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Comment by esmi | Hacker News Reader

Although I agree with you I wonder if it’s just an artifact of how we were trained to type. When I see kids type on glass they don’t seem to require this tactile feedback. In 5-10 years, basically when today’s 10 year olds are of working age, I wonder what we will see.

But I do understand we need good keyboards today.

Here is a small study that looked at it in kids: http://www.bradycline.com/2013/03/ipad-typing/

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When I'm looking to the keyboard of my phone or tablet, I also don't need feedback, however while writing on a desktop PC or workstation and writing code full speed, physical keyboard gives my brain hints for alignment and takes another concentration task from my consciousness.

Another effect is the screen size. You can see the keyboard and text area in your vision on a phone or tablet, but it's not possible in a desktop or laptop.

Looks like it boils down to the information that we can gather about our fingers and hitting targets with the vision and other senses during writing.

Funny thing is, I can write faster while I'm listening to music and cannot hear the keys' sounds.

Definitely. It’s interesting how personal it all is. I guess I’m just theorizing how long until we are the modern equivalent of a writer who can only write with a typewriter.

When I was a kid writers would discuss typewriters very similar to how we discuss keyboards. I haven't seen a typewriter in years. ;)

I like the flat style of Apple scissor keyboards, but I won’t discount what could be done with a touch surface “keyboard”. Why worry about emulating the feel of a mechanical keyboard? I love swipe keyboards on phones; removing physical keys makes that frictionless on computer keyboards. (Though predictive text may not be as fun for terminal flags.) And there are probably other gains to be made if you can unlearn what you learned from Mavis Beacon.

For that matter, why emulate a mechanical keyboard at all? If we unlearn the whole ”static” key concepts maybe there is even more to gain. Probably too late for me though. ;)

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