Kung Fu Typing - Keyboard Finger Movement Diagrams

http://www.datapointed.net/2010/01/typing-styles-compared/

by movember • 14 years ago

50 54 14 years ago

I'd like to see equivalent diagrams on a Dvorak (or colemak) layout. The "touch typing" diagram would be much closer to the "robot" one, demonstrating you don't have to be a robot to type efficiently.

Oh, and It'd be cool to have non-slanted keyboards. My hands don't both lean on the left. http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/better-keyboards

orjan2• 14 years ago

You should check out TypeMatrix[1]. I've been thinking of getting one for a couple of years now. I guess I'm just being lazy...

[1]http://typematrix.com/

hailang• 14 years ago

I wanted to buy it until I read this: http://a3nm.net/blog/typematrix_review.html

Dvorak is cool, but you don't need typematrix to feel its benefits. I use normal keyboards to type dvorak, all you have to do is to change the keyboard layout.

loup-vaillant2• 14 years ago

From the second paragraph of my own blog post I linked above:

> I use a Typematrix EZR2030 for over a year

So I did kinda checked it out. :-) It's Much better than your average keyboard, though I agree with hailang about not needing it to enjoy a sane layout. In my experience, a sane layout is the second best thing you can do to improve comfort. The first best thing was touch typing itself (most importantly being able to not look at the keyboard at all), and the third was the actual keyboard. I didn't try advanced keyboards such as the Kinesis Contoured though, so they may be more important than I feel.

CWIZO• 14 years ago

I've been using TypeMatrix (dvorak layout) for about two months now. It really is awesome. I had severe hand pain but now I've managed to bring it down to tolerable levels and I believe that the TypeMatrix played a huge role in this improvement.

Can't touch type yet (I still look at the keyboard constantly) though :/ I'll have to invest some time into re-learning how to type I guess.

treerock• 14 years ago

I'd like to see these diagrams extended to coding languages. My touch typing is okay when writing, but I have to glance down to find any symbols and quickly lose my flow.

That's probably a big reason I like Python.

Swizec3• 14 years ago

I taught himself how to type and was lucky enough to use a split keyboard for a while - really awesome for improving technique. My technique is probably somewhere between touch typing and "The Robot".

But the 110wpm rate is worth it. And people look funny when I blast away at the keyboard without a screen in sight (I often type on a bluetooth keyboard attached to either ipad or iphone)

edit: The funniest result of being a quick typist is that I use copy+paste less than I did a few years ago. Often the context switch between typing and selecting is too much work and it's quicker to just type things twice.

irahul9• 14 years ago

> My technique is probably somewhere between touch typing and "The Robot".

How do you learn "The Robot"?

Swizec3• 14 years ago

You touch type without moving your fingers back to home row every time.

I especially do this with my index fingers who will often jump from, say, Y to U directly without hitting J in between. It looks very funny because they often hover above the keyboard because of this.

But I do tend to move my wrists too much when typing.

Cthulhu_3• 14 years ago

> edit: The funniest result of being a quick typist is that I use copy+paste less than I did a few years ago. Often the context switch between typing and selecting is too much work and it's quicker to just type things twice.

Same for me, ish; I often find myself just using backspace and retyping the last few words if I find a typo a few words back, as opposed to reaching for the mouse and redoing just that word, or using the keys to go back. Going four words back is usually a matter of alt + left-left-left, alt-backspace, re-type, but still I find myself just deleting the last couple words and retyping it.

DennisP• 14 years ago

I used to do less copy-paste but since I got decent with vim it flows right into my typing. If you're not using it you should give it a try, with that kind of typing skill you could be insanely fast at editing too. (Has a learning hump at the beginning though.)

irahul9• 14 years ago

> The result is a compact, muscle-memorizable repertoire of just over 50 unique motions in total.

Typing for me isn't much about speed(that's an added advantage). The muscle memory and ability to type without looking at the keyboard alone is worth learning it even if you experience a slowdown in the beginning compared to your one tap, two tap or what have you.

I am a bit surprised typing isn't emphasized enough. Techie or not, if you use computers a lot, learning to touch type is worth it, specially considering that if you aren't a techie(i.e you don't need all the special characters), it doesn't take much time to learn. For anyone trying to learn touch typing, I would suggest stick with the rule 1 - concentrate on accuracy, speed will come with time. And if you are a programmer, don't worry too much about speed. You generally don't type code at full speed anyway.

tehwalrus2• 14 years ago

THIS. I got a Das Keyboard with no markings just to finish learning touch-typing (I had done half a course at one point, so I sort of knew what to do..)

Speed is secondary to not breaking your focus/train of thought mid-sentence.

dkersten• 14 years ago

I got a Das Keyboard with no markings just to finish learning touch-typing

Me too.

