5 ms·

This is definitely a big factor. When you look at a Japanese computer keyboard [1] you might see lots of Japanese characters on the keys. Almost nobody actual

This is definitely a big factor. When you look at a Japanese computer keyboard [1] you might see lots of Japanese characters on the keys. Almost nobody actually uses these to type. Instead, if you want a か(ka) character then you type k,a on the familiar qwerty keys. These phonetic characters then get converted into the more complex Chinese-origin characters as you go along, allowing you to disambiguate homophones. The flick keyboard removes the need for typing 2 Roman letters to make one Japanese letter, instead you just have a single flick. Almost all young people use the flick keyboard and I definitely think it is faster. Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. I remember hunting for seconds to find letters in this unfamiliar arrangement. This is where many Japanese young people are. There was never a computer in their house and now they are heavy mobile users. The qwerty keyboard is not everyday for a lot of people. As to general computer literacy among Japanese teens: I teach a first year general English course at a Japanese university. The students are drawn from all different faculties so I feel it is a pretty good informal sample. I tried to get students to do an online survey by putting a web address on a slide. Over half do not know what a web address is and draw no distinction between search bar and address bar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_input_methods#/media/File:Surface_type_cover_JIS_keyboard_layout_blue.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_input_methods#/media/...

mwcampbell 8y ago
> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. I remember hunting for seconds to find letters in this unfamiliar arrangement. How early did you learn to type? As an American born in 1980, I learned in first grade, and I don't remember it being a struggle. So maybe it's really important to learn early. FWIW, I'm visually impaired, so looking at the keyboard wasn't a practical option.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Conversely I was born about 20 years earlier and I didn’t touch a keyboard until I was a senior in high school.
- laurieg 8y ago
  My family got our first computer when I was about 8. I didn't learn to touch type till I was sixteen, but by then I had a really good sense of where all the the keys were. I distinctly remember hunting for letters. (but then again I remember not being able to spell basic words, so perhaps I'm the outlier).
  - 7ewis 8y ago
    I started touch typing at around 18, after just forcing myself as I knew it'd be beneficial in the long run. I could type around 60wpm using two fingers, I know where they keys are... Just not how to use every finger! Now I touch type 'properly' I can get close to 100wpm. My speed has kind of plateaued now though unfortunately.
    - Baeocystin 8y ago
      Do you really find a benefit much past ~60wpm? Unless you're just transcribing, I would think compositional speed is the limiting factor.
      - rococode 8y ago
        Not OP but I type ~140 and there are definitely situations where you feel a desire for higher WPM. Informal writing is the most common one - for example, with this comment I'm basically just typing out what I'm thinking and it reads more like a conversation than a well-planned chunk of text. I'm going nearly full-speed because, like most people in the world, I can compose casual sentences in my head much faster than 2 or 3 words a second. This becomes even more noticeable when you're in chats and just typing as you think of things to say. It's also useful to type faster in settings with repetitive phrases, like coding. There is definitely downtime where you think of what to write next, but it's fairly common to quickly think out a longer segment of simple words and have to wait for your typing speed to catch up before moving on.
        lstodd 8y ago
        well, I'm sorry, but that seems like too many words for the idea you expressed in them. maybe it's just me, but at least sometimes brevity pays off.
