top | item 30955647

(no title)

johntdaly | 3 years ago

The alt keyboard layout thing was once appealing but I’m over it for two reasons.

1) I don’t think it is useful to write faster than I can ‘think’. What I like about writing is that I can hone my thoughts to be sharper than they would in everyday speech by reworking them over and over.

2) I grew up bilingual and learned another language to some degree along the way. Most alt keyboard layouts are optimized towards typing in a specific language and might not be “the best” for me. I am happy enough with an international english layout keyboard that allows me to type any extra character I might need.

This sort of mirrors my view on editors. Good enough now is better than the pursuit of perfection and comfort counts for more than purity.

P.S.: Doom Emacs might be interesting to you

discuss

order

eimrine|3 years ago

Thank you for advice, I am tinkering with Emacs rn.

> I don’t think it is useful to write faster than I can ‘think’. What I like about writing is that I can hone my thoughts to be sharper than they would in everyday speech by reworking them over and over.

Sorry for an offtopic but a decent layout is not so much about speed, it is about helping to get rid of some needness to watch the keyboard. If you can not enter your password without looking at the buttons than the honing of your thoughts gets obstructed with needness to look at elsewhere except of the thoughts has been written already.

> Good enough now is better than the pursuit of perfection

Definitely not working about choosing right layout (because of changing a layout is way harder than changing a text editor). But as another bilingual I am sure your choice works best for your languages and hands/fingers.

johntdaly|3 years ago

Yes QWERTY works well enough for me, mainly because I’ve been using it for 25 years. (I’ve learned touch typing in school 27 years ago) I often find it harder to find the right key when looking at the keyboard now and my “main” problems are between small differences in keyboard layouts (mac vs pc, QWERTZ vs QWERTY (uk, us, int)).