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Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220313160742/https://www.indep...

Mavis Beacon taught me to type. I don't really care if she's real or not, I'll always have a soft spot for that CD!

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StarCraft taught me how to type, gotta type fast if you're going to trash-talk on Battle.Net

ICQ and MSN messenger did it for me.

Definitely messenger apps that did it for me. Back in the AOL online CD days!

No one I knew could type, so I had to learn myself. By the time it was taught in HS, my habits and muscle memory weren't having it. I could type 'properly' but far slower, so I gave up.

To this day I've never had a RSI from typing (and some of the marathons were crazy!), and it's rampant among 'proper' typers.

Gotta get that zinger joke in before someone else does!

It could be a geographical thing but my experience of ICQ and MSN was almost entirely 1:1 chat. It was a calmer way to be - no onlookers to impress, and first-class support for signalling that you’re not at your computer right now so maybe they should message later.

This is my experience too. The standout memory for me is staying up till the wee hours of the morning chatting with the girl I'd end up dating for the last couple years of highschool.

Copying my mate’s work (hi, mjoc101) at uni taught me to type. Too many headaches looking at his printout, my screen, my keyboard, forced me to use whatever tool was available on the uni *nix systems.

One of the best things I ever did for myself. If you’re reading this and you don’t touch-type, learn. Now.

(They kicked me out eventually, so nothing good came of the copying.)

I was required to learn touch-typing to graduate high school. Early 1990s. My incentive was simple; the class was an hour a day of soul-sucking drudgery, for a full academic year, but if I could just eke out 35 wpm on a test, I could avoid the class entirely. I learned typing the spring before my senior year. And passed. Got to leave school an hour earlier every day. I filled the time by taking another math class.

Are you sure it wasn't all about the APM and macros? :)

I remember briefly learning to type from a Mavis Beacon book but practicing on those clicker mechanical keyboards drove my parents nuts!

MAngband and ADOM taught me touch typing (and the README taught me the most useful exercise for treating carpal tunnel).

It's good for training the 'k' and 'e' keys, at least.

I learned on MUDs. It wasn't just trash talking that required quick typing.

Blank key caps taught me to type

I had Mavis Beacon but AOL Instant Messenger taught me. I later relearned using gtypist when I switched to dvorak 10 years later though.

https://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/

Same here - I would likely be finger pecking to this day if not for Mavis Beacon.

> I don't really care if she's real or not

I don't understand comments like this. Why go through the effort of articulating your lack of interest in a topic? "I have no intellectual curiosity about this topic, but I figure I should still comment letting the world know I have no interest in this".

I think you missed the point of the comment. I don't think this is a lack of interest in the topic per se -- it's demonstrating that when using the software, there was a clear separation between the 'teacher' and just using the software. I had no idea she was a 'real' person (or interpreted as such anyways) and always presumed it was just a 'character'.

I think something is lost in translation here, the OP is saying that emotionally it doesn't matter to them if she wasn't real, they still hold her in high regard.

They are not saying, "I have no interest in this."

"They taught me how to type" sounds a lot more like fond recollection than disinterest to me, but I guess we all read things differently. Your way seems needlessly uncharitable, though!

> I don't understand comments like this.

Interestingly, I suspect you understand it fully.

“I don’t really care if“ can be replaced with “regardless of whether” if you have a pathological case of semantic pedantry.

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