- Izkata 8y ago
  I've never learned home-row touch typing, but I have my own style that I learned while playing StarCraft when I was ~10 in the late 90s - you can't spend time hunting for keys if that means your army is getting wiped out. So while it may have been a struggle for me back then, it was for an entirely different reason. I too don't remember it, though.
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    I had similar circumstances, I started using computers at a fairly young age and basically developed what I call an "advanced hunt and peck" style. I knew where everything was, but for the life of me I found it incredibly difficult to learn to relearn how to type "properly". This is actually why I use DVORAK now, the only way I could force myself to learn was to completely disconnect the letters on the keycaps from what they actually represented. It was the most grueling two weeks of my computing life, but it was worth it in the end. Actually, I've since lost my previous typing skills entirely - whenever I'm forced to use QWERTY for some reason I end up typing at a glacial pace, so there's the one downside (thankfully this isn't often, mostly when I pull up the console of some server through iLO/iDRAC to get networking back up so I can just SSH in instead...)
WalterBright 8y ago
> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. Does an IBM cardpunch keyboard count? :-) Anyhow, I took a 2 week class in 8th grade to learn to touch type on a mechanical typewriter. It's paid off handsomely ever since.
- ForRealsies 8y ago
  r/gatekeeping
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I found that taking a few college programming courses was entirely sufficient to learning to type. (keep in mind, I had already written dozens of academic papers at this point, but it was the coding that really solidified my typing abilities...)
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    > a few Yeah, but my typing class was only 10 days, one hour a day. It was a marvelous return on investment. Also, it was on mechanical typewriters. You had to physically hammer the keys to make it work, making for a very positive impression on muscle memory.
rangibaby 8y ago
> search bar and address bar. I would say that is because the search and address bar have been the same thing in all major browsers for some time now.
codedokode 8y ago
The advantage of "flick" keyboard is probably that the buttons are larger than buttons on a latin keyboard. Hitting and sliding the finger seems like a more complicated action than just hitting a letter, but maybe that is just because I don't use it often.
- Crespyl 8y ago
  I've known an english variant of the "flick" keyboard (MessageEase) since my first smartphone. I find the flick/tap-and-drag gestures to be vastly more comfortable and natural than trying to use my thumbs to peck at a QWERTY soft keyboard and relying on predictive algorithms to make up the speed loss. An additional benefit is that this approach provides more room for additional symbols and layers that are more of a bother to reach from standard soft-keyboards. For example, I can have a full set of programming symbols with Ctrl/Esc modifiers available without explicitly mode-switching the keyboard, it's extremely helpful when I'm ssh-ing from my phone. For reference, with a physical QWERTY keyboard I average around 95 wpm, with messagease on my phone I run around 60 (without autocorrect/suggestions).
  - rjplatte 8y ago
    Holy Crap. MessageEase is the keyboard I didn't know I wanted. It's like Minuum but smarter. <3
    - mathw 8y ago
      I've used MessageEase for years now on Android and it was really worth the time investment. I only switch back to Gboard occasionally to get at its far superior emoji input system, but I don't use a lot of emoji in most of my text entry so that's not a massive deal. I can type accurately without having to wrestle with autocorrect all the time, and that'll do for me! And although the letter frequency distribution isn't right, I can happily use it to enter German and Lojban and Welsh on the occasions when I want to use those on my phone.
      - Crespyl 8y ago

