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Comment by xouse | Hacker News Reader

People think touch typing takes a long time to learn, and getting good does take a while, but it only takes about an hour to memorize the alphanumerics and which finger types what well enough to break the hunt and peck looking at the keyboard cycle forever. Once the cycle is broken just typing casually is enough to eventually achieve mastery. It's only that one or two hours that really suck, and then that week or so of being kind of mediocre that keeps people stuck in the suboptimal local maxima of not touch typing.

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If you use a computer in any way in the course of your job or daily life, touch typing is the single biggest improvement in productivity and quality of life that you can make. It is SO much faster and easier than hunt and peck.

Agreed. Touch typing + learning vim changed the way I work and boosted productivity to another level

I had a conversation with a friend who is an attorney and they blew me away with their off the cuff typing speed. It ended up inspiring me to get better at something I did all day....for someone who’s not sure where to start I’d start with gtypist typespeed or speedpad. Don’t forget about mavis beacon!

Second this.

Also more specific but if you are french the keyboard layout is not great for programming (because []{}';. are not straightforward). I’m more happy since I switched to QWERTY layout for programming. Since I touch type I can easily switch depending on the task.

This is also the case for the german(qwertz) layout because whoever designed it gave zero fucks about people that use it to program. I have been much faster since switching to qwerty. The only issue is umlaute(ä,ü,ö,ß) but I just use compose key(caps lock in my case) + a,u,o,ss to type those.

Just to add that this is not about QWERTY. The portuguese and spanish layouts are QWERTY, but still a pain [1]. Typically the best is to look for the US QWERTY layout or the international layout [2], the ones that have easily accessible brackets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KeyboardLayout-Portuguese...

[2] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106058/difference-...

I learned to touch type via https://www.keybr.com/ - Careful, you can get addicted to this site!

All other software felt like a much bigger grind, with fixed lessons that didn't fit my shortcomings. keybr adapts to your own typing, I made tremendous progress in just a few days.

I still use it a lot but also like to mix it in with https://zty.pe/ - fun little game.

I would add an odd perspective on this. I learned to touch type in grade school because the programming teacher covered all the keys with white stickers. The home keys had different colored stickers. And she setup a sheet of the keys on stands at each machine.

Adding stickers to your keyboard takes very little time, and will force you to learn to touch type. Everyone in our class was a typist within a couple weeks, and doing great by the end of the class.

I combined learning touch typing with switching to Dvorak[1] about 15 years ago.

Doing both together increased the time being annoyingly slow at typing, but it's so rewarding for the gain in comfort. (I don't touch type on Qwerty, but of course with some translating to Dvorak I can pretend.)

https://www.typingclub.com/dvorak is out a good place to start. Don't rearrange the keys on the keyboard! You're not going to look at them anyway.

[1] Nowadays there is also Coleman and variants. I still recommend Dvorak, but at the point someone is deciding between the two it's not worth an online debate.

Most people really could learn touch typing in less than an hour, I experienced this myself. If you type at a decent speed you already know the symbol position already either way, so all that's left is going for more consistent and controlled finger movements.

I easily increased my typing speed by 10WM in a single day just by doing that switch, and I think this is one of the most significant improvements regular computer users can get basically for free.

I really need to do this. At one point I got pretty far on https://www.typingclub.com/, but slid back to hunt-and-peck as soon as I stopped it. I'm learning Vim now (which has a similar effect where you get immediately much slower before you get faster), and one of the guides I was reading said not to waste your time with Vim before you can touch type.

That said, Vim is easier because as soon as you understand how to switch in and out of insert mode it works as a regular text editor. Touch typing really brings me to a standstill.

After a few years of also failing like this I combined learning touch typing with switching to Colemak, and that finally made it stick (though ruining me for normal qwerty, but it was worth it). It takes a while though and there will be a really frustrating period when you can’t type either qwerty or Colemak.

Our school made a concerted effort to have us play touch typing games during our 'computer hour' or whatever it was. It was a great help.

Though by then myself and all my friends were pretty great from playing those old Sierra adventure games. The on-screen action often didn't wait for you to finish typing. So I guess my point is, you can make it fun too if you want.

It definitely took me longer than an hour. I had been using the keyboard wrong for over a decade, so it was hard to undo. I did an hour every day for 2 weeks, I think, after which it stuck. I then wrote at 30-60WPM for a while, which was a bit of a pain.

Now I can get up to 100WPM, definitely appreciate that I took on the challenge.

I’d even go a step further and learn Dvorak. It’s surprising how much more relaxed your typing becomes vs. Qwerty.

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