As a programmer I needed the keyboard to be an extension of myself. I can't be looking down every 2 seconds to position my hands correctly or find that one key.
Originally I never followed home row position and had orchestrated my own abomination of touch typing that would work for all letters. The problem began when I started needing to use () and {} more often since my old typing position would never let me do that with ease. Not to mention capitalizing letters and even using numbers I would almost always need to look down or lose my position and train of thought.
I was at about 30 WPM using this method. Eventually I took about 2 months using www.ratatype.com and following through the lessons to pick up home row position and such. Now I can average 80 WPM without trying on most of those speed typing games and 120 WPM on rare occasion.
Now I can easily find home row and the keyboard is truly an extension of myself where I don't feel bogged down by typing (using VIM now too). The mental barrier is gone and I only think about the problem and not having to switch context between looking down and finding a key while thinking about the problem. 10/10 would recommend anyone not using home row to try and learn it.
side note: I would never have picked up VIM/Emacs if it wasn't for me using home row.
I'm very into mechanical keyboards, and I switched to ortholinear layouts a couple of years ago to improve my technique (the grid layout doesn't allow you to cheat with your ring fingers). Typing is a purely physical act for me now (I am also a vim user and editing text feels like sculpting clay), and the funny thing is if I actually try to think about what I'm typing I can't remember where to put my fingers. It has to be completely subconscious or it doesn't work.
With ortholinear are you significantly faster than when you used staggered layout? If i could apply my numpad speed and accuracy to the rest of the keyboard it would be worth it. However, seems like people just re-train only to get to the same speed.
The primary differences are 1. proper finger position and technique (mind your Ps and Qs); 2. better touch typing accuracy (see 1). Speed is probably roughly the same but with less backspacing. The staggered layout is weird; it's not natural at all and requires bizarre finger contortions designed to prevent mechanical typewriters from jamming. Ortholinear allows your fingers to move in perfectly straight lines, so it becomes incredibly easy to know exactly where a key should be without looking (honestly, can you type *$(@ without looking at your fingers?). Since we don't live in the 1890s, I think it's time to move on.
The biggest benefit is not exclusive to ortho, but fully programmable layouts have totally transformed the way I interact with the computer; I map space and enter to where my thumbs naturally rest, have momentary layer toggles on row four that allow me to type any shifted symbol from the home row (also numpad centered on jkl and arrows mapped to hjkl), and esc/ctrl on R3 C1 (caps lock). Most of the time I never move my fingers more than 1u from their home positions. In my experience ortholinear is easier to map since things like number pads are awkward on a staggered layout, and ortho R4 gives you the ability to toggle between six layers without moving your thumbs. I've arrived at such an efficient layout that I don't even use R1 and most of R4 at all.
Edit: you don't lose your ability to use a standard keyboard layout after learning ortho; it just feels like trading in your ferrari for a ford pinto.
I can type the punctuation on a staggered board without looking... I don't know what's so hard about it.
RE: ortholinear
In my opinion, there's no reason to do ortholinear instead of column-stagger, which is far more comfortable because it lets your fingers rest in a more natural curl. It's also further removed from row-stagger, easing the clean separation of muscle memory so that you can still use normal keyboards.
The real key to upping your keyboard game, though, is thumb keys. My Mitosis Anaphase has tons and tons of thumb keys so I never have to reach for anything, ever. My number keys are on the home row, modifiers, and the enter key easily accessible by my thumbs. On layers I have mouse keys, funky punctuation, and more. The thumb clusters even leave room for a standard inverted-T arrow cluster useful for media control.
> can you type *{@ without looking at your fingers?
No, but I would love to! Thanks for your comments. After thinking about it, I'd be willing to lose some speed (if at all) if I never had to look down to type ()=>{};
I'm a bit hesitant to use programmable layouts/layers. I already sometimes type 'jj' in MS Word because of Vim. I'm slow in context switching.
I've had a few different ergonomic/ortholinear keyboards and I really, really highly recommend checking out the Atreus keyboard if you want to never look down. It's so ridiculously small (42 keys, no number row) that you know exactly where your fingers are the entire time you're typing.
