Do you touch type?

[paulca]

I have been a programmer for 40+ years.  I tried on and off to learn touch typing - typing without looking at the keyboard at all.

About 5 years ago while typing I started to notice a huge increase in my error rate.  I was starting to worry about cognitive or motor reflex decline, but then I noticed.  I was no longer looking at the keyboard at all.

My error rate is still fairly high, but maybe one correction every 5 words and a typing rate of maybe 100 wpm.

I don't know and haven't learnt any particular "style" or "technique", in fact my technique is probably far removed from a typists as my pinkies cover modifiers and cursor keys mostly.

[ataradov]

No, not really. Never bothered to learn,since it was never a limiting factor.

And it is rather strange because it is not that I need to look at the letter, but I just need to look at the keyboard in general. I have not had a keyboard with Russian characters in 10+ years, yet when typing in Russian I still do the same thing.

[mendip_discovery]

My error rate is still fairly high, but maybe one correction every 5 words and a typing rate of maybe 100 wpm.

The number pad, I am rather quickly an accurate for a dyslexic.

Keyboard, I barley look at it. But my error rate if massive and I am not that fast. But I don't write large blocks of text all that often.

Currently on the phone and I dont need to even look at the keys for that either. Though I have to poof read everything at least twice as the auto correct can really throw some good errors in there.

My limiter is mostly this rather useless brain I have.

As a mate always said, all the smelling pisstakes are mine.

[PlainName]

Not learned touch-typing but generally I don't look at the keyboard - just know where the keys are. In fact, in typing this I haven't once looked at the keyboard 

But I am very fussy about keyboards. For a long time my favourite was a Dell SK-8115, but eventually they went obsolete and I decided to go wireless. Current one is an RT100 (ISO) which is.. OK.

[ejeffrey]

Yeah I learned touch typing in 4th grade and never looked back.  For programming it's not a huge time saver but it's a nice cognitive offload to not have to not have to think about it.

For writing it's a huge advantage.  In particular, I also don't need to look at the screen to type which means I can read a document and type a different document at the same time.  For instance in college I could read a paper draft, make revisions on the fly while retyping it.  Or I can read a document while composing a message or reply about it.

It's clear to me that this isnt super common among newer programmers at least judging from modern code editors.  There are too many auto-complete features that grab the input focus if you aren't paying close enough attention and I always have to turn them off because they make a total mess.

[MarkF]

I took a typing class in high school.
Best thing I ever did.  My best was 40 words/min.

I also play the piano and was a church organist for many years when I was younger.

Both have suffered greatly due to neuropathy in my hands and feet from my chemotherapy.

[MisterHeadache]

I also learned typing in middle school.  I still remember the format of the lessons - we started with the home row, learning one left finger and one right finger at a time.  Then branched out to the Q and Z rows, then lastly the number rows.  Kept at it through high school, then by college I was full-on touch typist.

It's one skill that I have that hasn't significantly degraded 40+ years later.  In fact, at work I frequently find myself in meetings speaking one sentence while typing some notes from a prior sentence.  Weird how that works, I guess it is similar to musicians who can play a guitar or piano without consiously having to think about it, some form of muscle memory plus a region in the brain that can work independently.

[IanB]

I took a formal typing course while I was doing an internship as a student. It was initially painful transitioning from two finger typing to touch typing, but it didn't take long to become proficient. I have been touch-typing for my whole career since (four decades). I can't imagine not having this skill. It makes the use of the keyboard so much more fluent. I think and the words appear on the screen, just like thinking and speaking. No need to look at the keyboard (or screen) while typing.

Amusingly, I have a friend who made a keyboard with all blank keys, no engraving at all on any keycaps. (He wanted nice tactile keys with a good feel.) And of course, the lack of markings on any keys was no impediment at all.

[SteveThackery]

Yes, I learned to touch-type, and I would say it has contributed to my life enormously.

Prior to learning to touch-type I was a hunt-and-peck typist, like everyone else. If you watch a self-taught typist they get really good at hunt-and-peck - the hunt part gets really quick. However, virtually all of us who type like that have to shift our eyes between keyboard and screen. We've all glanced at the screen to see that we've been typing in all uppercase, for example. But this is the crux: self-taught typing is TIRING. There is no doubt that the up-and-down eye movements, combined with the ungainly hand movements (usually with no more than two fingers per hand), require a significant amount of brain power.

And this is where touch-typing comes in. You never look at the keyboard; you look only at the screen. In fact, you can happily look at the wall, a colleague, or another document. And you use all eight fingers plus (usually) one thumb, so the individual finger movements are much smaller, which is both more restful and faster. The reduction in brain workload is very substantial.

