[BiteCode_dev]

Exactly.

As a freelancer, every time a client decides for a cheaper alternative, I make very clear I would be delighted to work with them in the future anyway. It rarely fails, one or more years later, the clients calls me back because their cheap alternative turned out to suck and be expensive eventually. Last month, a client from Luxembourg called after 6 years of total silence. They still had me in their listing. 3 years ago, one called me because 2 years prior, the 50k quote they rejected from me turned into a 400K bill from my competitor, and still no release yet.

My rates have been steadily increasing for years thanks to this. Before, geeks were at a disadvantage because people didn't know better, and teams with a good marketing would destroy us. But now, they have been burned so many times. And it pays because more and more devs coming to the market are becoming dependent on their tooling. Now, more often than not, I work with teams that have been copy/pasting git commands not knowing what they do, that have never, ever looked the source code of their framework or don't know how to use a debugger. The HN bubbles tends to blind us to the reality of the corporate world.

Yesterday I did a deployment, but was not allowed to touch the machine. Instead, they made me call a guy sharing a screen of a Vista machine, while he was sshing prod using cmd.exe, and I had to dictate him the instructions to debug the deployment on their custom linux setup. A near retired sysadmin that couldn't type with 10 fingers, pressing 30 times the up arrow to find a bash command in the history every time. He could click on WinSCP very well though.

This 20 minutes job turned into an afternoon of billing.

Though I suppose that's what I look like as a Python expert to an old timer from the 80s that can code in assembly, debug using strace and understand L1 cache :)

People are scared we are going to get automatized by AI.

I am preparing for the most lucrative decade I ever worked in.

[darkwater]

> Near retired sysadmin that couldn't type with 10 fingers.

Hey, I feel called out on this. I type with 2/3 fingers and I'm quite fast even if not like a full fledged 10 fingers typist. At my age I don't think I will ever learn typing with 10 fingers, but I think I don't need it either.

[notpachet]

I think you should at least give it a go.

There's a fluency effect that happens when you're able to touch type without looking, similar to when you master a language enough to speak without thinking. You become more efficient because you dissolve the barrier between your thoughts and their expression.

I know there are lots of arguments intending to counter the importance of touch-typing in programming ("most of my time is spent thinking"), but I think those miss the point. Faster typing is just as valuable whether you're programming, or writing an email, or responding to a message.

[ctvo]

Where in their reply did it say they weren't a touch typist? They most likely touch type with 2-3 fingers. Not that shocking if you learned to use computers without typing classes.

[notpachet]

While I guess it's theoretically possible to memorize the positions of all the keys using only a few fingers (so that you're typing purely by touch, without looking), I haven't ever seen that in the field.

Usually when someone says "touch typing" they refer to the standard "home row" approach, using all fingers. I could have made that more explicit.

[darkwater]

Well I do know all the keys position and I can write without looking at the keyboard, typing with just 2 fingers. (I just switched keyboard last week from a 70% to a 100% so I'm getting used to it)

[cthalupa]

I type at roughly 150-160wpm depending on what I'm typing and for the length I'm typing (this range is for 30s and 60s tests).

I touch type.

I use 4 fingers on my left hand and 3 fingers on my right to type. (This is counting thumbs on both hands)

I've never really understood the home row because if my hands are on the keyboard I'm actively typing (or playing video games), in which case all my fingers are busy actually doing things, so I basically just put my hands down where I'm going to start typing anyway. When I'm actively typing I'm not wasting time moving my hands back to the home row, either.

[discreteevent]

Do it. After 20 years of coding and thinking I was fast I was embarrassed into it after watching a teenager type faster than me (they had just completed a typing course). It won't speed up your programming but it will make your communication and documentation a lot smoother. It really only takes a few weeks of forcing yourself to touch type for emails etc. (Don't start with programming, it will be too frustrating).

[BenjiWiebe]

Maybe it was just because they were a teenager. I'm not far past teenager myself, and I started typing before getting typing classes in school. On random excerpts (typeracer.com) I get 80-100wpm with 98% accuracy, typing with about 4 fingers.

[nirui]

Haha! I have 10 fingers, 5 of them almost always near my chin as part of a misoptimized supporting structure, 4 of the rest 5 usually spend most of their time holding/transporting a mug, leaving only 1 left .... the most busy and important one of course: I use it to poke the mouse/touchpad so the screen stays on.

Only during the most rare occasion, those 10 fingers will give up their self-designated posts and come to this massive array of buttons to do their exercise of pressing stuff, something like "su apt install", "dock run", "cd.." etc.

I'd say type fast != work fast, so I don't mind if someone is a slow button presser :)

[causi]

The curse of having access to a computer years before your first typing class and never being able to un-learn your self-taught method. I know the pain.

[wizzwizz4]

My self-taught typing method uses “whichever finger is currently closest to the relevant key”, and has a lot of hand movement – might have something to do with my being a pianist.

[Clubber]

Honestly if I had taken a typing class, I would probably have carpel tunnel by now. My hands attack the keyboard at an angle over the left shift/ctrl and right arrow keys. Typists, at least when I was in school, are taught to attack straight up through the ZXC and M,. keys, which keep your wrists at a bad angle.

[jrockway]

I made a conscious effort to unlearn bad habits in my 20s and it was pretty easy. I definitely press some keys with the wrong fingers, though. (1 is especially annoying to press with your pinky, so I don't do it.)

