How I got to learn to type | Hacker News Reader

How I got to learn to type

tihauan.iwillread.com

11 pointsTihauan8 comments

I've recently moved from qwerty to dvorak for similar reasons. Even though it's not yet been 2 months of dvorak training, I score around the 60wpm in typeracer.

One of the reasons I decided to try it was the same 8hrs a day excuse. I now have a hard time imagining going back to qwerty like someone that touchtypes has with going back to look at the keyboard.

Ps. I never understood why vi navigation is done with hjkl instead of jkl; - if you touchtype the classical way, it means you navigate with 3 fingers instead of 4.

Edit: correcting typos. I'm typing from my iPhone :)

I also switched from QWERTY to Dvorak, as an excuse to learn to touch-type - after a decade or so of typing QWERTY in my own seven-or-eight-finger style, there was no way I'd ever be able to override such ingrained habits. I've been using Dvorak constantly at home and work for several years now, and I just clocked myself at 77wpm on TypeRacer - not that impressive, but then I find I spend more time thinking and editing than typing anyway. :)

Also: in those TypeRacer trials, I found my right hand doing a lot more work than my left-hand - possibly because my left hand stays on the vowels and my right-hand is jumping about all over the place. Why oh why couldn't Dvorak have put R and L somewhere more... convenient? :(

Just to be clear, I was already a qwerty touch typist before, so I just moved for the layout efficiency.

I don't dislike the r and l placement on the right hand. I do sometimes feel p should belong on the right hand tho.

> Ps. I never understood why vi navigation is done with hjkl instead of jkl; - if you touchtype the classical way, it means you navigate with 3 fingers instead of 4.

My best bet would be to support different keyboard layouts.

Edit: Wrong I was :)

hjkl were the arrows on the keyboard used to develop vi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg

And maybe part of the reason for that was ctrl-h is backspace and ctrl-j is line feed.

I first did typing at school in an IT class (c. 1990) where most felt it was useless. I didn't realise how important it was, I think the teacher did, she was very prescient.

At Uni in 1994 I realised how important it was going to be and taught myself to touch-type. I think it was a little easier starting as I learnt piano from when I was 11 years old.

I don't type a lot day-to-day. My http://play.typeracer.com/ unpractised score was 50wpm at 96.2% accuracy (oh yeah and that site is good example of unregistered users mentioned a couple of days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=910829). Though I found it a little hard as normally I'll type a few paras and then use spell-check whilst I proof read so the modus was a little forced.

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there are plenty of touch typing resources only a bing away

First time I've heard MS Bing referred to like that!

Yeah, when I saw that, I thought, "how much did they pay him?"

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