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Comment by gundmc | Hacker News Reader

> Few people feel the need to learn it.

Is this true? Almost every educated adult under age ~45 that I encounter touch types. Certainly in the white-collar/tech professional sphere.

There is definitely a generational divide where it becomes far less common with those who did not grow up with ubiquitous computer usage.

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I find that most Americans can touch type, but most Danes can’t. I’m Denmark touch typing used to be taught in schools as a voluntary subject, but it mostly appealed to girls who wanted to become secretaries and was eventually abandoned due to lack of interest. Nowadays the only way to learn is through online tools like Typing Club, but last time I checked it didn’t support the Danish keyboard layout. I personally used gtypist on Linux, spent a week on rote learning, best invest of time in many career.

I'm American and would disagree that most of us know how to touch type.

The average American definitely doesn't touch type. The average american types ~40wpm, so yeah.

40 wpm is about 4 characters a second, which is pretty good for 2-fingered typing - and phenomenal for hunt&peck.

I'd say that average includes a large, probably majority, of touch-typists.

There’s an incoming cohort of people who only ever used a touch screen to type and a physical keyboard is a new thing. They do things like activate caps lock, type a single capital letter, then deactivate caps lock, because that’s how a phone keyboard does it. There’s also the reliance on autocomplete, auto spellcheck, auto capitalization, auto punctuation, etc.

We’re quickly moving to where using a physical keyboard is going to be a skill that needs to be actively taught/learned. People aren’t getting that type of incidental exposure anymore.

Huh, I'm 39 and I really hadn't thought about this incoming generation of people not used to typing.

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