4 ms·
"Less than half the population of the world has the manual dexterity to wiggle their fingers at the speed of 50 words per minute or better." This is so stupid.
by woodandsteel 8y ago
"Less than half the population of the world has the manual dexterity to wiggle their fingers at the speed of 50 words per minute or better."
This is so stupid. They are assuming that when you type fast, you push down with one finger, and when you get done you push down with the next, and so on.
But it has long been common knowledge that the key to fast typing is over-lapping keystrokes. That is, you start to push down with one finger, and before it gets all the way down you start pushing down with the next, and so on. The trick for going really fast is how closely you can space the stokes without getting them out of order.
- saltcured 8y agoYour comment has reminded me of an office mate from my university days. Most of us type in an obviously sequential manner and you can almost imagine our fingers being the striking arms of an old, mechanical typewriter, flinging out one at a time to strike a letter. Some go faster or slower, but it seems like the same process at different speeds. He typed like a line-printer, somehow rolling his hands up and down the keyboard and bashing out what looked and sounded like whole lines of text in a single pulse. It was as if he had a chording system for whole phrases, and his arm and hand movements would almost remind you of a concert pianist's.
- woodandsteel 8y agoYeah, that is a good way of putting it. I am not as good as that guy, but though my finger speed is at best average, back when I was typing all day I could do about 90 wpm. My mother could do 120. By the way, with overlapping keystrokes, the big problem with slow fingers is when you have to use the same finger for two strikes in a row.