WEBVTT

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DREW: You ready?

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Okay.

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EMILE: So hi, everyone.

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I just wanted to know --

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has anyone used steno?

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Steno keyboarding?

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No one?

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By show of hands?

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Except for Drew?

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No one?

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Okay, well, that's awesome, because...

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Prepare to be amazed.

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Maybe the best thing that you never tried.

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Could be.

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So what is steno?

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It's a specialized,
non-alphanumeric,

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chorded keyboard layout.

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Non-alphanumeric
meaning that not all the letters of the alphabet

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can be found on the keyboard,

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and you actually get them
by pressing different chords.

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It also works with phonetics,

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so as opposed to
typing out individual letters,

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like you do with a typewriter-style keyboard,

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you do words.

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So you can see how this already benefits things.

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It's almost like object-oriented programming
to procedural programming,

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is one way you can think of it.

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It's typed using a stenotype,

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and back in the day,
they used to look like that thing,

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where you put your code
on a piece of paper,

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so not very good for us.

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This machine must be about...

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More than 100 years old.

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Nowadays, they look like that.

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So if you wanted to plug it into USB,

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you would need something like that.

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And then why should you care about this?

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Us all being developers,
and especially liking Vim,

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we do a lot of typing,

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and the thing about qwerty,
or even Colemak or Dvorak,

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is that you'll get RSI.

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If you work for eight hours straight,

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just constantly typing,

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you will get RSI.

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And this is one of the things

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that is solved.

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So that's a huge win,
and I'm sure we all always look out for that.

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Significantly faster than qwerty.

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So we speak at about 180 words per minute,

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and the top speed for qwerty
is about 160, without, you know,

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Guinness Book of World Record exceptions.

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So it's much faster.

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And I think the record for steno
is at about 360 right now.

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People reach 300 words per minute,

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and they say in six months,
you'll be on 160 words per minute.

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So it's way faster than qwerty.

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Fluency and efficiency of text entry,

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which is something we all know about,
using Vim.

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It's just that --
the rhythm that you have while working.

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And you'll get more of this
when you focus on words,

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and not just letters,
typing in individual letters.

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It's an emergent technology,
even though it's been around for hundreds of years.

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In the context of us using it,
us developers using it,

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it's quite an emergent technology,
so that's quite exciting.

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If you wanted to use this,
obviously you need a modern stenotype

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with a USB cable,
that would plug in, like we saw previously.

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So there are a few problems with that.

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They're really expensive.

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Bloated proprietary software.

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And highly monopolized market.

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So that's the problem, right?

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But then, luckily for us,
along comes Plover.

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And they solve this problem
by producing

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free, Open Source stenographic software.

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So in your face, big companies!

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You know?

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This means that the cost goes down
from about £3,000 to about £40.

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So that's what they give us.

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You can use a keyboard like that.

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That's the Microsoft SideWinder X4,
which is the cheapest keyboard

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that you can buy to use steno.

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You can get these laser-cut keys
to make it even more like a steno machine,

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which you actually put on your keyboard,
and it looks like that.

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You get the 22 keys.

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And as you can see,
it's not the weird qwerty matrix.

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It actually has the keys above each other,
the way it should be.

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So which keyboards can you use?

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You need n-key rollover,
which means you have to press

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at least 10 keys at the same time,
to produce these words.

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And there's a list of the keyboards that you can use,

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if you wanted to do steno.

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So you can look at this afterwards,
and even have prices.

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You can see it's pretty cheap.

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So then I felt like I had to say
something about steno in Vim.

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These go together really well,
and anything you can do

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on a qwerty keyboard,
you can do on a steno keyboard.

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That's really important to keep in mind
when you're learning it,

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so there's nothing you can't do with steno.

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It's a perfect match.

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And thanks.

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I'm Emile,
and that was it about steno.

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(applause)

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>> Yeah?

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>> Like, aren't chorded keys
worse for RSI?

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>> Sorry?

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>> Aren't chorded keys
worse for RSI?

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>> Well, yeah,
if we think about emacs,

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then I know that is a popular argument with emacs.

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But this is a non-typewriter-style keyboard,

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so it's more like a piano,
if you look at the keys.

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And the way it's been engineered is --

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mainly people with disabilities,
who really can't type that fast.

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So it's definitely with, like,
trying to prevent RSI.

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But I know that
that is a popular argument in emacs.

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And I'm not, like --
I haven't used steno that much,

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but I know that people say
that it's way less RSI

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than typewriter-style keyboards.

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>> Thank you.

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>> Can I ask another question?

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Do you switch between steno and qwerty?

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>> So this is quite a beautiful thing,

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that I use Colemak,

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and when I switched to Colemak from qwerty,
I lost qwerty,

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and that really sucked,
because I couldn't use anyone else's keyboard.

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But steno is so different,
that it wouldn't interfere

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with your Colemak or qwerty or whatever you use,

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and you can still maintain both,

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because they're just such different machines.

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Yeah.

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DREW: I actually have a Filco Majestouch keyboard.

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So if anyone wants to try it out,
I've got it set up here.