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by eloisant 1358 days ago
> Typing should be less demanding, I'd think.

Not really, unless you're the kind of guy working in Cobol and who is used to typing with latency.

I've seen Cobol developers just ignoring the latency, keeping typing because they know what they've typed and it doesn't matter that it's slow to show up on screen.
2 comments
toast0 1358 days ago
Working with latency like that also requires the system to be predictable. If you're expecting auto complete but not confident in what it'll show, you've got to wait, if you're not sure if the input will be dropped if you type ahead too much, you've got to wait. If you need to click on things, especially if the targets change, lots of waiting.

If the system works well, yeah, you can type all the stuff, then wait for it to show up and confirm. 'BBS mode' as someone mentioned.

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NoGravitas 1358 days ago
> I've seen Cobol developers just ignoring the latency, keeping typing because they know what they've typed and it doesn't matter that it's slow to show up on screen.

I used to do that (not in COBOL), typing into a text editor in a terminal over a 2400-baud modem. Like the other commenter said, you get used to it, but it requires a certain predictability in your environment that you don't get in modern GUIs.

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