It has programmable layouts/layers but if you just stick with the defaults it's no more context-switching than modal editing. QWERTY is the base layer, next layer up does symbols, arrow keys, page up/down, and a numpad. Then on the third layer you have function keys and a few extras (e.g. insert, volume up/down). Took me a week or two to get comfortable with the first two layers, another few weeks before I felt confident with the third, and maybe 6 months in now I can't imagine ever going back to a regular keyboard.
Typing `*{@` is as easy as typing `prw` with one (thumb operated) modifier held down.
Similar to the Atreus is the keyboardio, which I am now on my first month of learning.
https://shop.keyboard.io/
I have a Planck on order and will be the first keyboard I will be building, but wanted to buy something without having to think about which Cherry switches or keycap profile was perfect for me.
The use of layers is great, and I encourage anyone to try it. I saw someone on a youtube somewhere explain the idea succinctly and I think it's worth paraphrasing here: "Bring the keys to your fingers and not your fingers to the keys"
> After thinking about it, I'd be willing to lose some speed (if at all) if I never had to look down to type ()=>{};
Losing speed isn't a given. I recognise that my situation is completely different from someone who has learned to type by looking, but as a blind person I've only ever touch-typed and very rarely dip below 100 WPM while working with text. Writing code is different, naturally. But this is an area of life I've never felt at a disadvantage. Quite the opposite given how most people seem to type.
In typing position, your arms are not parallel. Neither are the fingers of one hand parallel with the other. Doesn't that make the standard staggered layout more ergonomic than ortho? Isn't that the reason for the staggering?
Good points. I mostly use split keyboards to solve the arm problem, and there are staggered column layouts like the ergodox and friends that solve the finger problem (I'm typing on one now). And no, the staggering isn't for ergonomics, it was a limitation of mechanical typewriters[0] and it just stuck (hah) after that since it was what people were used to.
For me, it's not about speed, but accuracy. Typos are worse in programming than prose, and doubly-so in Vim (or another editor with Vim bindings).
I'll try Ratatype. I've tried home row a couple times in the past, but haven't ever really stuck with it, and always felt like it was overly-focused on letters. If Ratatype will help me type accurately when typing includes plenty of ()[]{}%$^!, then that's a skill I'd really benefit from.
Yes, I do believe they have a specific lessons on just using symbols. The nice thing is they also have a typing test which is just a paragraph you can test that once a week to see your improvements. keybr.com is also nice after the lessons from Ratatype because it shows you which letters you are still struggling with. They have a nice stats page.
My experience with a guitar suggests that it is a wrong mood to learning new tricks. When I was told that my right hand thumb position is not right, and I should try to change it, I didn't challenged the idea at first, I knew that if I try to change it, I would face problems, it would be harder for me to make it right, even if "right" is a way to a mastery. A few hours a day in a month or two, and I learned how to do it right. Now I can do both ways, because each has its upsides and downsides. I'm playing classical pieces with "right" position of my thumb, it is really good, but when I use guitar as a rhythm-driver I prefer to use thumb to silence some strings.
There are no point to compare a new way and the old one before you mastered new. And there are no point in thoughts like "my natural ways are different and should be preserved for the sake of keeping my personality". If your physiology is near enough to averages, than all the differences are neurological or mental. These differences can be overcome. But because they are mental, the mood of yours when you are learning is the very important to a learning.
> If your physiology is near enough to averages, than all the differences are neurological or mental.
Independent control over the last three fingers of the hand is one of the places where there are some pretty important anatomical differences between people.
Cool. I didn't knew that. So there are possible anatomical differences. It could be important.
But, you know, I chatted some time ago with a nurse who worked with children with neurological disabilities of some kind, which rendered them unable to attend a regular school. She insisted on the idea, that disabilities is not an excuse for a child to be freed from normal expectations. It was like "you are 8 years old, get the spoon and use it yourself, you can do it". Moreover she refused to work with children whose parents interfered with her methods. She said it is ok, if mother feels pity for her child and cannot see how her child struggles with a spoon and because of that helps him/her. But only outside of working hours of the nurse. When she is here, she is in command, and mother should not interfere. If parents interfered, she believed her work to be futile because child will grow disabled not by a physical condition, but by a mental representation of himself, he would think of himself as of disabled, he would make excuses to not try to do what is hard to do for him, and so on.
