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So I decide to start touch typing as I think it'll improve my overall typing capabilities including an aspect in which I fail the most: accuracy. I've never used other keyboard other than the standard qwerty.
My current typing style, which is very disorganized (I mostly use the index and middle fingers to type), has yielded me an average of 80WPM, but a good deal of that is backspacing lol.
Now that I made the switch, I'm yielding an average of 15WPM but I think it'll be for the better in the future (looks more professional, is more accurate, I hope it will beat my current typing speed)
What are your thoughts? Should I just keep typing like I usually do or make the switch? (Have in mind I'm majoring in Computer Science; lots of programming!)
Poll: should i
(Vote): switch
(Vote): stay
Also, how do you type?
  
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By touch typing, do you mean using all of your fingers on both hands to type?
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United States13896 Posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing
Touch typing = not using your eyes to look at the keyboard while you type. You weren't touch typing in the first place? I thought it was standard to have everyone know how to touch type these days. Anyways, definitely stick with it, especially if you're going into Computer Science.
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I can touch type, but still type with both index fingers :\
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On April 09 2009 00:57 p4NDemik wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typingTouch typing = not using your eyes to look at the keyboard while you type. You weren't touch typing in the first place? I thought it was standard to have everyone know how to touch type these days. Anyways, definitely stick with it, especially if you're going into Computer Science.
not offensive, but look one post above T_T
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It'll be worth it in the long run. Plus it helps in SC and other games alot. Only thing that sucks after getting ur touch type down is that you can tell whenever you press the wrong keys. So pressing the wrong keys while hot keying almost makes you just wanna leave the game, or maybe thats just me.
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United States13896 Posts
On April 09 2009 01:06 MasterReY wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2009 00:57 p4NDemik wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typingTouch typing = not using your eyes to look at the keyboard while you type. You weren't touch typing in the first place? I thought it was standard to have everyone know how to touch type these days. Anyways, definitely stick with it, especially if you're going into Computer Science. not offensive, but look one post above T_T
Sorry? Your post wasn't up when I went to reply, you just posted it quicker. :/
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lol he posted it two seconds before you
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touch typing should be really easy for any decent SC player imho
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On April 09 2009 01:10 EsX_Raptor wrote:
lol he posted it two seconds before you
those are minutes
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United States24676 Posts
Definitely gain the proper typing technique. Touch typing is great!
Typing fast is awesome.
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United States13896 Posts
This is a great read. Definitely if you're planning on going into CS there is absolutely no reason not to learn how to touch type. After reading this I'm curious about getting a Dvorak keyboard myself. Would be strange at first, but if the it really helps as much as he says it does, it would be worth it.
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If you are a programmer, how can you play without touch typing?
Im a programmer myself, and i touch type. Its not that hard to learn i think.
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araav's link was interesting but i would definitely disagree with the "learn-dvorak-if-youre-starting" thing.
i guess technique could be useful too, i have never really learned technique yet i type quite fast (i don't have any specific fingers for any keys, etc). i guess if you type enough you start being fast either way.
it boggles my mind how you can be a programmer and not type sufficiently fast .. i mean you spend so much time typing, you should get better by like default O_o
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i need to learn the home row key shit even though i type decently fast without it :s
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I also thought that it was standard for people to look at the screen while typing, I type 60 WPM while looking out of the window of my house as long as I know what I'm typing (It's not like randomly generated words) when I type stories for school or when I am just typing up something big I either watch tv or look out the window or something of the like.
(Typed that while looking out the window)
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best way i learned was just to get MSN and chat with friends into the wee hours of the night. Although school made us use "Typing Tutor 7", that was probably the biggest waste of my time ever. typing sad dad fad sad asdfasdfdsaddsfasdf over and over again doesnt really work imo. I damn near failed IT until i started IM-ing.
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Let me take this opportunity to put in a plug for
http://colemak.com
When you're just about to start learning to touch type, it's the easiest time to make the switch.
My colemak wpm is 140, my qwerty wpm is 100.
Consider that I have been using qwerty all my life and colemak a few years, you can imagine that the gap will widen.
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Fast medium slow?
Bullshit. That's not how good musicians learn. Good musicians play a piece close to "at speed" 95% of the time, because hand motions are completely different at different speeds, and it's largely a waste of time to learn the piece at a speed you're not going to eventually play it at.
That doesn't work for typing because there isn't "at speed" like there is in music pieces. You just want to go faster all the time.
So how should you practice typing?
Considering a major cause of speed walls is confusion in the brain, it's a good idea to practice the hand motions separately (reducing complexity), rather than together. Once you get the hand motions right for both hands separately, it's easier for the brain to coordinate the hands together.
If you don't have tutoring software that can do this, just get creative and rearrange the letters in a phrase so that all the letters for the right hand come first, and all the letters in the left hand
For example if you were trying to type the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in the colemak layout, you would type:
Tqcbrwfxpsvrtazdg heuikonojumoehelyo
Left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, etc.
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... i didnt know "touch typing" was a separate category.
I always thought it was just "typing", and those that needed to look were called "poking".
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is good
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Touch typing is really useful.
Learning it will take you 2 weeks at most if you use it constantly and happen to type a lot (e.g. when posting crap on forums/blogs or chatting on IRC or IMs). Use a program to help you learn it, there are a lot of these available. I used KTouch for Linux/KDE back then.
