At the beginning of the year, I felt like I hit the ceiling as an engineer. It seems that you read thick books, solve complex problems at work, speak at conferences. But it's not that. Therefore, I decided to return to the roots and, in turn, close the skills that I once considered basic for a programmer as a child.
First on the list was the blind seal, which I had been putting off for a long time. Now I consider it necessary for everyone for whom code and configuration are a profession. Under the cut, I'll tell you how my world turned upside down, and share tips on how to turn yours around. At the same time, I invite you to share your recipes and opinions.
What distinguishes a programmer who uses a mouse from a programmer who uses hotkeys? Abyss. Almost unattainable speed and quality of work, other things being equal.
What distinguishes a programmer who uses hotkeys from a programmer who can type blindly? Another big gap.
What the fuck is this for me
Can you type blindly? No, I'm not talking about the case when you write 10 words and then look at the keyboard. But in a normal way.
- When you hone your accuracy and the number of characters per minute.
- When you correct words without looking at the keys.
- When using both.
- When each character has its own finger.
Until December or January of this year, I couldn't touch type. And I didn't worry too much about it. Then a colleague shamed me, and I decided to learn at all costs. After trying different machines, I settled on . A couple of months, one twitchy eye, and 20 wpm is mine.
What for you this
We live in a world of blind typists.
The whole world around was created by programmers-blind printers for people like them:
- You open vim, and there almost all hotkeys are single-character. While you are looking at the keyboard behind them, you will be as fast as a grandmother accountant who types in an unfamiliar layout with two fingers: “Sooooo, iiii with a dot, uh, like a dollar, ji, like a si with a squiggle, go ahead, I’ll find it now, don’t rush ".
- In general, this whole marvelous zoo of Linux utilities like less or innotop. Everything is tied to the fact that you will use single-letter hotkeys.
And next to it is full of the same ten-fingered ones:
- Here is a friend, riding a snowboard, says: “Now I’ll come home, I’ll finish 15 pages of my dissertation.” You ask, they say, save up? And he: “Yes, no, I know what to write about, I’ll sit down and write quickly.” And then it turns out that he takes this skill for granted and never talked about it, because he thought that everyone could do it.
- Or another friend: “Have you noticed that when you sit in a pair with those who do not type blindly, it seems that they are oh-oh-oh-very slow?”
- Almost all of my most productive co-workers happen to own this thing.
Blind typing will save you from copy-paste:
- I used to think it was easier to copy 10 lines than to write them. Or even one, so as not to make a mistake. Now I just write what I want to write and never stop making sure that what appears on the screen is correct; without fear of typos, layout issues, or syntax/semantic errors.
- It turned out that I was still a graphomaniac: I began to keep a diary, write articles. Here he wrote this.
- Hotkeys are fun to learn. They ceased to be chords, but became a continuation of already familiar keys.
You can think less about the number of actions, and more about the quality:
- Code often ends up being shorter simply because you're doing a couple more refactoring cycles in the same amount of time. Or you manage to write an optional but nice test.
In some games, you get an ability that allows you to fly over enemies that you previously had to fight. Here in the life of a programmer, such a super-ability is blind typing.
Now my result is about 60 words per minute on familiar text and about 40 on unfamiliar text.
I know that it is quite possible to reach 80 if you work on accuracy. That is, the faster you are, the fewer typos you have. Norm. I'll go get some more.
Tips and tricks for those who decide to learn
To learn touch typing, follow two simple tips: experiment and relax.
Experiment
It so happened that in addition to touch typing, over the past year I have mastered many things that needed to be brought into muscle memory: a unicycle (unicycle), surf, started touching the piano (slightly). Once upon a time performed with juggling. And for all this I have a general approach. I'll try to describe it.
Your task is to complete the element in the maximum number of variations.
- In juggling, starting with the other hand or shifting attention from catching the ball to correct throwing.
- On the piano, start playing a phrase from the middle or practice without sound.
- On a unicycle - follow the correct posture, and not balance. Even at the cost of falling.
The touch typing trainer sets a goal: 100% accuracy and a certain speed. But it does not say how to achieve it. Here you have done the exercise. You have three stars out of five. The first desire is to repeat. Suddenly there will be more? Will. Or it won't. I repeated this for 15 minutes with varying degrees of success. The way out is to make the head work during repetition.
When repeating, the head should work. How to achieve this?
- Alternate algorithm for dealing with errors.
- Set intermediate goals related to accuracy, not speed.
- Sometimes you write more slowly than you want on purpose.
- Concentrate on typing rhythm, not accuracy.
- Change where you train.
- Change trainers.
During training, you made a mistake. What to do?
Use the three algorithms in turn.
For what? Every time you have to think a little differently, so the attention is not dulled.
Bad algorithm: "In case of an error, start over." So you will train all the time the same thing, moving forward very slowly.
For a change, I set goals related to accuracy.
Try not to make a mistake even once in writing:
- A certain letter in the entire text.
- A specific set of words in which you usually make mistakes.
- All first letters in all words.
- All last letters in all words.
- All punctuation marks.
- Come up with your own version.
And the most important thing.
Don't forget to rest
With monotonous repetition, the body goes into a zombie mode. You don't notice it yourself. You can set an alarm for 10-15 minutes. And take a break, even if you think you're fine anyway.
Somehow, in the preface to a book on Objective-C (which I don’t program in), I read a phrase that is worth remembering in the process of any training. She wants to finish.
“It's not you being dumb, it's Objective-C that's complicated. Get 10 hours of sleep a night if you can."
Here I wanted to end, but the IT editor came with questions about numbers Olesya asks, I answer.
Why did you choose this particular simulator and how many others did you try before making your choice?
Not much, four or five. Including sharpened by programmers. I liked the quality of the feedback: each character is highlighted, statistics on fingers, keys and in general. Meaningful English text. Training is diluted with mini-games. I have a colleague who liked but it's only for mac.
How much time per day did you spend exercising?
At first, a lot - 6 hours a week. That is about an hour a day. Now it seems to me that I was too much evaporating, and it was possible to do it at a more relaxed pace.
When did you stop looking at the keyboard while working?
Tried not to watch from the beginning. Especially if something non-urgent happened. I have a password for 24 characters, the first time it was difficult to write without hesitation. I set a hard stop when I was able to consistently hit 35 wpm on the simulator. After that, I forbade myself to look at the keys at work.
How long did it take to master touch typing?
Now looked, 40 hours in total. But this is not all the tasks, a little less than half remain. The most recent machine requires 75 WPM.
If you liked reading this longread, then taking advantage of my official position I invite you to my . There I talk about SRE, share links and thoughts.
Source: habr.com