Learning to Touch Type Again

https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/learning-to-touch-type-again

by Decabytes • 3 years ago

68 68 3 years ago

keybr.com is a neat site. Used it a lot when I was working hard on fixing my typing posture (don't knock it, it'll save you from a lifetime of RSI ;v;).

mellosouls• 3 years ago

Another upvote for keybr here, a couple of weeks last year half an hour a day got me touch typing.

Also recommended: typelit.io, where you type books out.

For a small subscription you can upload your own books, convenient for bookclub/typing practice killing-two-birds efforts.

https://www.typelit.io/

throw12346512342• 3 years ago

Typing books is half the battle for programmers (if you are one). I bet your wpm drops in half once you start needing common-code characters:

http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/

The one thing I struggle with is arrow keys and/or ctrl+arrow to go the end of the word or needing home/end to go to the end of the line. I don't want a non-standard programmed keyboard/layout, but it really slows things down when writing code.

brenainn• 3 years ago

https://typing.io/ is a good one for practice

Tomte• 3 years ago

Tipp10 is great: https://www.tipp10.com/en/index/

Ashish180519942• 3 years ago

Good work for your site

Ashish180519942• 3 years ago

https://www.tipp10.com/en/index

samsquire• 3 years ago

I bought a split keyboard but when I realised I had to relearn everything after trying to use it, I abandoned it. I once used DVORAK but I abandoned that too (not overlapping the split key keyboard).

I also really liked vimperator, the firefox plugin that let you manipulate firefox and click links through the keyboard and scroll with vim bindings.

My tastes have completely changed. I no longer want to optimise how I do the work that I do do, but innovate or learn brand new things.

Switching machines is painful and jarring when you swap from a custom configured machine to a default configuration machine. So things like keybindings, tmux bindings, zsh customisations, ssh shortcuts. I just decided to remember how to use -W so I wasn't dependent on ssh shortcuts.

I am just keenly aware that the profit I get from tweaking everything has diminishing returns. I would rather spend that time learning a new algorithm or playing with some code on repl.it.

There is a case for avoiding syntax highlighting too, learn how to setup a codebase from scratch, not use autocomplete so you really learn how to read and write code. Those I agree with.

I use a trackball out of inertia.

Please note this comment is NOT against tweaking or optimising, it's just I think it's fine to not want to do certain things. I don't think it's obviously superior or worse, it's just not for me.

woleium• 3 years ago

Vimperator lives on as pentadactyl and tridactyl

I believe there was also a vim based chromium fork too, but I never tried it

afarviral3• 3 years ago

You are absolutely right.

rgoulter3• 3 years ago

For emacs, I've found that putting the modifier keys on home row works well. i.e. tapping the key works as normal, and holding the key acts as Alt/Win/Ctrl/Shift.

An advantage to doing things this way is reducing hand movement/stretching.

Another advantage to that technique is it'd work with pretty much any keyboard. (Even keyboards which have large spacebars).

skribanto• 3 years ago

For me, tap hold is kind of iffy. If I set the hold delay short enough that it doesn’t feel sluggish, it becomes too easy to misfire it while trying to type. That’s just my experience though, I’ve come to prefer dedicated keys for each in a thumb cluster

melling• 3 years ago

“As someone who easily spends more than 60 hours a week at the keyboard gaming, coding, working, and writing, I am no stranger to wrist pain. Particularly the part where my thumb and wrist meet on my right hand.”

Patient: “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.”

Doctor: “Then don’t do that!”

Perhaps it would be a good idea to reduce typing in general?

We’ve got voice input that’s getting much better.

We had this a decade ago:

https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI

Some sort of gesture based input? AR/VR has helped improve this?

Hopefully a combination of keyboard, voice, and gestures could reduce RSI issues.

iib• 3 years ago

I've been trying to find the modern equivalent of that video, and nothing seemed to be good enough. Do you know of a good setup, preferably local and emacs-based?

aliceryhl• 3 years ago

The best tool for voice-to-text for programmers is Talon.

https://talonvoice.com/

dietrichepp2• 3 years ago

We’ve got voice input that’s getting much better.