I don't know what was the psychological outcomes for her pupils, but they grew to an almost normal adults in means of physical and mental abilities. Or at least she told me so, and I believe her.
I mean, it is not good for a learning to doubt your innate abilities. A learner must believe in herself, or she would face more problems than she might. It is why I do not like when media tells everyone that there are a "nature" component in any "nature vs nurture" question. From other side I do not like to not like, because I believe that it is not good to believe in lies, but... I don't know. It is too complicated.
Huh! I don't have this independent control in either hand -- I can't bend my pinky without also bending ring finger -- but I touchtype at 130wpm peak. Maybe this isn't actually relevant for speed typing?
(Despite trying most mech keyboards/switch types, I've always been faster on chiclet/low profile/low force style: it would've saved a lot of time if someone had pointed out that mech keys aren't actually about typing efficiency at all.)
I am guessing you could type faster on those than whatever chiclet board. The advantage they have is that the plate spring pops back up, reducing the amount you need to use the extensors (it’s faster to just contract and then relax the flexors than to deliberately lift the fingers). [Unfortunately they weren’t built into too many keyboards, and some of the ones that do have them are crappy for other reasons.]
There are a bunch of relevant keyboard design factors which are not really properly considered by keyboard makers. For example:
+ The relative height of the tops of the keys (sadly most keyboards ever made have screwed this up, and it has only gotten worse over time, because most keyboard designers were just copying past designs without understanding the anatomical considerations). If the further rows (top letter row, number row, F row) are aggressively raised, the fingertips can reach them without needing to bend at the first knuckle, meaning those keys can be pressed without as much hand movement while the fingers remain in the most comfortable and fastest part of the main flexors’ range of motion. By contast the bottom row of letters should be the same height as the home row.
+ The separation, tilt, and tent of the two halves of the keyboard. Ideally the keyboard should be oriented so that the forearms and back of the hand are comfortably flat with wrists and arms in a neutral position, and key axis on each half of the keyboard should be perpendicular to the plane of the forearm/hand.
+ The placement of more keys within a close range of hand/finger motion, and the elimination of keys further away. (This gets us decidedly away from standard keyboard shape.) In particular there should be a lot more more accessible thumb keys.
+ The letter arrangement. Qwerty is optimized for the original keyboard from the 19th century. Dvorak is optimized for the shape of 1930s typewriters (where the consistent aggressive height differences mean that the close letter row is quite hard to reach but further rows are relatively easy). More recent efforts to optimize arrangement make no effort to make sure that several-key sequences on one hand can be typed in one fluid motion. In practice people who type quickly can line up several fingers on the same hand and press the keys in quick succession using one medium-scale motion, alternating between stretches on one hand and the other.
I've never played guitar but your post reminds me of all things of golfing and the three times instructors moved me through grip changes. For me anyway the new grips were awkward, almost unbearable and resulted in painful blisters but I did adapt and my game improved although I'm far from mastery.
For someone who "float" types, that's an impressive speed.
I tried out the typing website that 's mentioned on the post, and it reminds me/makes me realise the potential flaw in these types of typing tests.
After trying it out for about 10 minutes, I get an average 40 WPM; but I see that it's because I pause for a few seconds after each round of words (probably my brain adjusting from the garbage that it just digested).
Typing, and fast typing, is a function of the brain being able to process either an auditory, mental or visual data source, and the hands converting it to keystrokes. If one thinks of the brain as a data buffer, the brain receives info and interprets it, and sends it to the hands. There's almost always some lag, and that lag is mainly how fast one types (my opinion of course).
When you're given a test that's got words that don't have much meaning, it takes some adjusting to process them, because I had to rely on reading them word-by-word (I learnt some speed-reading when I was younger, so I tend to process a lot more words at a time).
I noticed that I typed better when the words made sense, because the brain could buffer words, which I'd rely on not reading completely, but using my previous knowledge of how to spell them.