I never bothered to get fast: my touch-typing speed is 60 wpm at best, which is about as fast as I can think (really it's only copy typists that need to push the speed really high). But the best thing is: I can keep up 60 wpm for hours. Yes, literally hours. In practice, because I tend to spend a lot of time thinking, I actually expect to produce 1000 words per hour, and those words will have had the first pass edit (spelling, grammar) done on them. And here is the crux: it's not just banging out a thousand words in an hour: it's four thousand words in four hours.  It is scalable.

It is made possible by touch-typing. Unlike the unstructured typing everybody does if they are self-taught, touch-typing happens at an unconscious level, and as such has practically zero load on your cognition. I literally cannot tell you where the keys are on a keyboard, but place my fingers in the proper touch-typing position, and I can just hammer out any word that comes into my head without even thinking about my fingers or the keyboard. It really is wonderful.

So touch-typing has made a massive contribution to my productivity. I know that my university results were boosted a lot by my ability to turn out plenty of work with little fatigue. And when I worked at BT's R&D place I could turn out substantial reports quickly and easily. Touch-typing has stood me in very good stead.

In conclusion, learning to touch-type was tedious and boring, and seemed to take far too long. But it is one of the best things I've ever done.

[SteveThackery]

Just some observations about the learning process.

I used a program called "Mavis Beacon Teaches Touchtyping", and I worked through it religiously. I made one significant mistake: I didn't bother with the lessons covering the number row. I'll come back to that.

I discovered something strange, but important to know. Firstly, practise for ten, no more than fifteen, minutes per day. More than that becomes tiring and tiresome, which act to discourage you. Discouragement is the last thing you need because it is oh so easy to give yourself a day off, and before you know it, learning to touch-type gets pushed aside and soon forgotten. But here is the strange thing: you don't improve while you are practising, you improve between practises.

Suppose you are up to 30 words per minute. You go through your 10-15 minute lesson, and at the end you are still at 30 wpm. Don't worry! Between practises something odd happens: you get better at typing. When you start the next lesson you will storm away at 32 or 33 wpm. I can't explain it, but it's as if the practise session tells the brain what circuits are required, and when the brain is resting it builds and consolidate those circuits in the background. It's just an analogy - I don't know what really goes on.

I said earlier that I had made a mistake regarding the number row. When you work in science or engineering you often need to type numbers, so you really should do all the touch-typing lessons pertaining to the top row. Infuriatingly, I didn’t, so now I have to drop out of touch-typing and glance at the keyboard as I type out numbers. I promised myself I would do those extra lessons, but I never did.  I'm retired now, so I don't really need to type all that much - and therein lies my rubbish excuse for not learning the number row. 😄

[CatalinaWOW]

I learned to touch type in high school.  This was in the mid 1960s, when the only people who typed were secretaries and novelists.  I can't remember why, and hated every minute at the time.  Ruined my GPA with a D, and didn't enjoy the instructor who was of the ruler on the knuckles for bad hand placement school.

But a few years later, typing FORTRAN into keypunch cards I was glad to have the skill.   And it really helped writing documents of various types both in university and in the workplace.  I am now really glad to have learned, and even respect the instructor since I never had carpal tunnel problems.

I do regret never trying Dvorak or even better, chording keyboards.  But not enough to rectify that now. 

[ataradov]

Amusingly, I have a friend who made a keyboard with all blank keys, no engraving at all on any keycaps. (He wanted nice tactile keys with a good feel.) And of course, the lack of markings on any keys was no impediment at all.

I've got a Happy Hacking Keyboard 2 with no letters when it came out, and I used it without issues, but I still look at it, I can type without looking, but it is way slower. I stopped using it because small arrow block was annoying. And the first one had no arrow block at all, but can't imagine being that leet of a hacker.

I still have that keyboard in the original packaging.

I just tried typing.com test and got 40 wpm with 94 % accuracy. It can probably be improved, but I don't really care that much.

[IanB]

I didn't bother with the lessons covering the number row. I'll come back to that.
...
I said earlier that I had made a mistake regarding the number row. When you work in science or engineering you often need to type numbers, so you really should do all the touch-typing lessons pertaining to the top row.

Not only the number row, but ALL the punctuation characters and special symbols. If you write software (do coding), you will know that programming languages make use of nearly every punctuation character for some purpose or another. You can't write code without them.