Voice input for tasks like writing has been “solved” for at least twenty years now, you just need to get your software set up to use it. As I understand it, the improvements to speech recognition these days are making it easier to handle noisy environments, different accents, more languages, that sort of thing, but if you just care about accuracy and productivity in a controlled environment, then we’ve had good solutions available for a long time now. If you travel back in time to 2003 and decide to write a novel using speech recognition, it will still be a pleasant experience—you shell out some cash for a system like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, train it to recognize your voice, and get working. Your accuracy and productivity will improve over time as you get in the habit, and as the system adapts to your voice.

If you can do a portion of your 60 hours using voice, I recommend it. Take some load off your hands.

kortex• 3 years ago

> keyboard gaming
We’ve got voice input that’s getting much better

I have this hilarious mental image of someone playing Diablo by yelling "Double-you Double-you Double-you aye aye dee dee dee dee"

Jokes aside,

If you can do a portion of your 60 hours using voice, I recommend it. Take some load off your hands.

is great advice. Much of preventing repetitive stress injuries is reducing repetitive motion. I definitely ought to use more voice input, but there's an inertia aspect to it I need to overcome.

bsder• 3 years ago

Voice input for tasks like writing has been “solved” for at least twenty years now, you just need to get your software set up to use it.

So, where is the Linux writeup on how to do this?

The last time I tried to put my control keys on a footpad, it was a pain in the ass. The issue was you couldn't send a modifier from one HID device and a key event from a different one and have the OS pick them up and combine them. So, you had to get a special keyboard with a special footpad that you plugged into the special input on the keyboard.

I'd love to do a hybrid of voice/keyboard but I haven't seen any good writeups. I don't need everything on voice, but it would be nice to get some of the things that cause me to move my hands in the most contorted ways to be better. Hell, just putting scrolling on voice would be a big win given all the web "progressive scrolling" shittiness seems to require you to scrub the hell out of the scroll wheel nowadays.

mattrighetti• 3 years ago

I started touch typing with keybr too, took almost two months to get to my usual 90 wpm.

I remember practicing for an hour a day, it is fun after you nail the first 4 letters so don’t give up too early.

Now I am using a Corne v3 which I built myself and I am considering investing more time switching to another keyboard layout like dvorak or colemark, can anyone recommend it? Was it worth it?

rgoulter3• 3 years ago

Dvorak is much more comfortable to use than qwerty.

The main cost is the fingers needing to re-learn motor memory. Likely with QWERTY your fingers 'knew' where the letters where. When I learned to touch-type Dvorak, my fingers took some time to adjust, and I had a hard time typing on QWERTY.

With a separate column-staggered keyboard like the Corne, I imagine it's easier to retain the row-staggered QWERTY on standard keyboards, & touch-typing whatever on the Corne.

dannyz• 3 years ago

I was starting to get wrist pain in my right hand at the end of the day. I believed it was from never learning to type properly, I only used two fingers on my right hand even though I could type relatively fast.

I tried many times to re-train myself to type properly, but with proper technique I was only typing at half of my normal speed and would give up quickly.

In the end I switched to colemak to force myself to re-learn how to type with proper hand technique. It took a year but now I can type faster than I used to be able to with QWERTY and without any pain. It was definitely worth it for me, but there are enough annoyances with everything being QWERTY by default that I wouldn't recommend anyone make the switch without a reason to do so.

dietrichepp2• 3 years ago

I had the same experience switching to Dvorak. It forced me to relearn how to type, and when I was relearning, I made sure to learn properly. The switch, and relearning to type, 95% solved my RSI problems.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B• 3 years ago

Both Dvorak and Colemak seem better than QWERTY but it’s difficult to choose between those alternatives. I started using Colemak a few days ago because it’s more modern than Dvorak (whatever that means) but I’m still not sure if it’s the best choice.