I recently also noticed that if I close my eyes while typing, my accuracy is very very close to 100% (ie in every typing test I've taken to try it, I got 100%, but in real-life typing, I do make the occasional mistake) while with my eyes open, its anywhere between 80% and 99%, depending on how tired I am.

olalonde• 14 years ago

I agree totally. I used to be a monkey typist (maybe 3 fingers on each hands and never had to look at the keyboard) and my WPM was about 70 wpm, so I didn't really see the point of learning touch typing. However, when I tried to start using Vim, it was quasi-impossible to become productive in it with my typing style. I therefore started to learn touch typing. I was very slow in the beginning (maybe 30-40 wpm for the first few weeks) but I forced myself to touch type all the time although it was much slower. It has now been a few months and I'm almost back at 70 wpm and my accuracy is much better. Vim is also now my favorite and most productive editor. Tip: don't try to learn both touch typing and Vim at the same time. Learn touch typing first and when you're comfortable enough, learn Vim.

PeterMcCanney• 14 years ago

After 18 years in front of a keyboard I'd hoped my typing would be better than it is. But I'm stuck between a "Pointers with Thumbs" and a "Von Style"

Does anybody have recommendations for a good online touch type training program? Specifically for developers.

Swizec3• 14 years ago

Just buy a split keyboard. It will force you to learn how to type properly :)

sukuriant4• 14 years ago

I hate split keyboards so much! My left index must type Y and my right index must type B and they're always on the wrong side of the keyboard!!

sukuriant4• 14 years ago

Put your hands on home row and keep your eyes on the screen and just go, with discipline... it's how I learned, sorta. A friend and I competed to learn how to type without looking.

irahul9• 14 years ago

I won't recommend it. You sure can just go to a shallow swimming pool, flail around and learn swimming, but re-discovering first principles is distracting and might de-moralize you.

I don't remember which one I used when I learnt(it was about 6 years ago and I was using windows at that time), but I would say use one which teaches basic letters, n-grams, symbols and integration. Muscle memory is built over time and it's hard to override. Unless you believe using wrong fingers give you some sort of advantage, why would you want to learn the wrong fingers when you can very well learn the right ones with the same level of effort(your comment about y and b)?

tehwalrus2• 14 years ago

If you can afford one, a Das Keyboard is the way to go. Alternatively, melt the lettering off your existing one. Once you start forcing yourself to recall the key locations, your brain will realise it already knows them.

From then on it's just a case of keeping your fingers on the home row :)

cocoflunchy• 14 years ago

Maybe http://typing.io ?

Bootvis2• 14 years ago

Someone here on HN (thanks for that whoever you are!) recommended GTypist (http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/). I have been going to the lessons and my typing has much improved. Furthermore, it's free, easy to use and later lessons contain all special characters.

irahul9• 14 years ago

You should submit that to HN. I already know typing, but had I not, I would have definitely used it.

lywald• 14 years ago

I'm also between PointersThumb and "VonStyle". And I learned touch typing but I don't like it.

I reached 110wpm touchtyping instead of 100, but it requires a far more rigid and precise posture (hands in front and parallel). It's not comfortable when I'm standing at the side, bending over the keyboard, or when I'm slouching lazily in my chair. I guess it's better for serious typing work, but for everyday use I prefer my style.

maxvs• 14 years ago

I've tried lot of different tutorials and the best one for me is: http://www.typingstudy.com/. Very well done, imo.

Cilvic• 14 years ago

Do I miss the explanation how they created the diagrams? Would be cool do it for one self.

gprasanth2• 14 years ago

And here I am, still desperately waiting for the perfect speech to text converter that just removes need of having to type text entirely. I can see a future where programs are narrated.

Cthulhu_3• 14 years ago

o rly? I, and probably the other 'fast' typists here, type a lot faster than they can talk - plus, almost nobody can 'speak' perfectly, so corrections - even if assuming the speech-to-text converter has a 100% accuracy rate - will be very frustrating.

A better system would be a thought-to-sane-text conversion. But I doubt that'll ever be possible, :p.

gprasanth2• 14 years ago

Right, now that I think about it, even I probably type faster than I speak.

irahul9• 14 years ago

    #include <stdio.h>

    int main(void)
    {
        printf("Hello, World!\n");
        return 0;
    }

Why would I want to dictate that? "Hash include less than sign(do I mean "less than sign" or "<") stdio.h greater than sign newline(do I mean actual newline or to print newline?) int main open parenthesis(actual or sign)...."

And you are assuming if there is a perfect speech to text converter, it's automatically better than typing. I don't see myself using one for most of the tasks. Speaking is too distracting.

djisjke• 14 years ago

Well, C is made for keyboards. In fact, every programming language I can think of is, so the ones who write with tts must create new languages.

felipebueno• 14 years ago

"Everybody was kung-fu typing | Those cats were fast as lightning | In fact it was a little bit frightning | But they did it with expert timing..."

Natsu2• 14 years ago

> As for Yours Truly, teenage peer pressure kept me from riding the touch typing train. Per the sexist suppositions of way-back-when, before computers went mainstream, keyboards were for secretaries, and secretaries were female. Dudes just didn’t do that kind of thing.

I took the hard way out. I took "Secretarial Office Procedures" in high school just to learn typing.

tommorris• 14 years ago

When I was a kid, about 9 or 10, my mother taught me to type. As a teenager, she had gone to secretarial college and had become a legal secretary typing up documents for lawyers before getting married.

