design it on a piece of paper if that's your method.

 

[[)roi(]]

Yep i agree and that is the case generally most of the time, your mentality seems to assert that people who type fast can't code efficiently, perhaps this has been your experience but yeah it has not be mine.. Which is well, daft.

Nope, as I said I touch type; on plain text I can often hit well over 100wpm, but the point is that alone is never a good measure of productivity or skill.

I'd argue that I see far more unskilled developers cranking out lines than the other way around (i.e. huge LOC is most often a good indication of a lack of planning / thought / experience)

We are talking speed vs lines of code. I think the road went severely to the left, you CAN type highly efficient code very fast. You know like think in your head? Then type it out? Or design it on a piece of paper if that's your method.

Probably (there probably are a few exceptional cases), but in my experienced I have yet to find anyone who boasts about typing speed producing code that didn't require substantial rework in maintenance.

 

[MrGray]

Quality coding has absolutely nothing to do with typing speed.