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Comment by thomasahle | Hacker News Reader

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thomasahle

I can think of lots of more things, where doing them fast initially makes sure you'll never learn them:

* Typing on a keyboard

* Sharpening a knife

* Driving a car.

It seems more like a question of doing things a lot and very focused, than focusing on speed initially.

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All of my car/motorcycle track instructors were big believers in "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast".

Basically go slow and work on the correct form/line/being smooth/etc... Once you have that down, you are ready to go fast and you will be better/faster than someone who hasn't gotten the flow down at a manageable speed first.

I used to teach guitar and always had to tell students to practice it slowly, but perfectly first, and only try to speed things up once they had the basics mastered.

Speed is impressive, but you literally have to learn to walk before you can run!

Tried to teach myself to touch type. I can kind of do it, but its just so slow compared to my normal typing.

Measure your writing speed. Aim for 70-80 WPM. If you get that speed then it's a) enough and b) it doesn't matter at all if you "touch type" properly or have invented your own typing system.

The advantage of touch typing is on a good keyboard/desk/etc you can do it 10 hours a day for 30 years without wrecking your hands. That said, most programmers don't actually type that much so it's not nearly as important.

I bemoan the death (or near-extinction) of text-input games. I learned entirely on my own how to touch type by playing classic Sierra adventure games and spending a ton of time in DOS. I never would have done that if I had gotten into computing a few years later with the transition to mouse-based UIs.

Definitely same here. I feel I was fortunate that my parents were poor graduate students. As a result, I learned my formative computing skills on DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1 at a time when respectable citizens were packing 486DX4s - Pentium 90s.

MMO's took over that space. I learned how to touch type by playing Runescape.

I use an IDE and tab completion most of the day.

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