[IanB]

I've got a Happy Hacking Keyboard 2 with no letters when it came out, and I used it without issues, but I still look at it, I can type without looking, but it is way slower. I stopped using it because small arrow block was annoying. And the first one had no arrow block at all, but can't imagine being that leet of a hacker.

My friend literally made his keyboard from scratch as a custom build--chose the layout, selected good tactile key switches, made the PCB and soldered in the keys, found/made a suitable enclosure, put the whole thing together. I guess this is what you do if you are not happy with any commercial offerings.

[tszaboo]

I didn't really learn it but I'm typing with about 7 and a half is fingers, without really looking at the keyboard. I glance at it every now and then. Accuracy is not great, depends a lot on the keyboard. I prefer ANSI layout and full size, with some not clicky switches. I have one at home that has the same color scheme keycaps as the old IBM, it's great.
I don't bottom out the keys usually.

[Analog Kid]

I learned to touch-type when I was in junior high school (7th grade, I think).
My mother made me take a summer school course.
Good thing she did; it's stuck with me all these years.

So much better than hunt-and-peck.

[Neilm]

When I was diagnosed with dyslexia (age 10) my parents sent me to learn touch typing. I have been doing it for the last 40 years.

Useful for when pranksters at work swapped my keys around - I put the J and F back as they had pips on them and didn't bother with the rest. Confused everyone who tried to use my PC

Neil

[Analog Kid]

I prefer ANSI layout and full size, with some not clicky switches. I have one at home that has the same color scheme keycaps as the old IBM, it's great.

My all-time favorite keyboard is still that original IBM PC one: you know, the cream-ish colored one with the super-clicky keys that you really had to push down. Almost like a manual typewriter.

I hate the ones (like the one I'm using now) that have almost no tactile feedback, no click at all ...

Dunno what "ANSI layout" is: QWERTY? Dvorak?

[negativ3]

Speech to text apps took away my need to type quickly, especially when into paragraphs and walls of text.

I do also enjoy a clicky keyboard.

[krish2487]

Yes I do.

I learnt it specifically a while ago, using "almena method". I m not endorsing it by any manner, but it is what helped me learn proper touch typing in a structured manner.
It has contributed a huge amount in removing the latency between thinking and typing by removing the step of looking at the keys aka hunt and peck method.
The stream of consciousness flow is rather seamless now. I do make mistakes every now and then, but overall its a net benefit.

The advantage as I see it, is not in making me a better programmer or a more efficient embedded engineer, but simply allow me to focus on what is in front of me on the
screen instead of diverting my focus away from monitor.

On a side note, another thing that led to a increase in speed of my thought - activity - result on screen is vim keybindings, this is on top of the touch typing that further refined
my workflow to not just type but navigate the desktop environment. Just my 2 cents.

[IanB]

Dunno what "ANSI layout" is: QWERTY? Dvorak?

Not sure either, but perhaps US standard layout?

There are many different key layouts, almost one for every country and region in the world.

For example, the UK standard layout is different from the US layout, even though they are both "QWERTY". It can be a bit annoying switching from one to the other since a whole bunch of keys jump around to different positions, and the Enter and Backspace keys change size and shape.

In other countries there are even bigger differences. For example, in France it is not a QWERTY keyboard but an AZERTY keyboard.

This is not to mention all the options for accented letters across Europe.

Let's not even get started on Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc.

One thing you really cannot travel with is touch-typing, unless you are good at adapting.

[Analog Kid]

By the way, one thing I've noticed is that despite the conventional wisdom that computer keyboards ought to be re-laid out, since the QWERTY keyboard was actually designed to slow down typists to avoid key jams on manual typewriters, I don't find this to be a problem at all. In fact, it seems to hardly matter how the keys are arranged, so long as you have the muscle memory of where they are. I find I can type as fast as my fingers will move despite this archaic arrangement of letters.

[ejeffrey]

Amusingly, I have a friend who made a keyboard with all blank keys, no engraving at all on any keycaps.

I have a Das Keyboard with blank key caps.  I used to have an IBM PS/2 keyboard with movable key covers.  At one point I was going to try learning Dvorak so I moved all the keys around.  After deciding that it wasn't worth the effort I changed the layout but not the key caps, which super confused people.

[TimFox]

Accent and diacritic marks:
Olivetti typewriters had a good solution:  the keys for common accent marks did not advance a space.
To get e with acute accent, you hit the accent first, then the letter.

[SiliconWizard]

Accent and diacritic marks:
Olivetti typewriters had a good solution:  the keys for common accent marks did not advance a space.
To get e with acute accent, you hit the accent first, then the letter.

I think you get that kind of behavior if you select "international QWERTY" as the keyboard type.