andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2008-09-13 04:53 pm
andrewducker) wrote2008-09-13 04:53 pm
The Right Tools
Spent an hour this morning sorting out the bit of "garden" front of the flat with some thin garden gloves and some awful cheap shears.
Then went to B&Q, got a decent pruner and some thick gloves, and got the rest done twice as fast, and with a much better result.
Note To Self: you don't buy cheap computer components, don't buy cheap DIY stuff.
I then read this article about how important fast-typing speed is as a coder, went here and tried out their typing-speed test. Which was a bastard, as it's full of non-standard spellings. but I got 62WPM and only one mistake (on word 4), so I feel quite good about that.
Then went to B&Q, got a decent pruner and some thick gloves, and got the rest done twice as fast, and with a much better result.
Note To Self: you don't buy cheap computer components, don't buy cheap DIY stuff.
I then read this article about how important fast-typing speed is as a coder, went here and tried out their typing-speed test. Which was a bastard, as it's full of non-standard spellings. but I got 62WPM and only one mistake (on word 4), so I feel quite good about that.
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Aaah, it's different text each time!
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I touch-type test between 105 and 120wpm, depending on the source text and how badly they penalize you for errors (ie, whether or not I actually care enough to backspace and correct them). (I cannot, *cannot* make myself double-space after a period, and most online typing tests still try to enforce that; many will call everything after that miss an off-by-one error.) I've also had months where I was reduced to typing one-handed (or, in one particularly fun instance, two-fingers-on-one-handed), at which I am, oh, about 30 wpm. The difference is annoying, but I wouldn't call it crippling. If programming is anything like writing, you spend a lot of time staring at the wall and thinking anyway. What he's talking about with the whole "non-touch-typing programmers don't work enough!!" is not non-touch-typing programmers, I bet, it's lazy programmers; someone who really wanted to would find their own workarounds....
http://www.typingtest.com has a better speed-test, including letting you pick the text you want to use.
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Quite surprised by that, since I had to go back and edit some text I'd mistyped.
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Disagree on the touch typing. (and the guy sounds like a dick).
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I am a famously bad typist (touch-typing is beyond me, gives me hand cramps, too). Originally it was semi-deliberate. Typing was what girls with no better prospects/ambition/brains did...
I extensively comment, test, document and converse and communicate. I seem to be a distinctly better than average developer, but I lack the overwhelming interest to be a truly great one.
If you ask me, then what makes the difference between good and bad developers is partly a set of innate aptitudes (logic, abstraction, communication, optimisation, pragamtism), and starting very early to develop those into skills. I started at 9 (maybe 8 - 1980, anyway) and was doing Z80 assembler within the year. I was writing my own primitive database systems and something resembling hyperlinks before my teens.
I know a few other people who also started young and there really is a difference - a fluency, and agility. Like learning languages or sports/dance/drawing/painting/music when you are young.
of course I could be totally deluded :-).
45 wpm by the way - not quite as dreadful as I feared. that's on a laptop key board (yick!).
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