One bonus of Colemak is that it has the same location for the keys XCV used for cut, copy, and paste.

masters3d• 3 years ago

I am learning a new layout that does not have xcv in the same place but I fix this by using a layer that keeps the same positions for xcv when holding down cmd/ctrl

TheRoque2• 3 years ago

To be fair, I think that DVORAK is overkill. If you want a good compromise between ergonomics and ease of use, definitely go for Colemak. Also a way better choice if you are European, and occasionally need some accents or characters that are not on the Dvorak keyboard. If you are crazy about min-maxing every aspect of your typing, IMO it becomes a rabbit hole: programmer's dvorak, colemak DH and other mods etc. etc. Don't forget that the more your setup is away from the standards, the more it can be a pain to go back to the standard, or have other people use your setup

bbojan• 3 years ago

I've tried many (too many) layouts and my recommendation would be Colemak-DH.

If you have a programmable keyboard, feel free to experiment with symbols, letters, etc. Home-row mods are also something that I warmly recommend.

nico_h• 3 years ago

There are other layouts, like BEAKL, MTGAP, Hands Down (Neu, Gold,Vibranium…). The current recommendation for Colemak on split kb is Colemak Mod DH, but i think the optimal layout depends on the ratio of code to prose that you use.

There is a subreddit dedicated to this very discussion, and the more general subbredit ( r/ergoMechanicalKeyboard) migrated to Lemmy https://lemmy.world/c/ergomechkeyboards

https://www.reddit.com/r/KeyboardLayouts/comments/14m5hpy/no...

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Tangentially related: I began learning the piano last year at 35 and, for obvious reasons I suppose, it feels 100% like I'm learning how to type all over again. But I'm now old enough to really notice and appreciate the progress. Yesterday my left hand was jumping around to different chords without even noticing and I had that moment of, "oh wow it's happening!"

I'm entering this phase of what I'll call "general purpose use" where instead of building the muscle memory for specific "words" and phrases, I'm able to just conjure "words" and phrases in whatever order I want. Reminds me of the jump from Mavis Beacon to actually typing up school reports and whatnot.

rimunroe• 3 years ago

Yesterday my left hand was jumping around to different chords without even noticing and I had that moment of, "oh wow it's happening!"

I had this experience when picking up the VR rhythm game Beat Saber. It felt a lot like learning an instrument. If you're not familiar, Beat Saber is a game where you hold two lightsaber-type swords and slice blocks in specific directions as they fly toward you to the rhythm of a song.

At some point my hands just started moving into the right positions without me even consciously registering every block coming toward me. I have a distinct memory of seeing a block right as it was about to pass me by and thinking that I wouldn't have time to cut it before I realized that I was already doing so. Nowadays the limiting factor is overcoming the physical inertia of my arms in order to move them quickly enough.

trane_project• 3 years ago

GNU Typist was good enough when I had to learn to type on a similar keyboard.

Ironically, I am now very slow to work with normal keyboards.

PopAlongKid2• 3 years ago

I wonder how words per minute (WPM) is actually measured. For example, an illustration in the article seems to indicate that the speed of 1 minute of typing with 12 errors is a valid data point.

I learned touch typing on a manual typewriter using Gregg book[0] (summer school prior to freshman year of high school), and seem to recall that the official WPM test involved something like 5 minutes of transcribing a provided text, and nothing you typed after the fifth error counted at all. So obviously a much stricter standard. My best at the end of the class was something like 42 WPM, and I haven't tested it since then, but I do think I'm pretty fast and with good accuracy.

The errors mattered a lot more on a manual typewriter due to time needed to correct (or start over). And of course most typing nowadays is probably to generate original content rather than to transcribe an existing text.

[0]https://archive.org/details/greggtyping191se00rowe/page/n9/m...

PopAlongKid2• 3 years ago

I found this at archive.org from a Gregg book circa 1960s. Items 1-16 not shown are about mistakes relating to pagination, margins, characters too light to be easily read, etc.

There was a time when this test was a primary factor in certain job interviews.

------------------

Calculation of test results

17. Gross Strokes. Strokes are counted correctly by considering the entire copy as having been typed in one continuous line. Each character or space in such a line counts as one stroke.

18. Gross Words. The total gross words are the total gross strokes typed, divided by 5. Do not add strokes in repeated matter or subtract strokes in omitted matter. NOTE: The count given with most test copy is the cumulative gross word count (strokes/5).

