This is my first day with the n900, and I was wondering about the keyboard. Who is writing a lot on it? How long does it take you compared to typing on a full sized keyboard?
Found myself approx. two times slower.

Anyone uses the keyboard for writing software?
Is that a realistic thing to do?
Not talking about developing an office suite, of course. Small projects. Mother's little helpers, scripts

Right now I can't imagine doin this, but I would like to.

So hoping, speed will improve with practice.


Thanks for listening

Except for weirdos (and there are a few here), typing is much slower on the N900 than on a real keyboard.

On the other hand, some (notably Lcuk) have reported sitting in airports writing and testing code for the N900, ON the N900. So it can be done. There is even a C++ compiler out there, and of course other languages too, such as Python and (less common here) Ruby.

Okay, thx. suppose I need to find the switch for weirdo mode then.

I really want to use it for some decent writing. If this can't be done I'll wait for the N9.
I hate waiting

You get used to it pretty quickly. I'm programming stuff in Python on my n900 and is quite a pleasant experience.

My only grumble is that some of the symbols are only on the virtual keyboard.

However, you can reprogram the keys to produce other symbols.

I've written some 1kbyte sh scripts on-device when away from computer..

A couple of weeks, and you should be fine. I used to walk around with a 10+ kg backpack for many, many years. After buying the n900, I started to leave my laptop at home or office and I only bring my n900. Being a talkative person, eh, weirdo, I learnt how to type on this little thing pretty fast. The only annoyance is one I share with Johnel: I tend to use the pipe symbol a lot, and it's on the symbol keyboard. But it's a small price for not having to carry my backpack.

typing is not hard but holding the phone with balance can be hard, it is so heavy sometimes it's quite awkward to press certain combinations or sequences of keys without worrying about dropping it.

im pretty quick at typing on it, but will obviously never be better than a real keyboard where I can get about 100wpm

I get about 60+ words per minute on the N900's keyboard, tested on typingtest.com iirc.

i never really undertake any *new* programming on n900 unless it is trivially short or an emergency needing a quick fix, but I do regularly edit existing files. I use nano. being familiar with keyboard shortcuts you can move around really fast and do what you need

of course my typing speed is pretty slow, but having ctrl key combinations makes all the difference in the world for speed vs a virtual keyboard ala iOS when editing with nano