Are you a touch typist or do you hunt and peck? For a developer, touch typing can really help keep from having to move your eyes back and forth from the monitor to the keyboard. Although I’m sure there are plenty of programmers who get along just fine without touch typing, I refuse to believe it’s more efficient to hunt and peck. To me it’s sort of like using the mouse too much. You can get things done moving from the keyboard to the mouse to point and click, but learning an application’s keyboard shortcuts can help make the application easier to use. Touch typing can have the same effect.
There are commercial products available to help you learn the keyboard layout, online tutors, and there are even some online games to help you learn. Did you know the longest work you can spell with one hand is stewardesses? Well, at least it is for touch typists.
Like Truman Capote said. “That’s not writing. That’s typing.”
November 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
A perfect post to spread my love of Dvorak with. I’m a full convertee and it only took about a week to get my typing up to an accuracy and speed that didn’t get in the way. A week fully worth it given that I can’t even type on a QWERTY keyboard now! There really isn’t even a need to convert a keyboard except that it forces you to learn the layout a little bit better.