[loloquwowndueo]

I’ve met hunt-and-peckers who can rival my 90wpm touch-typing (and I use the term loosely - I use all 10 fingers and don’t need to look at the keyboard, but also don’t keep them on the home row nor do I follow any formal typing methodology) . Never underestimate the speed that a lot of practice can give.

[read_if_gay_]

Have you ever taken the plunge though and really tried to go through with learning touch typing? You may not find it impossible after all. Then again typing isn’t really a huge bottleneck when it comes to coding.

[the_af]

I find touch typing with all fingers is overrated.

I type with only two/three fingers. I don't hunt and peck, but I'm no touch typist either. I can type faster just with my index fingers than some people with all of their fingers.

That said, typing speed is not critical. I mean, if you're really slow I guess it matters, but it's no measure of the quality of your work. The brain is the bottleneck here, and all the slowness happens in the design/troubleshoot/think space anyway.

[lijogdfljk]

I type in this weird hybrid .. thing. I find it much more comfortable, though more error prone, than traditional home-row on traditional keyboards.

I use nearly all fingers, but where i really suffer is that i find key-combinations, notably alt+ to be really awkward because my hands are at a steep angle relative to the straight keyboard.

I live in Kakoune (vim-like) so "touch typing" is my bread and butter, but home-row just feels so bad to me.

I keep meaning to try a split keyboard with home-row. I suspect that's the root of my issue, and that my odd typing pattern is a result of trying to manually replicate a split keyboard. /shrug

[read_if_gay_]

I can recommend a small split ortholinear keyboard. I built one as a weekend project and it was pretty fun, doable with basic microcontroller and solder skills (except for the ~50 SMD LEDs which I couldn’t be bothered to do). Pretty happy with it, it’s comfortable and I do feel that I type better than on a regular keyboard. You can buy kits containing everything you need, I got this one:

https://mechboards.co.uk/shop/kits/helidox-corne-kit/#case

With small keyboards, you’re trading off physical distance between keys for having to press more buttons simultaneously. Might fix your problems with reaching key combinations, but the combinations themselves do become more complicated as well.

[lijogdfljk]

I've wanted to pursue them but my hope was to find software to do stateful/modal transitions. As a fake example, instead of pressing Alt+Z you'd press Alt then Z. It becomes a lot like modal editors, which is my favorite style of editing - i add a lot of usermode stuff into Kakoune to avoid key combinations.

So far i've not felt i could get software to do the modal editing i speak of reliably in all of my environments. I'm on NixOS right now, and i didn't want to manage the software. It definitely is interesting though!

[dalmo3]

I did. Have probably put ~50 hours total into (free) typing courses during the last year or so.

I'm still painfully slow. Maybe 50wpm tops for natural language, embarrassingly much less for programming.

Thing is, I'm now even slower than I was before "taking the plunge", and I can't even go back to my old loose method I've nurtured for 20 years!

On the flipside, as you mentioned, typing in itself isn't a huge bottleneck, especially with autocomplete, and I'm much faster navigating the ide. So maybe it's a net positive after all.

[BiteCode_dev]

I use the imagery to create a visual atmosphere rather than aiming at calling out a particular demographic.

Besides, I don't blame him, he was performing the job he was paid for.

[headcanon]

Hey, whatever works. If you do want to make the jump though, my suggestion would be to get a keyboard with no key labels (like a Das Keyboard), you'll learn touch typing pretty quick. Unless you are somehow touch typing with 2-3 fingers, which in that case hats off to you!

[oddmiral]

Just rearrange keys on your existing keyboard.

[hguant]

>Now, more often than not, I work with teams that have been copy/pasting git commands not knowing what they do, that have never, ever looked the source code of their framework or don't know how to use a debugger.

Thank you for reminding me that it's about time for my yearly reread of Pro Git. It's amazing how many people look at you like you're a wizard when you just...read the documentation.

[BiteCode_dev]

Or can enter the proper key words on Google.

It feels like cheating, but I put my imposter syndrome in a trash bin years ago.

[edem]

It is amazing to see how so many so-called programmers can make a living without even reading the freaking documentation. And when I cide the docs on some topic they look at me as if I was performing a magic trick.

[BenjiWiebe]

You did do a magic trick. You found docs complete enough to cite.

[brainless]

This has also become my strategy lately. I got fed up with price wars by tons of cheaper software dev shops. I am Indian and have run them myself, but I am an engineer first - the really curious kind. I can not do price war, I do not like writing casual code just for bucks. So I started keeping just good relations with anyone who is attracted to "low cost development shop". Eventually I started seeing myself helping multiple founders with "low cost teams". I think gradually they will start billing me to guide these low cost teams. (Although that might not be happen since I am also planning to go into the founder mode).

[k4c9x]

And it's a never ending cycle. I get older but the CTOs stay the same age. They kick out the old IT, hire some foreign Sales Force squad to rebuild everything. It ends up costing 5 years worth of salary of the old team in just 1 year. Nothing ever gets past the finish line and the existing software just stays in place. CTO moves on with millions in his pocket, owners are left with nothing and end up trying to get the old team back to maintain the existing software. A few years later, another hotshot shows up.

[frockington1]

Reminds me of the offshoring craze about a decade ago. Everyone was worried that there would be few software jobs left in America. Now it seems every company is trying to re-onshore development and desperately searching for people and driving up wages

[bastardoperator]

It sounds like your customer is dealing with low maturity staff and no amount of consultation is going to fix that even if they decided to pickup co-pilot which is also unlikely if they haven't picked up ctrl-r.