Learn to type before you learn to code | Hacker News Reader

Learn to type before you learn to code

hkelkar.com

12 pointshvd19 comments

I would like to disagree. While it might be true that being good at typing can help and certainly doesn't hurt I don't think it is a requirement. Also being slow at typing will make you think twice at what you are writing, which is good! Personally I learnt to type properly only finding my first full time job!

it seems like many people who don't like what you said pressed the down-arrow as though it were a disagree button.

I personally agree with this comment, my typing speed is not the limiting factor in my ability to turn out good programs.

I used to type extremely fast but over the years I developed nerve damage in my left hand from what docs told me was bad posture and bad keyboards.

5 years ago I switched to a split keyboard and now type half as fast but surprisingly I’m more efficient.

I've found typing faster means thinking faster, reading faster, comprehending faster, developing faster, debugging faster and generally getting things done faster.

I cheated my way through the typing classes in Computer Lit and couldn't touch type for a long time after I was coding professionally. Eventually I felt a bit ridiculous about it and bought a Das Keyboard Ultimate. I never did exercises or anything, just committed to typing on that keyboard at work. After a couple of weeks I was typing faster than ever without looking. One of the better investments I've made.

Point noted duiker101, I think though typing well is a discipline in itself and enhances dev productivity. I think there was a post by Steve Yegge a few years back on learning to type http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirties...

The way you type is not related to the way you think, and therefore code.

I must say extensive computer use (and mainly coding) is what made me type fast & accurately enough (according to the various tests found on this blog post).

Knowing how to talk in a foreign language will help you write better in this same language. I'm not sure that such an analogy can be drawn from typing/coding.

I know some dyslexic people coding pretty well and I'd say that most of the time it's a problem of accuracy.

Question to any touch typist who codes: how do you cope with all the special characters: (){}[];:'`!@#$% ?

Do they slow you or make you leave the home row?

You should be able to touch-type all those keys. The braces and square brackets may take some getting used. I find these characters to be the toughest: |+=

I have to really stretch my right pinky to reach those keys; slows me down and impacts my accuracy.

I felt this was a subliminal advertisement for Ratatype so I tried it out. Not many people use it: I got placed 4 / 75 with these mediocre stats: http://imgur.com/ikSxiSE

I suggest to add some WPM time visualization and a shortcut for restarting. Thank you, it was fun.

90 wpm is far above the average.

If you are a non-typist and you are going to learn to type you should learn Dvorak or Colemak. For anyone who already knows Qwerty it isn't worth the time to re-train, but if you don't know any layout yet it's a good opportunity to chose an optimal one.

Agreed - this is what I did.

I didn't know how to type properly for a long time, so when I finally decided to learn to type, I had the same thought: learn to type using something that's actually designed for typists.

I looked at a few layouts: Dvorak, Colemak and fully optimised QFMLWY. I chose Colemak because QFMLWY takes too much effort to install (Colemak is supported in Linux and OSX out of the box and is easy to install on Windows) and Dvorak, while an improvement over QWERTY, still seemed archaic to me (having been created before computers).

I absolutely love Colemak - it does exactly what it advertised to do. Its very comfortable, alternating hands a lot and moving the most used keys to strong fingers and easy to type keys. I'm also often amazed by how much I can type with just the home row (in fact, I have a cheapo laptop with a cheapo keyboard that i use and the home row keys are most worn of all, except maybe that one spot on the space bar). Of course, since I never touch typed qwerty, I can't compare.

For learning, I used a blank DAS keyboard. Took about two weeks of pain, but I feel the blank keys really helped force me not to look at the keyboard. Now I don't care about key markings and happily use qwerty markings on my Colemak keyboards.

Yes my technique improved after i purchased a kinesis advantage split keyboard which forced me to separate hands, Now with gtypist drills I am much better on regular ones as well. Great to know learning to type has worked well for you @joshontheweb & @j45

Jeff Atwood wrote something similar about this: http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-are-typists-first-programmer...

Great thing. Pass a test at http://www.ratatype.com/typing-test/ and print a typing certificate, put in CV.

Meh. You don't need to type that fast to write software. You'll spend far more time designing your program than you will actually typing on the keyboard.

I disagree. Typing is boring, coding is fun.

Learn to type by learning to code.

You don't automatically learn to type by learning to code, though. You have to make a conscious effort to learn to type. I was coding for years before I eventually decided to take the plunge and learn to touch type.

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