19. Penalty. For each error charged under these rules, 10 words must be deducted from the gross words.

20. Net Words. After deducting the penalty from the gross words, the remainder represents the total net words. The typist’s net rate (words a minute— wam ) is computed by dividing his total net words by the number of minutes he typed. Fractions of .500 or less are discarded; fractions over .500 are credited to the next whole number.

  EXAMPLE: A typist writes 5,808 gross strokes with 8 errors in 15 minutes —
  5,808/5=1,161.6 or 1,162 gross words 
  8(errors)X10=80 (penalty)
  1,162 - 80=1,082 net words
  1,082/15 (minutes) =72.1 net words a minute

Zambyte2• 3 years ago

A few years ago I also got a split + columnar keyboard (ZSA moonlander). When I made the switch, I also switched to Dvorak from QWERTY. It was a brutal first month grinding typing practice, but I'm really glad I did it. My posture has felt much better with the split keyboard, and my hands have felt much less strained with the columnar + Dvorak.

I don't think I type much faster than I did before switching (maybe from like 80 WPM to 90 WPM), but I feel much more comfortable typing as fast as I can for much longer.

1MachineElf• 3 years ago

I'm also a happy Dvorak convert. Yes, it's tough at first. Switches back to Qwerty also take some getting used to.*

I believe there is a universal benefit of learning a non-QWERTY layout. Many people learn QWERTY first when they are young, and as a side-effect, they carry with themselves the baggage of bad typing habits. While making an intentional effort to touch type with QWERTY can help significantly, I believe it can't compare to the benefits of starting from fresh with something new.

*I think I was lucky to have a job where I needed to make those switches often, so I gained proficiency quickly.

Zambyte2• 3 years ago

Many people learn QWERTY first when they are young, and as a side-effect, they carry with themselves the baggage of bad typing habits.

Absolutely! This was a huge factor in my decision to switch. I learned to type quickly on QWERTY mostly from FPS shooters - which meant that I would start typing while moving my hand from my mouse to my keyboard, which meant that I would type much more with my left hand than my right. I probably used my left hand for 60 to 70% of the keyboard, rather than 50/50 for each hand. I really wanted to learn to type properly, but breaking old habits on such a familiar layout was hard.

afarviral3• 3 years ago

Right, so it may not be so much about the supposed superiority of an alternate layout but about learning the layout well, which is hard to do once you have a decade or more of bad habits. That's a new take for me, having switched to colmak-dh (and training qwerty and even getting much faster on it at the same time).

thepaulmcbride• 3 years ago

I went through a very similar exercise recently and wrote about it (https://paulmcbride.com/posts/i-learned-how-to-type). I've yet to pick up an ergo keyboard, but I can absolutely type faster than I once could.

I found both monkey type and keybr to be super helpful.

hospitalJail• 3 years ago

The keyboard injury makes me wonder why this is a problem for some people but not for others.

Like shouldn't this be an epidemic?

jstanley• 3 years ago

I think it comes down to how you're sitting, and whether you do something about it when you get the first hint of pain.

I don't get any wrist pain at all when sitting at my desk and typing on my keyboard, but if I try to type on a laptop while lying down for more than about half an hour, my wrists start hurting. Part of me wants to carry on, but I know it's just going to make the wrists hurt more, so I just stop if they start hurting, and the problem doesn't seem to be getting any worse.

ff_within3• 3 years ago

bad wrist genetics/poor posture/weak wrists/grip strength/uneven floor/uneven desk. i have noticed many of my ergo issues are reduced/eliminated if i have been exercising regularly, particularly using my forearms.

dgrabla• 3 years ago

To learn in a non-tedious way I recommend the games "The typing of the dead overkill" (Linux Port) and also the more modern "Epistory"

