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> 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 ea

> 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.
        Baeocystin 8y ago
        https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
        sergiosgc 8y ago
        Written text is condensed. It takes more time to idealize a good paragraph for a written text than the equivalent for conversation. This extra time is used to sort the logic of the text, reducing redundancy in the process. The parent comment does sound like verbal communication. Even so, I understand the point. I type 120wpm and, when writing, I form paragraphs mentally, then dump them via keyboard. If this second phase could be faster, I'd write faster.
      - Baeocystin 8y ago
        It was an an honest question, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I can't say that I have ever bumped in to my typing speed limit when writing, even informally, and I am certain my max is well below 140. Different strokes and all that. :)
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...)

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.
      - Baeocystin 8y ago
        https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
      - sergiosgc 8y ago
        Written text is condensed. It takes more time to idealize a good paragraph for a written text than the equivalent for conversation. This extra time is used to sort the logic of the text, reducing redundancy in the process. The parent comment does sound like verbal communication. Even so, I understand the point. I type 120wpm and, when writing, I form paragraphs mentally, then dump them via keyboard. If this second phase could be faster, I'd write faster.
    - Baeocystin 8y ago
      It was an an honest question, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I can't say that I have ever bumped in to my typing speed limit when writing, even informally, and I am certain my max is well below 140. Different strokes and all that. :)

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...)