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Comment by pudgereyem | Hacker News Reader

QUOTE : >"In 2005, in a personal quest to improve his own typing speed and accuracy, Metadot Corporation founder and self-proclaimed “Uber Geek” Daniel Guermeur asked to have a totally blank keyboard created. To his surprise, his typing speed doubled after just a few weeks of use."

When reading the history of Das Keyboard I get the feeling that the founder (Daniel Guermeur) felt an increase in typing speed due to the "blank" keys?

As hackers tend not to look at the keyboard when typing, is there any reason to have blank keys other then the badass feeling of it?

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I started using blank keyboards about three years ago and it did in fact force me to touch type and has increased my typing speed a lot. Even after ten years of programming I was a 4-6 finger hunt & peck typist. Once I started using a blank keyboard I quickly broke the habit of looking at the keys and picked up proper touch typing form naturally.

Plus it is badass.

The only reason I can think of is to confuse your coworkers. Maybe it's to force people to learn to touchtype by going cold turkey on the visual aid?

As far I as I can tell it's just an overpriced gimmick.

I think the price is fairly standard for a mechanical keyboard... not that it is cheap.

When I was about 15, I painted over my key caps with a few coats of acrylic paint to create a blank keyboard, with the same idea - a forcing function to learn to touch-type. It especially prevents you from subconsciously looking down for the occasional key, e.g. the rarer symbol keys.

It didn't hurt that I was using Dvorak layout - the alphabetic keys would be misleading in any case. I chose Dvorak for similar reasons, so that looking would not give any benefit. (I type about 110wpm.)

Badass feeling - forcing yourself to remember the most obscure symbols - ultimate customizability

I can agree on that.

I actually did have a blank keyboard as a teenager, and altho I type pretty fast (90+ wpm) my technique is bad: only using my index and middle finger on the right hand. I don't know why really, just got used to it and never bothered to rethink.

Anyone recognize themselves?

BTW: After reading your blog post Maxim, I ordered a Das keyboard myself. I still think it's overpriced, but hey, I guess we all need our gadgets.. dont we? :)

We'll I'm still a teenager just about - so maybe it's a phase. I hope you enjoy it!

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