TheRoque2• 3 years ago

I learned Colemak a year ago so I could touch-type properly, because the regular layouts are so sub-optimal that the balance between fingers feel so weird, and being on the home row is actually not optimal. I definitely am happy with the change. I use Colemak mostly for coding, and writing short texts. I would switch to my native layout whenever I need to type fast and long texts (AZERTY, french layout). I definitely think Colemak is the sweet spot for someone wanting to get a better layout, without much hastle: it's already on MacOS and Linux, it keeps a lot of keys the same as QWERTY (for shortcuts), and it has a ton of built-in dead keys for European accents ! I didn't even need to remap the vim bindings using it. I may not actually type faster (actually I max at 80 WPM now, before it was 100 WPM), but the ergonomics just feels so much better.

nabogh• 3 years ago

How does colemak work with the cardinal directions, hjkl?

jakecopp• 3 years ago

I use Colemak on a Kinesis Advantage 2 and decided to keep the same vim keybindings (physical locations change/key letters stay the same).

I think it's less optimal than QWERTY but still really nice and I'm very happy with my choice. Of course I don't know what it's like remapping because I never went down that road.

I imagine it would get very confusing having to write vim commands in qwerty when your keyboard is Colemak. Almost like switching keyboards between insert and normal mode.

I agree with parent post of yours. I'm a much better touch typer on Colemak than QWERTY - partly because I had to learn again, partly QWERTY sucks for touch typing (try hitting the letter C with your middle finger while your first finger hovers on F!)

YellowSuB2• 3 years ago

I spent a long time trying to learn touch typing on a regular keyboard but I could never get it to stick, it always felt like the keys were off, due to the stagger, and I would frequently hit two keys at the same time. Getting an ortholinear keyboard (planck) really helped me and finally I can touch type at about 70-90wpm without the awkwardness of staggered keys. It feels like the keys are exactly where they are supposed to be, instead of always being slightly off angle. I guess my brain is just wired differently or something. I don't think there is any way to go back to a regular keyboard for me, which was a minor issue when I started working, but I started bringing my ortho to work and it has worked nicely for me.

medeshago• 3 years ago

I had the same experience, but with a preonic. It's not that hard for me to use a regular keyboard but it definitely feels akward and when I do I type slower and more prone to errors.

YellowSuB2• 3 years ago

Yeah I've been thinking about getting a preonic, or at least something slightly larger than the planck, at times I find it a bit too minimal, also I would like to have two orthos so I don't have to lug one to work every day.

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

I would frequently hit two keys at the same time

For me, it was as simple as switching out my mechanical keyboard for a mecha-membrane keyboard, thankfully. Although, now I struggle with anything else! :shrug:

smokel• 3 years ago

Some people are asking for advice on switching to Dvorak. Here is my life story:

I grew up typing Qwerty using only four fingers for typing letters, and my right-hand thumb for pressing the space bar. I could type pretty fast, which was especially useful for having heated discussions on irc. My typing speed also got me a job offer during the first dot com bubble.

At around 20, I switched to Dvorak, because I learned about the silly history of the Qwerty layout, and how Dvorak would result in more typing in less time. Over a period of two weeks, I worked my way up from the Beavis and Butthead lessons (uuuu hhhh ...) up to using all ten fingers (apart from the thumb on my left-hand, which isn't doing much apart from the occasional Alt or Super here and there.)

In this training period I suffered from terrible headaches. In retrospect, I think the main pathways in my brain connected my thoughts directly to the Qwerty layout, and this needed a complete rewiring. Also, during this period I could not respond quickly to people on irc who were obviously wrong about something. The frustration was enormous.

Eventually, my typing speed on TypeRacer plateaued somewhere at around 100 wpm. That's a lot less than Sean Wrona, but still requires you to perform a test to check if you didn't cheat.

Switching from Qwerty to Dvorak was really hard, especially in the beginning. It took about five years before I could work on somebody else's machine. I'm also hardwired to Emacs key bindings, so that's a limiting factor as well. Also, I can't seem to type Dvorak with only one finger, when I'm eating a snack for instance. This is still possible with Qwerty! And I can recite the entire Qwerty layout in a pub at night, but I require a keyboard to say aoeui.

In my early days of Dvorak, I wrote some utilities that calculated the travel distance that my fingers would make if I were to retype the entire bible. Depending on how you looked at it, Dvorak required about 5 to 30% less finger movement. Unfortunately, when you put in the Linux source tree, with numbers, curly braces, and other symbols, the advantage isn't so big.

