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Comment by LordGrignard | Hacker News Reader

all the rest of the stuff is okay but seriously? 2 finger typing? as a programmer? you're gonna be there for AAAGES and your keyboard probably runs a sidebusiness with how long it takes you to type

I know I'm stirring up shit here but there really are benefits to touch typing (I mean just think about it, using 10 fingers instead of 2 is gonna be so much faster assuming you have 10 dingers)

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Touch typing is objectively better, but 2 finger is enough to have a career at programming, it's not what is going to hold you back.

I'd be more concerned about RSI than speed. You _really_ don't need to type fast for programming. If you do, your tools should be helping you do boilerplate more.

> Touch typing is objectively better

Even that depends on what exactly you mean. I agree with the literal meaning of the words, but for too many people "touch typing" means "home-row touch typing". Which I find extremely awkward and difficult. But literally just typing by touch, I'm self-taught due to StarCraft multiplayer back in the 90s and early 2000s, and have a style that confuses home-row typists when they realize what I'm doing.

So it's more like, you need to type smoothly enough that you're not thinking about typing. As long as your hands are pretty much moving automatically to get your thoughts into the computer, you can use any number of fingers at (almost) any speed, and you're good.

The RSI thing is real. Until my late 20s I would type blindly with what I jokingly called 5 and a half fingers. But I did start to notice some strain, which is when I decided to finally teach myself "proper" touch typing. I don't think my typing got meaningfully faster, but it got smoother, and the strain went away.

Getting a split-layout "ergo" keyboard helped me learn to type better back in the day. I could already touch type fast but not with great technique.

When I got a split layout key it became quite apparent that my technique was "weird" - sometimes I'd notice one hand come wandering over to the other side of the keyboard to find a key it was used to pressing. That became easy to correct once it was so visible!

I'm a programmer, not a secretary, I don't need more than 2-4 fingers because I don't need to write code that fast. I don't understand why anyone who writes code that is not semi-trivial would need to write code so fast they needed to touch type.

There are ergonomic issues too. Hunt and peck gives you a lot more flexibility as to how you can use a keyboard.

Most programmers who don't touch type can type pretty fast. There is more than one way to do it, and I'm not convinced touch typing is the right one.

> dingers

I'd suggest practicing your touch typing a bit more.

I've been programming for decades and I like... three finger type. Two index fingers and a thumb. I don't look at the keyboard though (I know where the keys are relative to each other inherently through years of typing this way) and I type at a very high rate of speed for someone using so few fingers.

9 fingers... Not 10, 9.

I use both my thumbs on the spacebar to assert dominance on every word.

But now I'm curious, which thumb do most people use on a keyboard?

My spacebar(s) are very smooth and shiny on the right compared to left.

By the same measure, looks like I use my left thumb by far the most. I'm left-handed.

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