“If you’re like me and never learned to touch type properly, just use the arrow keys, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”
Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.
I think it’s hard for people to make themselves dedicate the time to learn something when they aren’t forced to. A big function of school is to force people to learn things, things they could perfectly well learn on their own if they didn’t lack the willpower.
I’m very grateful that my dad, recognizing back in the 90s how important a skill it was, made me learn to touch type when I was just six years old. I never got as good with the number row as with the letters, which was fine for a long time as I am very quick with the number pad, but nowadays I mostly use my laptop which doesn't have a number pad. It is a silly thing, because I could with a few minutes every day for a couple of weeks train myself to be as quick with the number row as with the letters, but I haven't and probably never will. There is no pressing need for it in my life and no one to force me to do it.
I'm a pretty decent touch-typist, but I have some hiccups when using the symbols on the number bar (@#$%^ etc), or brackets, or other stuff that's common when programming but uncommon in most texts used by touch-typing programs.
So I wrote a little program to download source code from Github and allow you to type along with it, and measure the number of typos. It's super old, half-finished and was one of the projects I used to learn Python, so the code is hot garbage and unmaintained, but it might be an interesting thing to look at and use if anyone wants to practice touch-typing on source code:
I think increasingly so due to the prevalence of touch screen typing (I've no evidence to cite, it's just a gut feel). My kids, aged 10 & 12 cannot touch type, despite plenty of experience on a keyboard, they just spend far more time on phones and tablets.
Personally, I learned to first type in the mid to late 80s on a 286 using Mazis Beacon and an IBM selectric typewriter. I wasn't hunt and peck, but still looked at the keyboard while typing.
I didnt really no-look touch type until a took a typing class in high school where they covered your hands so you couldnt see the keyboard. That was the key to me really improving. I went from around 45 wpm to about 120 wpm. I didnt really get comfortable with the number/symbol row until I started programming heavily. Still had to look down for a while to find those symbols. Also one of the reasons I hate nonstandard keyboard layouts. I know where "{}[]/\" are, but on a laptop or compact keyboard, I'll have to gunt for those potentially.
I (finally) learned to touch type after picking up a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard a couple years back. Really forced me into touch typing since there was a clear division between each hand.
Prior to that, I could type at a very decent speed and pseudo touch typed: I would put my fingers on home row but quickly I would lose that discipline and look at my hands as I typed and use the wrong fingers for various keys. I'm guessing that most people who are using VIM (or just programming on a daily basis) are close enough to count even if it isn't proper touch typing like I had in the past
That being said, I'm SOO much faster than I used to be and would encourage people to grab an ergonomic keyboard. Better for your body and it forces you to type properly :D
We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life.
Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teaching myself to touch type. Basically, I took online typing tests over and over after work.
Since then, my typing speed has at least doubled. I don't look at the keyboard anymore, and I'm able to get my thoughts down with _much_ less friction. I can't recommend it enough.
Truth, typing quickly is crucial to getting thoughts out of your brain. Our brains think much faster than we type, so typing is our bottleneck. I am only at 60WPM (tops) and it really helps. It especially helps for the large majority of an engineering/programming job, which is not coding, but communicating.
Also helps writing code big time, but the big win is in communication, and as someone else mentioned during pair programming sessions.
You might more than you think. That was the case for me. Rearranging the key caps on my (non-laptop) keyboard quickly cured that, and is an interesting exercise when you can afford it.
Idea for someone looking for something to build, on my list but probably won't prioritize it for many years as I'll build it eventually but would welcome someone else building it. If anyone wants to work on this ping me and maybe I can help collaborate/mentor.
Typing App for Engineers, MVP:
* Load a canvas with a preloaded code snippet, the text is mostly greyed out
* When typing your text shows over the greyed out text, but darker, red if the character doesn't match
* Time how long it takes to type it perfectly
Gold plating:
* Users can login
* Users can upload own code snippets for community contributions
* Leaderboard shows top times and users for those who typed it perfectly, only perfect scores are registered, because code must be perfect or it won't run.
This could also allow an engineer to learn APIs while learning to type. I did this with 60 or so pages of Drupal code a few years ago. I used Compiz fusion's overlay opacity control to put a loaded code snippet into VIM,reduced the opacity of the window slightly, then laid another VIM terminal on top of it, reduced the opacity of that terminal window so I could see behind it and started typing the slightly greyed out text from the window behind.
Been meaning to put this out on my blog but this is a good start.
I was actually learning React around the time I was learning to touch type. So, naturally, my first project was to build a typing test[0] :) Looking back, I cringe at the code quality. But it worked and I had fun doing it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like the idea of typing out code though! I think there are some sites that do that, like https://typing.io/
SWEET! Typing.io is perfect and almost* exactly what I was intending to build. Can even upload own samples, and it focuses on working code, no typos. I think I'll actually pay for this too!
* It doesn't seem to have the social/competition/gamification aspect built in like Vim Golf.
Ah, sorry it took so long to respond—I was at work. I used KeyHero[1], mostly because the passages were interesting enough to keep me from getting _too_ bored.
I studied a few charts beforehand, but the repetition is really what made it sink in.
I used Tipp10 about 12 years ago when I forced myself to learn it. What worked for me is to do the basic lessons and then always use touch typing without looking whenever on a keyboard. You’ll be slower initially, but speed will increase over time.
I learned on https://www.typing.com/ (typingweb.com when I did it). One thing it doesn't do well is special characters and numbers though. We need a typing course for coders.
e.g. How fast can we type the below accurately?
function typing_test($foo = 'bar') {
return $foo
}
I learned touch typing when I was 25. THis was probably after 6 years of programming and computer use. I could already type fast enough without looking at the keyboard, but I decided to learn anyway.YMMV, but it took me about 2hours for 5 days to get comfortable with touch typing. For programmers who are still wondering the effort required, just do it!
For me the biggest advantage I see after learning touch typing is lesser errors because you are getting proper feedback from the screen while you are typing.
I taught myself at age 30 using online software. However, yes, touch typists in this industry seem rare to me. I often get called out on conferences for my typing, which is at best only about 60 words per minute. Maybe it is because I don't mute as much as I should, OR is there another reason?
I’ve noticed with a few colleagues when pairing that they were rather slow at typing and made plenty of mistakes. Then I realized that they were not touch typing and always had to look down for the backspace key.
I was quite surprised to see that there are programmers that don’t do touch typing.
I believe one learns such skill implicitly while typing lots of texts/prose continuously, which is not needed for programming, especially nowadays, where the editor properly guesses the needed token after you type 1 or 2 symbols.
Are touch typists rare these days? I feel like people these days forego even learning to type properly. I dont understand why they refuse to just learn it, it is such an essential skill to have.