What I do notice though, after ~20 years of Dvorak, is that it feels much more fluent than what I observe at my Qwerty typing coworkers. I guess what _really_ helped for lowering the risk of wrist problems, though, is to remap Caps Lock to an additional Control, and using C-p, C-n, C-b, C-f for keyboard navigation and C-h for backspace. Switching from keyboard to mouse and back really annoys me.

absoluteunit1• 3 years ago

In the last couple years I tried a couple resources to practice touch typing and even decided to build my own, I practiced mostly on it now: typefaster.app

opan• 3 years ago

When I last relearned to type with a new layout (Workman), I think I started with keybr until I had all the keys in my head/hands (One night was enough to turn off the visual of a keyboard), then after a bit moved to monkeytype where I turned on all the capitalization and symbols and set it to 60 second tests. I did daily tests, often many, and would note down when I hit a new 5 or 10wpm incremental milestone. I think it was 10wpm jumps until progress slowed down, then I went to 5. Within a month or two I was pretty close to my old speeds. Once I seemed to stop going up significantly in speed anymore, I changed to untimed 50 word tests, this way I can let loose and it's done when it's done. I don't have to worry that I'll get discomfort from going all out for too long in a row. I get higher speeds this way, so it's not a 1:1 comparison to the settings I learned on, but perhaps closer to results I got on other sites in the past like 10fastfingers when I used other layouts.

I used to use qwerty, typed over half the letters with my left hand, very non-proper technique, but I was quite fast (160wpm is the best I recall getting). I had occasional left hand pain, so at one point I changed to Dvorak. Fast forward a year or two and I've been getting right hand pain which seemed worse than the old pain. I built a Pinky4 split ergonomic keyboard (columnar stagger). I loved the keyboard, but a month or two in, my pain wasn't really solved. I decided to learn Workman because of that. I'd considered some others like QGMLWB or Halmak, but Workman was pretty unique in that it has 50/50 hand usage, while qwerty is left-biased and dvorak is right-biased (the others have a bias as well). My hand pain is gone now and I'm extremely happy with both Workman and the Pinky4. I configured my layout in the QMK firmware, so I can plug my keyboard into whatever and not have to tweak OS settings (assuming the computer is set to qwerty).

I would recommend both an ergonomic keyboard and the Workman layout, but if you only went with one, changing to Workman may have the bigger impact. I would recommend full immersion and not running away back to your preferred layout. This ensures fast progression and constant progress, though it's frustrating at the start for sure.

I use Workman on my phone as well with AnySoftKeyboard. Many people say this is ridiculous, but I just don't want to look at or use qwerty anywhere if possible. Also, I didn't make the layout available, it was already there or I wouldn't have bothered probably. I did the same with dvorak previously.

jedberg• 3 years ago

It always amuses me when someone sits down at my computer and tries to use it. I use the Microsoft split ergo keyboard. It's not much different than a regular keyboard, other than the big gap down the middle.

But you'd be surprised how many people use the wrong hand for the keys near the middle. You can tell every time someone messes up when they stab the big empty space and it makes a loud "thunk". :)

jasonlotito• 3 years ago

The Kinesis Freestyle keyboards are also split, but have a more traditional layout. They come both wired and wireless, with the bluetooth Freestyle 2 version allowing you to connect to multiple devices with the press of a button. It's also much cheaper.

The benefit to these keyboards is they have a more traditional layout. This makes it easier to move to different keyboards. While the 360 is really nice, it also means you have to learn a new way of typing that doesn't map well enough to more traditional keyboards.

My wrists don't hurt since using the split keyboard, and find that using the split during the day is enough where when I do use a non-split keyboard, I'm fine.

Decabytes• 3 years ago

Lots of Dvorak users in the comments, but does anyone use colemak or workman? How does it feel? Is it awkward from programming? Also for those using Dvorak, How is programming and gaming?

rgoulter3• 3 years ago

For gaming, I use the same solution as the OP: have a 'profile' where I switch to QWERTY for gaming.

