While I'd agree with Lisp and Haskell, I not sure how SQL could be considered that dense. I often find myself frustrated that a split second thought takes so long to express as a query, and I type a decent 80wpm or so.
Well I was actually talking about writing queries that involve a join or two. Thinking to myself "I can get this by grabbing all these via joining on that where x = y" doesn't take very long, but typing that out can be annoying if you do it often enough.
Of course, if you are constantly writing 8-way joins with fun things like group_concat in the select clause, I guess it would require a little more thought than typing. Also, I'd imagine the people that spend their days writing stored procedures, triggers, and the like spend more time thinking than typing, but I can't claim to be one of those people.
I'm reminded of some K guy (Stevan Apter?) posting working code to the newsgroup from a WebTV. The language is that terse. 1 line of code == 1 page of explanations.
I find that when I'm doing Java, I'm not thinking or typing as much as I am hitting ctrl-space for the IDE to autocomplete superLongMethodNamesFactoryStubHome().
In Ruby, it seems I think and type in equal parts.
I remapped my Escape key to a more convenient place on my keyboard (it's a thumb key now); as a result, when I write Ruby code in TextMate, half of it appears virtually instantaneously. The downside? Sometimes accidentally pressing Escape when typing anywhere else. D'oh!
I have a pedal for my Kinesis keyboard, but I almost never use it. When I do use it it's for something like num lock... I tried it for Emacs ctrl and/or meta but it didn't work well. The big problem is that I don't keep my feet frozen in one spot for hours, so when I go to press the pedal I have to find the darn thing by feeling around with my feet. You don't have to lose much time doing this before the point of the pedal is lost.
I could try to train myself to keep my feet in one spot. But I fear the ergonomic consequences. I have enough trouble with the need to keep my hands in the same spot for hours on end...
Maybe I need much bigger pedals. Or special shoes...
What sort of pedal, how much did it cost, and where'd you get it?
I ask because my sister had this neat idea for a hardware hack: a digital music stand. The idea being that page turns really suck when you play any instrument that takes two hands (we're both violinists), and if you could hook it up to a foot pedal, you could control the music without putting down your instrument. I also pointed out that a digital music stand would cost at least as much as a computer, but now that you can get laptops for $98, this may be doable...
Plus, think of all the people on YouTube that you see lean over to stop recording. If it doesn't already exist, software to control a webcam through a foot pedal would be a great boon to YouTubers everywhere. The porn industry would love it too - that bra unclasp is so much sexier when she's not blatantly fiddling with her webcam.
Also, I used to be in orchestras. A Kindle for sheet music would be neat. Especially if it had built in metronome and tuner for practicing. Might take away some of the old-school ambiance though.
Comments
My typing speed is about 75 wpm, which probably sucks by HN standards. I don't type nearly as fast as I think.
When I'm writing Java code, I find that my typing speed is often a bottleneck. In Ocaml or Lisp, it never is.
"SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing."
—Philip Greenspun, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/03/07/how-long-is-th...
While I'd agree with Lisp and Haskell, I not sure how SQL could be considered that dense. I often find myself frustrated that a split second thought takes so long to express as a query, and I type a decent 80wpm or so.
I always assumed he was referring to complicated ad-hoc queries that involve all kinds of joins and so forth.
If I understand you correctly, yes, typing "select ... from ... where id = ..." would get old very fast.
Well I was actually talking about writing queries that involve a join or two. Thinking to myself "I can get this by grabbing all these via joining on that where x = y" doesn't take very long, but typing that out can be annoying if you do it often enough.
Of course, if you are constantly writing 8-way joins with fun things like group_concat in the select clause, I guess it would require a little more thought than typing. Also, I'd imagine the people that spend their days writing stored procedures, triggers, and the like spend more time thinking than typing, but I can't claim to be one of those people.
I'm reminded of some K guy (Stevan Apter?) posting working code to the newsgroup from a WebTV. The language is that terse. 1 line of code == 1 page of explanations.
I find that when I'm doing Java, I'm not thinking or typing as much as I am hitting ctrl-space for the IDE to autocomplete superLongMethodNamesFactoryStubHome().
In Ruby, it seems I think and type in equal parts.
I remapped my Escape key to a more convenient place on my keyboard (it's a thumb key now); as a result, when I write Ruby code in TextMate, half of it appears virtually instantaneously. The downside? Sometimes accidentally pressing Escape when typing anywhere else. D'oh!
I keep threatening to get two foot pedals. One for CTRL and one for ESC. I think it would give me vim superpowers.
I have a pedal for my Kinesis keyboard, but I almost never use it. When I do use it it's for something like num lock... I tried it for Emacs ctrl and/or meta but it didn't work well. The big problem is that I don't keep my feet frozen in one spot for hours, so when I go to press the pedal I have to find the darn thing by feeling around with my feet. You don't have to lose much time doing this before the point of the pedal is lost.
I could try to train myself to keep my feet in one spot. But I fear the ergonomic consequences. I have enough trouble with the need to keep my hands in the same spot for hours on end...
Maybe I need much bigger pedals. Or special shoes...
What sort of pedal, how much did it cost, and where'd you get it?
I ask because my sister had this neat idea for a hardware hack: a digital music stand. The idea being that page turns really suck when you play any instrument that takes two hands (we're both violinists), and if you could hook it up to a foot pedal, you could control the music without putting down your instrument. I also pointed out that a digital music stand would cost at least as much as a computer, but now that you can get laptops for $98, this may be doable...
Plus, think of all the people on YouTube that you see lean over to stop recording. If it doesn't already exist, software to control a webcam through a foot pedal would be a great boon to YouTubers everywhere. The porn industry would love it too - that bra unclasp is so much sexier when she's not blatantly fiddling with her webcam.
Kinesis has their own foot pedals.
http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/foot.htm
There are a number of midi/usb pedalboards, but they have tons of pedals and are relatively expensive.
There are also a lot of DIY footswitch projects. Check this one out, it is for turning pages inside digital music stand software. :)
http://www.instructables.com/id/USB-Foot-Pedal/
Also, I used to be in orchestras. A Kindle for sheet music would be neat. Especially if it had built in metronome and tuner for practicing. Might take away some of the old-school ambiance though.
That's the best idea I've ever heard.