The test also doesn't account for the human mind self-correcting. It was only after about 3 minutes where I reduced the habit of backspacing to correct what I noticed to be a typo, but don't know if I get penalised for it.
Going back to the author's views on touch typing. I think if he/she spends more time on it, they could improve their speed. The micro/milliseconds that your 4 fingers spend moving would make a difference.
I completely agree with the criticism you raise towards the website. The nonsensical words make typing them much more difficult, but the real crux of the issue is that you can't issue corrections.
I prefer 10fastfingers as a typing test, because it's a list of actual easy words without silly capitalization and symbols. In my opinion, it's more representative of the way I would type most of the time than most of the other tests I've seen.
I will say though, that 40 WPM blows my mind. What kind of a result do you get on 10fastfingers.com? Because I can do 30-40 WPM on my phone with Swype.
EDIT: I used keybr for a longer period of time now and I think the start of the website gives a bad impression. The lessons don't feel quite normal, but once you finish them it ends up much similar to regular typing tests, where most of the words are actual English words.
More symbols? sure. But most everything is still an English language word. Admittedly, sometimes smashed together in the thisVarIsHere way, or this_var_is_there way, but mostly still just normal words where having a "typing vocabulary" of words you can type from muscle memory is hugely important.
I get 70 - 75 with around 90% accuracy The word disappearing after a space was throwing me off at first, but I guess there's no one universal interface/UX that would accommodate everyone.
I definitely think the author is underestimating the speeds he could reach with more practice touch typing. My average speed on that site as a touch typist at 83 WPM easily exceeds his maximum 'float' typing and I only consider myself an average touch typist. A total of 10 hours of practice compared to a lifetime with his current style is probably not enough to reach his maximum potential.
I'm kind of gobsmacked that anyone working in a modern office hasn't learned to touch type. The payoff seems so clear to me.
Thankfully my parent (mom) was an amazing typist (scientific secretary) and encouraged me to take typing in high school. This was just as personal computers were coming around (Apple II, IBM PC). I was the only boy in the class ... which was fine by me (hey, I was 14). When I began college, being able to type papers without hunt-and-peck was a clear win, and as terminals/computers became the norm the advantage proved even greater.
FWIW, I'm considering trying out a non-QWERTY layout and so far the Workman scheme looks like the best-of-breed; the designer is an engineer who gave it real analysis and it's wisely thought out, IMHO.
I can certainly type without looking at the keyboard (hell, I can air type every key/symbol from memory) but I sure as shit don't use the standard touch typing scheme.
I float over the keyboard with my primary 3 fingers on each hand doing most of the work and my thumb and pinky handling modifiers.
I happen to have hands the size of large dinner plates though, and just keeping fingers on the home row starts to cramp after a little bit. I probably have about half my spoken vocab as muscle memory on a keyboard and I reach about 100 WPM without having to deal with wrist/finger pain at the end of the day.
Same here. My mom was an executive secretary in the 60's-80's. I learned to type on her old electric typewriter that had no symbols (!) on the keys. You had to learn touch typing because looking was pointless.
25 days is, admittedly, longer than I expected him to try, but I still have trouble accepting the conclusion that it’s just not right for the author. There are many reasons touch typing is the preferred method and why it’s taught in schools and typing speed isn’t necessarily the most important.
As someone who does touch type and has tried to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK it’s also widely advocated that you switch entirely, even if you’re dirt slow at first, because the real gains come after your brain finally switches over and it truly becomes muscle memory, not actively remembering where keys are in whichever layout you’re using at the time.
In another 10 years I wonder if he’ll regret not switching to get that decreased muscle strain benefit too...
>because the real gains come after your brain finally switches over and it truly becomes muscle memory
This was half the reason I picked up blanks for my keyboard, sure the first few weeks were absolutely filled with glances downwards toward nothing useful, but eventually my brain managed to compensate. I found the hardest part was homing back to a known position on the board and would frequently mistype as I was floating back and forth. Turns out that was most of my issue.