For programming.. for vim and emacs (or helix, whatever) you end up memorising the mnemonics by the letters rather than by position.

Specifically for vim's hjkl (where the positioning of the letters is significant), Dvorak is not so bad because the jk keys are together. (And h is to the left of l).

ff_within3• 3 years ago

colemak is fine for both. the odd game or two may have something hard coded, but its usually zxcv.

rcarmo• 3 years ago

I'm doing something a little more extreme: I decided to get myself an https://artsey.io 8-key Bluetooth keyboard, not because I was aiming to type faster (I do just fine with QWERTY, and would find it really odd to depend on a different layout), but because I wanted something I could use for short sentences alongside a mouse.

PAPPPmAc• 3 years ago

I've been toutchtyping from late elementary school, and do it "too much" especially with a genetic predisposition for fine joint problems, so I'm always trying different input devices.

I do OK on splits, except for tending to reach for "b" with my right hand. I've mostly corrected that as I've used them more. They certainly help with wrists and shoulders, especially being able to tent, and take the least retraining per ergonomic benefit.

I haven't tried an ortholinear/columnar, it's somewhere on the list.

I can not get myself fully acclimated to a non-qwerty layout, whether mechanically conventional or not, its just too deep in my hands. I've been making an occasional pass at dvorak since the mid 2000s, and somewhat more frequent and dedicated attempts to get a BAT/Spiffchorder style chorder (specifically a left handed one) into my fingers for the last decade or so, and I always end up sore and slow because I start to twitch toward the qwerty motion before making the right one for the other design. It doesn't help that they're unusual enough that there aren't (AFIK) any good tutor programs suited to the progression on that style of chorder. Better every time I try, but never quite good enough for real work.

I suspect a certain degree of limited benefit using something unusual, in the same way using a non-bash shell increases friction with the rest of the universe.

ff_within3• 3 years ago

I really like full maks minimo. Once I got over moving the modifiers the increase in comfort over qwerty or even colemak is really good. Its basically a different typing experience entirely. Just rolling your fingers over the home row randomly will shit out half the words or more in most sentences. people who have not tried a better layout don't realize how much more work qwerty is to type for no reason. Thats most of the reason for all of these split keyboards and other ergo shit. Qwerty is just that bad to type on.

bobobob4202• 3 years ago

As someone who is teaching themself to type properly (home row keys and multiple fingers) but can touch type somewhat fast (130 wpm) this website https://www.keybr.com/ is truly amazing. I struggled teaching myself how to type properly and this website is really good at abosrbing the good patterns. Funny enough practicing correct typing (home rows + all fingers) lets me type faster and more accurately with my own system Ive designed. I practice typing speed tests daily so I can confirm this is true.

IndrekR2• 3 years ago

I started practicing with Keybr few years ago, but switched to superb https://monkeytype.com/ at some point when Keybr capabilities started limiting the progress. Usually using English 10k database.

bobobob4202• 3 years ago

I use monkey type for sprints, see the max I can output in 15sec, 30sec, 1 minute. I improved my speed from 105 --> 130 primarily using 10fastfingers.com I find typeracer to be the most superb site as it includes punctuation and is actual real life passages. You can also compete with other people which is very useful. I find sites like monkeytype better for benchmarking speed than learning to type.

dusted• 3 years ago

I learned to touch type from the movie hackers, specifically by emulating Dade when he chose to spray-paint his keyboard.

When it had dried, I realized I didn't know where everything was. But, being a kid with no money, I figured it out. Now I'm typing exclusively on blank keyboards. WASD makes some nice ones.

wesapien• 3 years ago

I can already touch type and I think a split keyboard will be a lot more beneficial for ergonomics than learning qwerty alternatives.

What's it like to be able to type in Dvorak or Coleman or any other layout? Is it like being bilingual. If I ever put the effort into learning something else, it's whenever I get a split keyboard.

dingleberry• 3 years ago

i write my own typing practice program (just a simple dowhile read loop while spitting out preprogrammed stream of characters)

not counting wpm etc, don't want bloat.

my focus is practicing accuracy on difficult pieces like 4567, $%^& etc

Learning to Touch Type Again

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