Touch Coding ;)

The Problem

The problem at the moment is that although I feel quite comfortable on the keyboard when coding, I would like to feel a lot more able to hit the more unusual symbols without thinking so much. It may seem a superfluous skill but I learned how to touch type only recently and I can safely say that it has a very positive impact on my ability to complete written tasks faster, freeing up that time for, well, anything else. I also allows me to think more while I type and (in my opinion at least) better content in that work. I have a SMART goal defined for this task here.

So I want to do the same thing with the symbols, keywords and other punctuation needed for coding. I used to use the ‘hunt and peck’ method and although I was pretty fast, I had to look from the screen to the keyboard and back again all the time. Its surprising how interrupting that is, now that I don’t do it. I know already, from the little bit of past experience that I did get while failing my degree as a child and before writing that wrong in my old age (ha!) that the H&P method is even more inconvenient when trying the think about logic, keep your position on the screen and then find the pipe for that ‘or’ statement you are trying to write. I just want that sort of hassle gone if this is going to be a career for me.

Is it right? who cares?!

I do.

I want to be very clear that this is not about writing code faster so that I can write programs faster and ‘get through’ more stuff just to say ‘I’m done!’. I know already that would lead to sloppy, buggy stuff. The proof of that pudding is here in the other goals that I have set up for myself.

• SOLID principles
• Design Patterns

This is more about just reducing the friction of interacting with the keyboard. I am also thinking of coating all the keys in Teflon…

In the Past…

I learned about how to drill words, fragments of words and commonly used and combined words. Having seen that work really well before, I will be putting together a test sheet that covers all the things I want to learn. I expect that after drilling that document 15 to 20 times for about 15 minutes per session that my speed and accuracy will improve when I am coding.

I never spent long on drilling this stuff while I was learning to type and I won’t spend long on it here. The reason is not that I don’t want to spend a long time, it’s that this is the type of skill that is best built up over time with low exposure but very frequently. So something like 15 minutes per day, everyday, is a really good start. If I have time for more, I would do a morning and afternoon session rather than just do the time straight through.

Already doing?

I have already begun using the symbols and punctuation for programming while not looking at the keyboard and I know where they are, they just don’t flow naturally at the moment. I think that should I be able to improve this skill that I will simply be able to write code faster and remove an obvious barrier in the ‘Understand problem, conceive a solution, code the solution and test it’ chain. I have other SMART goals for the other areas in that chain.

The Docs themselves

I have now created 2 documents that I will test myself on and drill until I can see an improvement in the completion times and less tangibly, how I feel as I type them out; Are they still difficult? Which symbols and keywords am I still tripping up on? From there I will derive the next documents that focus on areas of weakness that I identify. REFLECTION BABY. I should be taking the tests tomorrow.