The Lost Art of Typing Shit by Hand
3rd September 2016
Typing helps you learn the syntax. It helps you learn the keywords. It makes you think, and as you’re writing out the 10th import foo from ‘foo’, the little details become apparent.
“Oh, those separators in the for loop are semicolons, not commas.”
“Oh, import {foo} from ‘foo’ isn’t the same as import foo from ‘foo’.”
Typing makes you curious about the words you are forced to write out. “What do all those things in public static void main(String[] args) mean, anyway?”
It also helps you learn the various error messages. Inevitably, you’ll type something wrong or leave out something you thought wasn’t important or that your eye didn’t notice (damn semicolons).
When you’re typing in a program by hand, you can try to run it at various points along the way, to see what works. Maybe more importantly, you can see where it breaks. “Poking the box.”
Sometimes the old ways are best.