I’ve recently started trying to improve my typing speed, which has probably been held back by my somewhat unconventional typing style. Formal touch typing was never a part of my education, and while years of computer use eventually led to me being able to type without looking, I’m probably not as efficient as I could be.

Can you touch type - and with proper form? QWERTY, DVORAK or other layout?

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I’ve actually leaned that in school, on a fully mechanical typewriter. But i don’t use this skill, as touch type is completely useless for programming.

  • _skj@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I was never good at typing until I got a job programming. Never took a course or anything so I’m definitely not using proper form, but if you use a keyboard enough your fingers learn where the keys are.

    A course might help, but like all muscle memory, the trick is to just practice it enough times that you don’t need to think about it anymore.

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    i touch type qwerty and dvorak. when i was working in a call center i started learning one-handed qwerty touchtyping, too.

  • t0fr@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    Yes, I can touch type. I had a computer class in my year of high school where they taught us all how to do it.

  • Walk_blesseD@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    10 hours ago

    I taught myself to touch-type with proper form after I built myself a split keyboard with the Dvorak layout (I figured since I’d never learned to properly touch-type with QWERTY it’d be as good an opportunity as any to pick up a better optimised layout). I gotta say, it does feel pretty great being able to type something with my eyes closed, or more practically, qouting stuff from a textbook without having to look at what I’m doing on my laptop.

  • qaz@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Partially, only with one hand. I use one finger on the other hand

  • nomecks@lemmy.wtf
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    1 day ago

    I don’t use all the right fingers but can type 80+ wpm, so you can be plenty efficient with enough practice.

  • CromulantCrow@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Dvorak at work, QWERTY away from work. I occasionally start typing Dvorak at home, but it doesn’t take much to reset the brain to QWERTY. I learned touch typing in high school in the 80s on a mechanical typewriter.

  • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t recall much of my process learning touch typing on qwerty but the process was frustrating at first learning dvorak because the qwerty muscle memory kept getting in the way. But I made myself use it in IRC and kept a diagram of the layout on my 2nd monitor. I also played some typing games. Then, over time, I got better and better with it and started moving other programs over until it was my main layout. Now the first thing I do on a new to me PC is go looking for keyboard layout options (and holy fuck MS has moved that shit all over the place).

    Wayland (or something in KDE) has the best handling I’ve seen yet. Gaming was always kinda annoying as different games have different levels of support for alternate layouts.

    On windows, some would just work, remapping the default keybinds to the layout (because moving isn’t about hitting wasd specifically, but the keys in those places) and text types as expected. Some I’d go into options and remap to dvorak. Some I’d just switch the layout and be annoyed any time I had to type text instead of hitting keybinds.

    On Linux, Fedora Cinnamon, it was just random whether the layout would work like I wanted or do something else, like reverse (where even switching layouts keeps the incorrect dvorak layout), or sometimes it just ignored the system layout entirely. I had to remap and reset to defaults a lot.

    But then I switched to Fedora KDE and it’s perfect. Only “issue” is I had to set the default to qwerty, but then it uses that layout to remap the bindings for other layouts and both bidings and typing just works all the time now.

    • draco_aeneus@mander.xyz
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      11 hours ago

      To be fair, programming is basically the art of making the computer do as much as possible with as little typing as possible.

  • jason@discuss.online
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    1 day ago

    Yes. Custom layout so I was forced to learn touch typing. I’m way faster now than I was with with qwerty after years of programming because I would always find myself looking at the keyboard. So, I guess with qwerty, the same could be accomplished by taking the characters off.

  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The ONE class from High School that taught me something I literally use every single day.

    Typing.

    I graduated High School in 1988 and have used a keyboard almost every single day and can touch type with alacrity. As far as what layout, QWERTY.

    While Dvorak is supposed to be faster and more efficient, I’m an old IT guy and not a typist. While some of my work does include writing presentations and reports, I’m doing more punching commands and using short cuts. It’s just not worth the effort to learn another layout.

  • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    I was never able to touch type up through middle of high school despite typing papers and taking formal typing courses. Once I got into online PC gaming and also programming I got good at touch typing very fast. Is typing a skill you use daily? Natural practice beats forced if you already have the fundamentals down. QWERTY for me.

    • electrotabby@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      Same. I tried really hard to learn it but gave up in frustration. 5ish years with plenty of computer use later I suddenly found myself typing without looking.