Handwriting is only good if you can actually read your own handwriting.
My handwriting is shit. Terrible. Infact it is so bad I almost failed school.
At the age of 5 I was told by various authority figures that I was thick because I couldn't write. I vividly remember being told that some people have dyslexia, and that why they can't write, however I'm just slow, and that I'll have to just try harder.
Fortunately my mother decided that this was bollocks and forced the school to actually try. All through first, middle and high school my handwriting held me back. It is exceeding tedious to have all the correct answers but not be able to express them in a written format, the only format that gets you marks. When I was choosing my GCSEs at the age of 14, I had to weight up my potential career choices for someone who appears illiterate, and had a very high chance of leaving school at 16 with no qualifications. (the standard thing to do in my situation is to only do maths, a single science and English).
Fortunately my school was progressive and decided to try giving me an apple eMate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300). This literally changed my life.
It was the beginning of me realising that perhaps I wasn't a failure, and that I might be able to actually achieve something other than living in the family home.
I have a house, a wife, child and a first class degree. All of which would not have been possible without typing.
So the next time someone says that typing is inferior to hand writing, and that its very simple to write at the speed of thought, have some empathy for the legions of people that cannot write for shit.
Out of curiosity, why do you think your handwriting is so bad? Motor skills or something cognitive? E.g. can you draw, solder, sculpt?
Do you believe its a trade-off with a different type of skill that you have as a particular strength?
Mine tends to vary. Occasionally its beautiful, mostly its average and sometimes its scrawl no matter the effort. I'm not sure about the mechanism behind the difference.
My fine motor skills are "unrefined" shall we say. My drawing is equally rubbish, soldering is good though (surface mount and everything!)
the label that was finally attached was dysgraphia. However any skill that I learned after the age of about 16 is largely unaffected. I learnt drumming from 16, and fencing at 19, and there is no problem there, however tennis I fail horribly at, lacrosse I'm ok at.
I have a journal that I draw in, however its a real effort to write legibly. Its terribly frustrating to write long words so I sort of scribble the intermediate letters.
You were lucky. I also almost failed school, 7th grade when they introduced a mandatory handwriting class. As a remedial project, I had to spend that summer copying down encyclopedia pages in cursive, instead of working on my programming projects. My fine motor skills are great though, I just dislike handwriting with a passion.
The common thread I see here is that programming is about thinking. Yes, yes it is. however to be a good programmer you need to communicate your ideas. That means updating tickets.
This means getting my ideas out onto the page as quickly as I can. More importantly, in a form that can be understood effectively by others.
Handwriting by itself can help learning. It's not necessary to ever read the notes again. The questions is rather are there better alternatives on a computer/typing.
My handwriting is shit. Terrible. Infact it is so bad I almost failed school.
At the age of 5 I was told by various authority figures that I was thick because I couldn't write. I vividly remember being told that some people have dyslexia, and that why they can't write, however I'm just slow, and that I'll have to just try harder.
Fortunately my mother decided that this was bollocks and forced the school to actually try. All through first, middle and high school my handwriting held me back. It is exceeding tedious to have all the correct answers but not be able to express them in a written format, the only format that gets you marks. When I was choosing my GCSEs at the age of 14, I had to weight up my potential career choices for someone who appears illiterate, and had a very high chance of leaving school at 16 with no qualifications. (the standard thing to do in my situation is to only do maths, a single science and English).
Fortunately my school was progressive and decided to try giving me an apple eMate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMate_300). This literally changed my life.
It was the beginning of me realising that perhaps I wasn't a failure, and that I might be able to actually achieve something other than living in the family home.
I have a house, a wife, child and a first class degree. All of which would not have been possible without typing.
So the next time someone says that typing is inferior to hand writing, and that its very simple to write at the speed of thought, have some empathy for the legions of people that cannot write for shit.