[HN Gopher] Engelbart's Violin (2012)
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Engelbart's Violin (2012)
Author : tosh
Score : 25 points
Date : 2021-11-01 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.loper-os.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.loper-os.org)
| errantspark wrote:
| "a computer system should maximally reward learning. (The way
| Emacs does.) And that this should certainly be true of a computer
| one uses for 8-14 hours a day, for decades."
|
| I think this is a good take, modern interface design focuses on
| instant gratification/short term thinking and ease of use more so
| than on giving people good levers, or mind bikes. I think the
| truly brilliant tools enable use and creativity beyond their
| initial purpose. Sure, that stuff only becomes relevant when
| you're pushing the envelope and most people won't be trying to do
| that; but I believe focusing on that edge has long term benefits
| that are hard to quantify.
|
| I'm not sure about any of the keyboard stuff, but that particular
| idea I resonate with.
| dang wrote:
| Some past threads:
|
| _Englebart 's Violin (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11997761 - June 2016 (20
| comments)
|
| _Engelbart 's Violin (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510129 - Oct 2014 (27
| comments)
|
| _Engelbart 's Violin - chorded keyboards_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4016421 - May 2012 (38
| comments)
| compiler-guy wrote:
| This article is confusing typing with programming.
|
| Professional, really, really high end typists exist--such as
| court reporters--and they do have very sophisticated, special
| made tools for typing unbelievably quickly.
|
| But most programmers' quality of work is not limited by day-to-
| day issues with the keyboard. It is all about thinking.
|
| There are custom keyboards out there, and some are very nice to
| use--I swear by my not-every-day-but-pretty-common microsoft
| split keyboard. But the idea that we need some amazing speed-
| optimized keyboard isn't accurate.
| jp57 wrote:
| The intro scenario is actually a pretty accurate representation
| of what it's like to try to be a professional musician or
| composer. Hardly anyone succeeds; most have to work at a
| nonmusical day job, and many of those who do succeed in
| supporting themselves as musicians end up in studio or backing
| roles with little creativity.
| kragen wrote:
| A lot of things about NLS were wrong; this chording keyboard was
| one of them. Typing speed never went above 40 wpm, because each
| hand stroke was a byte, a character; QWERTY can hit triple that.
| Alternative chording keyboard designs like the Stenotype design
| used by Plover can achieve even higher speeds, but I don't think
| the Microwriter did.
|
| However, "The emphasis is on usability - without the necessity of
| training. The exact opposite of Engelbart's approach," is
| correct, and it does explain why Engelbart's career went downhill
| in the 01970s and never really recovered.
| jdougan wrote:
| The point wasn't typing speed, the NLS workstations had full
| keyboards for bulk typing. Where NLS combined with the chording
| shined was in editing and presentation (look at what they
| showed in the demo), and the NLS command set design facilitated
| that.
|
| What I think Engelbart understandably missed is that 1) we are
| all beginners sometime and 2) we no longer sit in only one app
| all day so the time efficiency amortization benefit he expected
| is a bit worse. GUI standards claw back some of the efficiency
| loss (remember pre CUA?) but don't take you to the levels he
| was shooting for.
| ufhghfggf wrote:
| Engelbart's chording system wasn't faster than QWERTY, but
| chording systems of the stenographic sort are the fastest way
| to get fingers accurately typing words, allowing over
| 200-300WPM for mortals. A major source of error with QWERTY is
| timing. We type "teh" instead of "the" if 'e' lands 1/100th of
| a second before 'h'. Or we type "THe" when we meant "The"
| because the Shift key is error prone to hold and release just
| right.
|
| Piano is known to be very hard but it forgives keys being a few
| milliseconds off because the ear can't hear if a C-G chord was
| actually C-3-milliseconds-before-G or G-3-milliseconds-
| before-C. (The wavelengths of the notes themselves contribute
| to the latency of the ear precisely determining the order each
| note was struck.)
|
| So stenographic chording systems help eliminate the error of
| having to exactly time the ordering of key-up and key-down
| events. If laptops shipped with steno keyboards they'd be
| faster and more pleasurable to use but "good enough is the
| worst enemy of best" I suppose. Shakespeare and Tolstoy didn't
| need high speed text input systems to write all their
| masterpieces. Modern computerized systems for writing musical
| scores haven't given modern society an abundance of Beethovens
| and Mozarts cranking out works like the 9th Symphony and the
| Magic Flute at 100 measures per minute.
|
| Funny, as I write this comment my thinking is beginning to
| evolve to consider that maybe we would be better off using
| Engelbart's speed limited 40WPM system after all? If the effort
| to post a comment on political Twitter were higher maybe we'd
| have higher quality political discussion thereon? If I had to
| write this HN comment long hand with quill and ink I think I
| would have been compelled to get my point across with half as
| many words....
| ianbicking wrote:
| Stenography is weird though. They are typing sounds not
| words, presumably because there's no opportunity to fully
| hear, understand, and transcribe words... to be that fast you
| actually have to cut out comprehension. It's interesting but
| doesn't feel translatable.
| chaganated wrote:
| what an ass! the moldbug post he linked to was a good read
| though:
|
| https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/08/whats-wrong...
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