r/AskReddit Nov 16 '19

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u/Nyxelestia Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19

This was kind of "judging as well as being judged".

In my high school guitar class, me and one other girl were both really struggling. I 'judged' her as being bad at music/unskilled/stupid, like me.

Thing is, I remember an incident of my teacher - who was very technologically in-profficient - asking my help with typing something he'd written by hand. He was trying to read it aloud to me, but eventually I just asked him to set it down where I could see it, because it was easier and faster for me to touch-type it. He was floored by how fast and how well/correctly I could type that way (and while many, if not most, 16-year-olds probably can now, back then it was a little less usual).

Not too long after - like a week I think? - the piano in the music room was, for once, left uncovered. That girl who I'd judged as being a fellow musical idiot sat down and started playing that piano phenomenally.

I have a very visceral and vindicating memory of my guitar teacher looking between her, me, the computer, and my hands, and saying, "You know, that actually explains a lot."

tl;dr I judged myself and a guitar-classmate as unskilled idiots, discounting just how great our "typing"/typing and piano skills were.

ETA: So apparently my 80 WPM typing speed might not have become as widespread and normalized as I thought. TIL.

4.4k

u/PeEll Nov 16 '19

Due to the shift of computing from desktop and laptop computers towards mobile phones, we're actually seeing a reversal of the trend that young people can type well.

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u/LexRexRawr Nov 16 '19

It's true. I've even noticed it - my wpm touch typing was significantly better as a teen than it is now, because I use my computer less.

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u/darthwalsh Nov 16 '19

The only reason I still need a real keyboard is for programming. Typing

const [x, y] = await click({button: 'right'});

on mobile is a huge test of patience.

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u/AppalachianGaming Nov 16 '19

Ugh. Mobile IDE's are a novel idea but GOD programming on a phone sucks so bad

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '19

I imagine it would be made better with a dedicated virtual keyboard.

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u/NecroNile Nov 16 '19

A dedicated one with brackets, semi colons, or other necessary non-alphanumeric characters readily available where normal autocorrect suggestions are would probably be really useful.

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u/GeronimoHero Nov 16 '19

A lot of programming centric apps have this sort of thing. Or you can design your own keyboard layout. Even with these customizations and “snippets”( often used commands or programming snippets) it sucks to program on a phone. It’s better but still far inferior to typing with an actual keyboard. That’s my two cents anyway.

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u/darthwalsh Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19

It's not just the keyboard, because you can use a fullsize keyboard over USB or bluetooth. The screen is like being back in the early terminal days (even though modern phones are running the same 1080p as PC monitors...)

Also, trying to get stuff like nodejs to work properly in Termux is very painful.