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I'm learning to type (slrpnk.net)
submitted 18 hours ago* by to c/Dullsters@dullsters.net
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Well, I sort of learned (as one does) in about 1986 or so, on an Atari of some sort or an IBM clone or just one of those computers that used to be around back then. Not my own.

I've naturally been going on that and probably typed countless lines in Usenet, IRC, web, notes, code, configs and whatever files. But it always bugged me that it's just kind of ballistic hammering with any and all fingers that happen to be near the next key.

So, I went and got a very minimal split keyboard to see if I can learn something new. The setup and layers and all that has not really been dull, but I've been pecking away slowly at typing.com and trying to keep my hands on the home row like it's 1989. I thought that might balance it out.

I just got the first unit certificate at 25 wpm. And, hey, I managed to type this post. Maybe I'll get better with time.

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[–] 6 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Funnily enough, I was given typing tutor games as a kid, didn't really spend much time with them, never really developed proficiency because as a 10 year old I didn't have a reason to type in my life and Magic School Bus was more fun.

Fast forward a few years and MSN messenger was a major tool of teen social interaction. You could use it to hit on girls. Knowing what I knew from that typing tutor game, I started IMing friends. I can now touch type at 100WPM.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 hours ago

    I spent a lot longer than I should have doing hunt-and-peck. I mean, I live on computers, and it made sense to learn, but it was a temporary speed hit, and it was always seductively faster to go back to hunt-and-peck. Did various typing programs in school, but it didn't stick. Years of computer use, and still did it using hunt-and-peck.

    IIRC it wasn't until I was about thirteen and taking a computer science course (which was worse to touch-type in, because it heavily used symbols) that I finally said, "Okay, that does it. I'm investing the time to learn to do this right, because I'm definitely going to come out ahead in the long run touch typing" and hit the point of forcing myself not to hunt-and-peck.

    It really is a damned useful skill, and I'm kinda bummed out by the fact that I think that a lot of kids these days are only using Android or iOS devices and often don't have a physical keyboard. I'd bet that touch typing skills are a lot less prevalent today than they were.

    I'd be okay with touch typing going away if we had some successor technology for inputting data into computers that was generally-superior. But even if we had flawless speech recognition, the noise pollution in generates (not to mention the lack of security) means that it probably isn't going to be what one uses for general text input.

    Maybe with some sort of fancy subvocalization pickup gear or something.

    I think that at some point, we will ultimately get some kind of brain-computer link. But as of yet, we don't have anything like that in general use---it's still a research area.

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