Somehow I ended up designing a keyboard (Gergo & Georgi!) and eventually settled on a layout that minimized wrist motion (or in the case of Georgi, finger motion). The default layouts ([0], [1]) naturally happened over a few months of programming, once the brackets were moved to be accessible with index fingers, thumbs for mods and enter and the funky Control/Backspace. It's entirely different to any other board that exists, but it works, for me and has helped with ergonomics.
I guess trackballs are kind of the same, once you pick it up you'll be inefficient and clumsy. If you throw out your mice you'll be good enough before you know it.
I used a typewriter long before I could read or write, banging out sheet after sheet of gibberish. In school, I turned in any assignment typewritten whenever I could get away with it. My own two-finger system, of course, but I did get reasonably proficient over time.
Come seventh or eighth grade, an optional typewriting class made it unto the curriculum (this was in the seventies, a good while before computers entered the picture). A walkover for me, of course, the only one in class who had ever done any typing at all.
Except it wasn't. I flunked. Miserably. The only one to do so. My habits turned out to be a hindrance, I never got the hang of ten fingers and a keyboard shielded from view and strange, difficult ways of doing things. To this day I haven't. Whether because of my early, possibly misguided training, or because catastrophic failure convinced me for good that I couldn't do it, I am not entirely decided.
Somewhat off-topic, but the touch-typing website linked showed an example of simpsons paradox after I tried it for 10 minutes to get a baseline.
My overall speed decreased over the 10 minutes of practice, but each letter either was flat or improved; the tool is apparently designed to give you more practice with the keys you are slower at, so as it figured out which keys I'm slow with, my overall speed decreased.
I like the way the author characterizes the "feel-good" nature of bouncing between keys with traditional touch typing. I type mostly in Dvorak these days (with some modifications to make it less terrible for programming), but when I do foray back into QWERTY there's often a moment where I'm struck by how nice it feels to stretch my fingers away from the home row, and the novelty of typing mid-size words with only my left hand. It doesn't hold up over time with QWERTY, but now I'm pondering devising a keyboard layout that optimizes for "fun" motions the way modern layouts optimize for finger-travel distance (and how awful the results would be in terms of hand strain!).
Speed and accuracy may be the wrong metrics to focus on as they don't necessarily account for ergonomics. On the other hand the brief mention that it feels better to touch type should probably be seen as an indicator warning to the author that perhaps their self-taught method may be anti-ergonomic. If so, the author should maybe consider the switch to avoid future pain/trouble.
(My self-taught form was an "float" of sorts with my right hand travelling a lot to compensate for a left-shifted left hand, which favored the modifier keys. I very much believe that I was very close to needing RSI surgery in grad school, and am very glad I relearned to touch type.)
I do touch-type, but I don't seem to do it in the quite orthodox way. My "homerow" seems to be shift-A-W-D or F and K-O-P-between ' and ENTER. Sometimes my right hand's homerow is also between K and L-P-[-ENTER. When I touch-type my hands actually encroach on each other's territory at times, where the middle buttons can be pressed by either hand.
I do find keybr to be very non-representative of typing AT FIRST. It becomes much better after you get through the "lessons". After the lessons it ends up being more like a regular typing test.
>I do touch-type, but I don't seem to do it in the quite orthodox way. My "homerow" seems to be shift-A-W-D or F and K-O-P-between ' and ENTER.
The problem here is your QWERTY keyboard. We're taught to use the "home row" and to keep our hands in that position, yet the keys are layed out in almost the most unoptimal way for this: the home-row keys are some of the least-used keys! It's an entirely idiotic layout for a keyboard if you want speed and comfort (from moving your fingers the least).
If you want to actually touch-type correctly, you need a different keyboard layout like Dvorak, where the home-row keys are actually the ones you use the most.
But why would I want the keys I use the most to be all near one another? I find that I type the fastest when I have to press keys that are far from one another. What complicates the Dvorak suggestion further is that I use the same keyboard to type two other languages.
My hands rest where they do because of games, because that's what I'm most used to.
>But why would I want the keys I use the most to be all near one another? I find that I type the fastest when I have to press keys that are far from one another.
Science and physics says you're wrong. Also, it sounds like you've never actually tried learning another keyboard layout.