mwcampbell 8y ago

> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. I remember hunting for seconds to find letters in this unfamiliar arrangement. How early did you learn to type? As an American born in 1980, I learned in first grade, and I don't remember it being a struggle. So maybe it's really important to learn early. FWIW, I'm visually impaired, so looking at the keyboard wasn't a practical option.

ghaff 8y ago
Conversely I was born about 20 years earlier and I didn’t touch a keyboard until I was a senior in high school.
laurieg 8y ago
My family got our first computer when I was about 8. I didn't learn to touch type till I was sixteen, but by then I had a really good sense of where all the the keys were. I distinctly remember hunting for letters. (but then again I remember not being able to spell basic words, so perhaps I'm the outlier).
- 7ewis 8y ago
  I started touch typing at around 18, after just forcing myself as I knew it'd be beneficial in the long run. I could type around 60wpm using two fingers, I know where they keys are... Just not how to use every finger! Now I touch type 'properly' I can get close to 100wpm. My speed has kind of plateaued now though unfortunately.
  - Baeocystin 8y ago
    Do you really find a benefit much past ~60wpm? Unless you're just transcribing, I would think compositional speed is the limiting factor.
    - rococode 8y ago
      Not OP but I type ~140 and there are definitely situations where you feel a desire for higher WPM. Informal writing is the most common one - for example, with this comment I'm basically just typing out what I'm thinking and it reads more like a conversation than a well-planned chunk of text. I'm going nearly full-speed because, like most people in the world, I can compose casual sentences in my head much faster than 2 or 3 words a second. This becomes even more noticeable when you're in chats and just typing as you think of things to say. It's also useful to type faster in settings with repetitive phrases, like coding. There is definitely downtime where you think of what to write next, but it's fairly common to quickly think out a longer segment of simple words and have to wait for your typing speed to catch up before moving on.
      - lstodd 8y ago
        well, I'm sorry, but that seems like too many words for the idea you expressed in them. maybe it's just me, but at least sometimes brevity pays off.
Izkata 8y ago
I've never learned home-row touch typing, but I have my own style that I learned while playing StarCraft when I was ~10 in the late 90s - you can't spend time hunting for keys if that means your army is getting wiped out. So while it may have been a struggle for me back then, it was for an entirely different reason. I too don't remember it, though.
- snuxoll 8y ago
  I had similar circumstances, I started using computers at a fairly young age and basically developed what I call an "advanced hunt and peck" style. I knew where everything was, but for the life of me I found it incredibly difficult to learn to relearn how to type "properly". This is actually why I use DVORAK now, the only way I could force myself to learn was to completely disconnect the letters on the keycaps from what they actually represented. It was the most grueling two weeks of my computing life, but it was worth it in the end. Actually, I've since lost my previous typing skills entirely - whenever I'm forced to use QWERTY for some reason I end up typing at a glacial pace, so there's the one downside (thankfully this isn't often, mostly when I pull up the console of some server through iLO/iDRAC to get networking back up so I can just SSH in instead...)

WalterBright 8y ago

> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. Does an IBM cardpunch keyboard count? :-) Anyhow, I took a 2 week class in 8th grade to learn to touch type on a mechanical typewriter. It's paid off handsomely ever since.

ForRealsies 8y ago
r/gatekeeping
jessaustin 8y ago
I found that taking a few college programming courses was entirely sufficient to learning to type. (keep in mind, I had already written dozens of academic papers at this point, but it was the coding that really solidified my typing abilities...)
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > a few Yeah, but my typing class was only 10 days, one hour a day. It was a marvelous return on investment. Also, it was on mechanical typewriters. You had to physically hammer the keys to make it work, making for a very positive impression on muscle memory.

rangibaby 8y ago

> search bar and address bar. I would say that is because the search and address bar have been the same thing in all major browsers for some time now.

codedokode 8y ago

The advantage of "flick" keyboard is probably that the buttons are larger than buttons on a latin keyboard. Hitting and sliding the finger seems like a more complicated action than just hitting a letter, but maybe that is just because I don't use it often.

Crespyl 8y ago
I've known an english variant of the "flick" keyboard (MessageEase) since my first smartphone. I find the flick/tap-and-drag gestures to be vastly more comfortable and natural than trying to use my thumbs to peck at a QWERTY soft keyboard and relying on predictive algorithms to make up the speed loss. An additional benefit is that this approach provides more room for additional symbols and layers that are more of a bother to reach from standard soft-keyboards. For example, I can have a full set of programming symbols with Ctrl/Esc modifiers available without explicitly mode-switching the keyboard, it's extremely helpful when I'm ssh-ing from my phone. For reference, with a physical QWERTY keyboard I average around 95 wpm, with messagease on my phone I run around 60 (without autocorrect/suggestions).
- rjplatte 8y ago
  Holy Crap. MessageEase is the keyboard I didn't know I wanted. It's like Minuum but smarter. <3
  - mathw 8y ago
    I've used MessageEase for years now on Android and it was really worth the time investment. I only switch back to Gboard occasionally to get at its far superior emoji input system, but I don't use a lot of emoji in most of my text entry so that's not a massive deal. I can type accurately without having to wrestle with autocorrect all the time, and that'll do for me! And although the letter frequency distribution isn't right, I can happily use it to enter German and Lojban and Welsh on the occasions when I want to use those on my phone.
    - Crespyl 8y ago