Once you start learning it you should never go back to your old style. Force yourself to use only 10 fingers from then on.
You'll still be slow after these 2 weeks but you should be comfortable with it, which is the important thing... high speed will come later, automatically.
The benefits of touch typing:
- you don't have to look at the keyboard, ever
- it's always faster than other styles, even though some <10 finger typers can become quite fast
- it's ergonomic (less hand/finger movement, less stress on a few single fingers)
(Although... a Starcraft player in 2009 would never understand why anyone would want that *g*)
You also don't have to follow the rules 100%... you'll develop your own style anyway, for example I'm fairly sure that I don't use the "correct" fingers for pressing B, N, or the special characters to the right. But these are details. Important thing is that you get the basics right.
The Colemak layout is probably great, but I would only recommend learning it if you only use a few machines and can have the layout installed on them.
If you use multiple machines/keyboards for whatever reason, it's probably impossible to use Colemak on all of them, and so you'd have to stay with qwerty at certain times anyway.
Almost everyone uses qwerty so using something different can be problematic at times.
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I touch type but not properly, want to learn it correctly some time.
For example when I type "type" I use my left index for the "t" and "y", right ring for "p" then left middle for "e".
I hardly use either of my pinky fingers and sometimes type the bottom row keys with my index fingers.
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On April 09 2009 05:56 Nytefish wrote:
I touch type but not properly, want to learn it correctly some time.
For example when I type "type" I use my left index for the "t" and "y", right ring for "p" then left middle for "e".
I hardly use either of my pinky fingers and sometimes type the bottom row keys with my index fingers.
something similar for me, i type "type" with Lindex for t,y Rring for p and Lring for e.
Actually this thread got me thinking, i went and filmed myself typing -- i went to typingtest.com picked out a random text i've never written before (or if i have i definitely don't remember it at all), and for 2 minutes straight went away at it. Ended up with 120+wpm before errors, and 117 net (all of the errors were due to punctuation and stuff that i don't type often, such as dates and their annoying habit to put a comma before "and")
It looks so awkward watching me type, i don't get it. I guess i definitely have no technique but i type fast enough without ever getting tired so whatever.
I could upload the video after i rotate it (it was recorded upside down O_o) to youtube or something :p
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I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak about a year ago, and I think it was a good decision. It just takes a lot of time and practice to unlearn QWERTY and to commit the new format into muscle memory. I used to type at about 70wpm QWERTY, but when I started typing in Dvorak it was down to 15wpm, and now, a year later I am at 90wpm (I think that Dvorak does increase your wpm when you get used to it).
But in the end, my hands are much more comfortable with the Dvorak layout. I barely have to use the 'q' or 'z' key (it's the apostrophe and semi-colon key in Dvorak respectively), and the most common letters are on the home row meaning that Dvorak requires less finger movement.
The only downside is that most people use qwerty so if I need to use another comp, I have to hope that their computer supports the Dvorak layout or else I'll just have to deal with typing in qwerty until I get back to my comp.
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Yeah switch, you'll average like 100 wpm once you get used to touch typing no problem.
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It won't make that big of a difference since you're at 80WPM already without it, but you might as well. It's easy as hell and you can probably easily get 130WPM ish in a few weeks time
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Baa?21242 Posts
Learning Dvorak or Colemack sucks I would think, since if you went to anywhere besides your own computer and needed to use one, you would type slow as hell.
I'm with fine with QWERTY, I can do 130 WPM. I don't see the need to switch to the much-lauded alternatives that don't actually seem to significantly improve speeds. IIRC, all the research leads to there being no significant difference between people typing on QWERTY and on Dvorak or Colemack...
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On April 09 2009 00:51 EsX_Raptor wrote:
My current typing style, which is very disorganized (I mostly use the index and middle fingers to type), has yielded me an average of 80WPM, but a good deal of that is backspacing lol.
WTF? How is it even possible to attain 80wpm just using the index and middle fingers to type? Are you sure you wrote that correctly? o_o
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whenever someone talks to me and i'm typing something up, i just keep typing while talking to them and maintaining eye contact. usually i get some "do you even know what you're typing?
... it's one of those things that if you do it often enough it's no problem.
like ... playing the piano without looking at the keyboard... playing a guitar without looking at the frets or watching your strumming... walking without watching where you walk (careful!)... writing without having to... hmm... can't say that i can write in a perfectly straight line without checking every now and then...
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On April 09 2009 10:37 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Learning Dvorak or Colemack sucks I would think, since if you went to anywhere besides your own computer and needed to use one, you would type slow as hell.
I'm with fine with QWERTY, I can do 130 WPM. I don't see the need to switch to the much-lauded alternatives that don't actually seem to significantly improve speeds. IIRC, all the research leads to there being no significant difference between people typing on QWERTY and on Dvorak or Colemack...
I quit qwerty cold turkey, learned colemak, and relearned qwerty after.
I'm only slightly slower in qwerty than I used to be (by about 10~20 wpm). I can still type 90~100 wpm in qwerty.
So it's perfect possible, at least for colemak and qwerty, to use both layouts concurrently. Dvorak and qwerty together is more difficult, because more keys change.
Anyway, it's just if you want to give it a try. I'm not saying I have anything better than anecdotal evidence. I just feel a lot more comfortable in colemak, and I do type faster in colemak than I ever did in qwerty.
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EPT
