^H ow ^H ow
19 February, 2010Back in September, I decided to do something about my embarrassingly atrocious typing. I report some success: I can type faster (33WPM on a good day), but I also make mistakes faster. Now I have two ways to type depending on what I’m working on, but both are still pretty slow. It’s embarrassing when I am surrounded by people who can get text into their machines like it’s coming out of a socket in the back of their necks. (You know who you are 
)
I was reminded of this when we went to see Tron* at the IFI on Wednesday. I may be slow, but I can type faster than Jeff Bridges’ rendition of an 80s hacker 
Thought experiment: if the backspace key administered small electric shocks when pressed, would we all be more accurate typists? Or would some of us just lose all feeling in one finger? (Or would voice-recognition suddenly seem like a much better idea?)
* It gets cheesier every time I see it. I would still like a pet Bit, though.
Jeff Bridges, eh? Is there any limit to this guy? He can even sing too. Dammit!
Jeff Bridges: “900 to 1200 times better than any human”
[...] Vim is a powerful tool whose purpose is to delete text. There are shortcuts for deleting, commands for deleting, even the cursor is optimised for deleting**. There are hidden shortcuts for deleting, so that if you forget for a moment that you are using vim, the next thing you type will delete a swathe of text as a friendly reminder. I have never encountered an editor so hungry for the total destruction of everything I manage to type. [...]