Touch Typing for a Developer?

The Whinger asks: "I've been programming in various forms for about 20 years now, and I still can't type. I keep thinking, "I must learn to touch type". Unfortunately, two finger typing, 'touch typing tutorial' into your search engine of choice throws back a minefield of hits. Of course, picking something to try does not guarantee success. Does touch typing help with programming? Do you know of any tutorials that you would recommend or avoid? I can't spend the next forty years two finger typing ;)."

It ain't gonna happen

[Wonko42]

I never learned to touch type the "correct" way (i.e., homerow keys and all that) but after ten years of programming, I have no trouble pounding out hundreds of words per minute without glancing at the keys. If your hands still haven't gotten the hang of things after twenty years, I seriously doubt you're going to have any luck forcing them to learn.

It really sounds like there's some kind of spinal disconnect going on here. Your fingers should have learned where all the keys are by now, and you should be able to hit them without even thinking about it.

I touch type, and I program...

[DaveJay]

I learned to type when I was ten years old, on my family's new Atari 800 with a program called MasterType. Unlike everything else I learned on that old machine (BASIC, PILOT, LIFE) I use my touch typing skills on a daily basis, and can hit upwards of 95wpm on a decent day.

There are five benefits to touch typing that I personally reap as a programmer:

1. If I am copying code from a book, or a printout, or notes that I took by hand, I don't have to take my eyes off of the printed material. This is quite helpful, as it means I don't have to find my place on the page every time I look away, then back;

2. I can repeatedly bang out long, descriptive variable names in roughly the same amount of time it would take someone else to hunt-and-peck a short variable name;

3. My comments and error messages tend to be more descriptive and useful, as I don't feel the need to save time and effort by writing in short words and sentences;

4. I can easily write documentation on the fly as I code, since little effort is required to whip out a quick paragraph or two about the code I'm working on;

5. My posts to Slashdot can be made quickly enough to be read by most people, yet still be long enough to warrant an automatic "+1 Informative" from any moderator who doesn't read the whole way through. ;)

-Dave

Re:It ain't gonna happen

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

" It really sounds like there's some kind of spinal disconnect going on here. Your fingers should have learned where all the keys are by now, and you should be able to hit them without even thinking about it."

I Agree, but maybe he just hasn't realised that.
To the original poster: Try typing without looking some time. just see if you can do it. Your accuracy might be a bit off at first, but you'll get the hang of it. its all about knowing where the keys are, especially relative to the last one.

Not so fast

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Touch typing will help with ANY typing.

Yes and no. For normal text, such as you find in comments, of course.

However, the usual "formal" approach to touch-typing, based on a home row and marked keys, isn't nearly so helpful in the context of a punctuation-heavy programming language. Being able to do 85wpm is little use if you're using Perl, where 98% of the characters you type are '/'. :-)

On top of that, developers spend almost no time typing code. The vast majority of their coding time is spent thinking, planning and exploring. And of course, their coding time is a relatively small part of their working time, the majority being spent on activities such as design, debugging and documentation. Touch-typing is great for the latter, of course, so the three of you out there who actually write a sensible amount of useful documentation might find the lessons useful. ;-) For everyone else, though, touch-typing is a useful skill, but not so much for development as for other activities related to it.

What Touch Typing will actually do for you.

[Whatchamacallit]

Everyone who uses a keyboard on a daily basis should be able to type at least 40 WPM without looking at the keys. Otherwise you are really impacting your productivity.

I took a typing class in High School circa 1987 on IBM electric type writers. It was only a half semester class but I was able to get up to about 60 WPM and over the years, I have increased that amount to about 80 WPM and I am happy with that speed. I can type faster when I transcribe text from a printout, magazine, or handwriting then I do when I type from my head to my fingers.

Co-workers are constantly looking over my shoulder in complete disbelief when they see me really typing fast. The funny thing is, I've witnessed people who can type 130 WPM and they are more then twice my speed. Typing really should be a required class in schools because most jobs require computer work and the keyboard is still the most important interface on a computer.

Programmers on this thread have stated that they don't think that learning touch typing is important and that the syntax of programming languages is too cryptic to type easily. While the cryptic nature of code is more difficult you will get better at it if you have a touch typing foundation and you merely practice entering code from magazines, etc.

Good programming editors have extensive keyboard commands. EMACS, ViM, Visual Studio, etc. These allow for one to quickly select options while actually typing. This keeps your hands on the home row of the keyboard. ViM is a bit better at this then EMACS but I don't want to start a flamewar. Use whatever works for you. Just know that both EMACS and ViM both use keyboard commands extensively and both will improve your productivity if you can touch type without looking.

I really cannot understand why so many refused to learn to touch type without looking. It's really not that hard, anyone can do it.

Mavis Beacon teaches typing for Windows works quite nicely, but as others have mentioned there are several Open Source tutors as well.

It's a whole lot of:

hjk lfgd lkd las lkj etc, etc, etc, till you get the home row down and then start inserting letters off the home row, then changing case and using symbols.

It is boring to learn but once you get some speed you will see the advantages. It kills me to watch someone fumble about with a keyboard or two finger it (even rapidly). All the head bobbing and finger hunting is killing your productivity. It's so much smoother when you know how to touch type the right way.