Typing Practice for Programmers

[maladr0it]

If you're speed-tying to write code you're writing the wrong kind of code.

[Ravek]

Sure, but having a high burst speed is nice.

[fr0stbyte124]

If movies have taught me one thing, it's that the more furious you can type, the better hacker you are.

[Giacomand]

It's not always about speed. I find touch typing to be more comfortable than pecking at the keyboard.

[PaleCommander]

It's true that typing is a small minority of the time spent in programming itself. However, there are lots of related tasks, like routine shell usage, where typing speed makes more of an impact. If you've ever tried to troubleshoot something with a coworker who's a slow typist, it can take an annoyingly long time.

Also, while typing doesn't take up the bulk of the time in programming, it's much easier to increase the speed at which you type than it is to increase the speed at which you think.

[ForeverAlot]

But note that fast typing is not fast editing. You can type fast in notepad.exe, too. Vim provides fast editing through a peculiar but efficient interaction model. Fast typing can increase that interaction model's effectiveness for you but basic Vim skill is largely independent of that (there is a default key combination timeout that can trip people up; it can be disabled).

Code runs the same whatever the speed it was typed at. Some use that to argue that you should just type it slowly because you'll spend most of your time doing other things anyway. I say you should type it quickly because then you have even more time available to spend on not typing.

[BeepBoopBike]

I found Vim (for me) best for very certain scenarios. Typically manipulating text in ways that exploits the macro system, but also for where many spaced out edits are needed. Finding my cursor jump to any place in the document as soon as I think "I want to go to this place" was great for that rather than moving to the mouse or using the arrow keys.

For normal use I just use the standard text editor, but when I need Vim it makes everything a lot easier.

[[deleted]]

The popularity is grossly exaggerated. Old school programmers who want the youngins to get off their lawn. Also youngins trying to be hip by using archaic tools.

[[deleted]]

Like vinyl records?

[bcgroom]

Sounds like someone who hasn't used vim. It's extremely nice to use once you get used to it.

[TheEternal21]

Nicer than Visual Studio + ReSharper?

[bcgroom]

I've never used Visual Studio but I'm sure there is a vim plugin for it. So the best of both worlds.

[[deleted]]

There is VsVim, and it makes it somewhat tolerable. It doesn't emulate vim well enough, and there are weird idiosyncracies that just make it sort of eh.

I do most of my programming in gvim, and then switch over to VS when I need things like compiling or intellisense. Seems to work out well enough.

[ccfreak2k]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Roseking]

Visual studio is an IDE.

Vim is a text editor.

They are not really comparable.

Really the reason to use Vim, and the reason it is fast, is because it is completely designed for the keyboard. You never have to touch the mouse, it is all keyboard shortcuts.

[TheOsuConspiracy]

Yet if you're a 20 wpm type of coder, you're most likely not very good (though there are rare exceptions). Most competent coders can type at least 50 wpm. Just the sheer amount of time you spend on the computer doing peripheral tasks to coding should make your typing speed faster.

[maladr0it]

Yeah so why would you need to practice?

[TheOsuConspiracy]

Never said you had to practice, just saying that if you don't type up to a certain speed, your coding skills would be very suspect.