I learned on a manual typewriter. I was the weird kid who typed up school reports on a manual typewriter before computers were widespread.

Along with basic sewing, it's one of the most useful things my mother taught me. We should teach every schoolchild to touch type.

Natsu2• 14 years ago

It was incredibly embarrassing at the time, but I'm very grateful to have learned touch typing.

tudorw• 14 years ago

I taught myself on a life size printed version of the Sinclair Spectrum that was part of the promotional materials, I was gutted when I found out that coding on the real thing required a bizarre set of keyboard combinations unrelated to QWERTY... the skills have come in handy in the following decades though ;)

jobigoud• 14 years ago

If you're going to touch type, you should use a layout designed for it, not a layout designed to prevent typewriter from breaking.

Dvorak, Bépo, etc. Much easier on the fingers. Then you can do the "robot" diagram because it's sort of built in your layout. Even for programming it's much better.

rimantas• 14 years ago

Placebo, at best.

entropy_• 14 years ago

I never formally learned how to type. I had no clue what "home row" meant or where you're supposed to keep your fingers at any point in time.

However, I do touch type -- I never look at the keyboard while typing, even for symbols used when programming and I use almost all my fingers, except perhaps my left thumb, it stays on the space bar but I always use my right one for that. And I just tried an online typing test. When I strive for 100% accuracy, ie, I go back to fix mistakes when I notice I made a typo I got 75WPM. Also, I usually type faster than I do when taking these tests because the slowdown for me is in reading not typing because many of them have nonsensical texts(not as bad as "Green ideas sleep furiously" but nonetheless, probably something I wouldn't write naturally).

I also don't even remember going through a "hunt and peck" phase when typing. I thought this was natural and all people who use the keyboard a lot evolve into something like this naturally.

Edit: I just looked at the definitions for some of these things and which keys you're supposed to hit with which fingers and I noticed that I usually keep the keyboard slightly to the left side so that my right hand is at an angle, not straight. So instead of splitting things vertically between my fingers on the right side it's a bit different. For example I hit the "Y" key with my middle finger and I move my entire hand down to hit the "," with my index. So it's definitely suboptimal but it's good enough for me.

moonboots• 14 years ago

I can only imagine how much hairier these diagrams become if generated from code instead of English/html. Even for the best case scenario of "The Robot" combined with an "ergonomic" layout like dvorak or colemak, the right pinky area would be a tangle of deep purple. If the diagrams were updated to include backspace key usage, the mess only gets worse.

I couldn't find a typing tutor that addressed the difficulty of typing the symbols in code, so I created a webapp called http://typing.io. It allows programmers to practice typing open source code instead of English or drills.

dmbaggett• 14 years ago

As an aging coder, I have to inject a PSA: be very careful here. Learn to type properly and use a good ergonomic keyboard like a Kinesis. Many of the most productive programmers I know have had to work through RSI issues from typing too much and/or improperly. Certain programs with hand-stretching key bindings like Emacs are especially dangerous without a keyboard like a Kinesis that eliminates the use of single-handed Ctrl-<Key> combinations. (The Kinesis puts Ctrl/Alt/Meta on the thumbs so you never stretch your hand to type <Modifier>-<Key> combinations.)

One reason I migrated away from C++ and towards Python over the last 5 years was the verbosity of C++ -- it was killing my hands (#). It really does add up. The absolute worst was when I was writing the rendering pipeline for Crash Bandicoot in MIPS R3000 assembly: the sheer verbosity difference between assembly and C was enough to destroy my hands, to the point where, in the home stretch towards shipping Crash 2, I was typing with my fists clenched, holding two pens and pecking a key at a time. I didn't really "get over" the RSI for another five years. Even now, I have to stop typing when I notice I'm getting fatigued, or I will get right back into serious problems. And this is far from unique; as I said, lots of coders my age have these issues.

Do not ignore hand/wrist pain. Do learn to type properly. Do invest in an ergo keyboard. If you are a coder, your ability to type is utterly critical to your livelihood and well-being. Don't mess around with it.

(#) C++11 makes this a lot better.

sukuriant4• 14 years ago

As a complete aside,

You worked on Crash?! That is truly awesome. It's not very often that I get to read a story from someone that works for a company I respect very much, on a series that has many happy moments in my childhood.

SiVal• 14 years ago

The typing properly part of your recommendation becomes even more important now that so many of us are on laptops and CAN'T change the keyboard.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

I'm a bit scared of changing my typing style now...

I started programming at 8 years old, doing the two-finger method, which eventually evolved into a modified 3-finger left, 2-finger right, with pinkies for modifier keys. I took a typing course in high school and did well, but I went right back to my old style afterwards. I've now been doing this for 30 years. My typing isn't super fast (maybe 70wpm), but I've also never had any wrist pain, regardless of the keyboard or sitting style I've used. My primitive typing style never allows for contortion moves, and I'm worried that if I do move to a more proper style, I'll end up with the wrist pain that everyone talks about...

Kung Fu Typing - Keyboard Finger Movement Diagrams

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