From personal experience as someone who types 140-150WPM on average and 200+ in short bursts without using the "official" key-finger mapping but something quite close, the key point (no pun intended) to typing effectively can be summarised in a single sentence:
It is more important to know where the keys are, than to know which fingers to use to press them.
Once you don't have to think to know where the keys are, and force yourself to use all your fingers, you'll naturally use whichever finger happens to be closest, and that will give you the first big jump in speed. Then type long enough and you'll "chord" keys, typing frequent combinations as a single uninterrupted sequence instead of letter-by-letter. I discovered I could type 60-70WPM with only one hand, because I see entire "words" at a time and already know where on the keyboard to reach.
I tried out that keybr.com site and got penalised badly due to the "almost-words" that I constantly mentally autocorrected, it felt like I was typing phrases from the poem Jabberwocky; nonetheless I don't think I did too badly:
Of course you can also go all-in on touch-typing, even going so far as to look for keyboards that minimize travel distance, etc.
I'm mostly done assembling my own ErgoDox (https://www.ergodox.io/) but haven't used it yet. I'm hoping that it'll make it easier to type (less stress/tension in my hands). It'll be more fun, for sure.
Anyone else here interested in assembling/designing their own keyboards?
I've got the Ergodox as well and like it in general but I think the thumb keys are a bit too far away from the rest of the keys.
A very interesting project is Mitosis[1] which uses PCBs both for keeping the switches in place as well as connecting the swithces.
I've been typing since I was six or seven and I guess I just sorta picked up touch-typing. I was never taught how to type but I don't have to look at the keyboard. (Usually, that is. I switch between English and Icelandic layouts, and it takes me a moment to find punctuation/special characters after switching. And Icelandic keyboards are awful for programming.) I think starting at such a young age got it wired in deep.
I find that I rest my fingers on the officially designated home row, but aside from that I couldn't even begin to tell you if I'm touch-typing "correctly." According to keybr.com I have trouble with Q and W (top left/pinky keys, which seem to require repositioning my hand) and B and Y (which I discovered I use the "wrong" hand for when I tried a split keyboard).
Whatever I'm doing, it works: I average 100 wpm, and max out at 150 if I'm in a hurry. My partner says my typing sounds like "evil bugs." :)
I found that using a split keyboard for a while helped me identify and correct cases where I used the "wrong" finger for a key, which improved my overall typing speed and comfort in the end. (And I still use a split keyboard because I prefer it now.)
When I decided it was time to knuckle down and learn to type properly I bought myself one of those Microsoft ergonomic keyboards for exactly that reason, to help force myself to use the correct fingers. I ended up loving it and now use a Kinesis Advantage.
Keybr.com is great. I really appreciated their charts on layouts.
I typed above 85 wpm on average, maxing at about 110. My left hand is proper home row. My right hand is angled with index and middle on j and n, moving around a bit. The chart finally explains why I do this. The left hand side is mostly evenly distributed (on QWERTY). The right hand side is sort of diagonally bimodal. It also clicked with me that I do this to get quick access to backspace with my pinky. Backspace doesn’t appear as a consideration for many keyboard layouts. I hit it a lot.
the problem I find with touch typing and programming is that the right pinky area is responsible for far too much
things like -> I do by "floating hand", given I use Vim bindings I often think about trying to make certain things work nicer with homerow touch typing
Originally I never followed home row position and had orchestrated my own abomination of touch typing that would work for all letters. The problem began when I started needing to use () and {} more often since my old typing position would never let me do that with ease. Not to mention capitalizing letters and even using numbers I would almost always need to look down or lose my position and train of thought.
I was at about 30 WPM using this method. Eventually I took about 2 months using www.ratatype.com and following through the lessons to pick up home row position and such. Now I can average 80 WPM without trying on most of those speed typing games and 120 WPM on rare occasion.
Now I can easily find home row and the keyboard is truly an extension of myself where I don't feel bogged down by typing (using VIM now too). The mental barrier is gone and I only think about the problem and not having to switch context between looking down and finding a key while thinking about the problem. 10/10 would recommend anyone not using home row to try and learn it.
side note: I would never have picked up VIM/Emacs if it wasn't for me using home row.