Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#81

Post by SuperPaintMan »

jbob2000 wrote: post #20

The biggest gain for me came from using a split keyboard. I had some bad habits where my dominant hand was crossing the keyboard to hit keys that my non-dominant one should have been hitting, and this was impacting my speed. By using a split keyboard, it forced my hands in to the correct posture and didn't allow one hand to dominate because the other side of the keyboard was too far away. I was tracking my progress o…

I've been going over this thread wanting to comment on damn near everything, I think I'll make a blog post.

In short, you nailed it. But forgot to mention abusing the power that QMK gives you for reducing reach/key stretch.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#82

Post by steve_adams_86 »

mmxmb wrote: post #66

I used Typing club's Typing Jungle[1] for several months every morning for 15-30 minutes to go from slow hunt and peck to touch-typing at 60-70 WPM. They have almost 700 lessons of increasing difficulty. Keep in mind that those lessons are for typing normal texts, not code (not enough lessons incorporating special symbols). It worked well for me since I don't care about speed that much when typing code. Being able to…

Typing club is excellent. With my kids out of school for the foreseeable future, this will be great to keep them busy – thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#83

Post by dasKrokodil »

mh-cx wrote: post #54

I can only tell how we were taught 10 finger typing, some 30 years ago: Don't aim for speed! Aim for typing without errors and - more importantly - a constant rhythm. Music helps. Start extremely slow and spell out each word letter by letter in your mind. You should find many exercises out there for how to get started with all fingers. But the key is really to slow things down. It's very much like learning an instrum…

I agree with the part about aiming for accuracy instead of speed. But I disagree with the constant rhythm thing. Maintaining a constant rhythm will slow you down, as there are always words or letter combinations which are slower to type. Thus, if you strive to maintain a constant rhythm, you have to adjust your rhythm to the slower parts, which means it will slow you down for the faster parts.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#84

Post by Ace17 »

kraftman wrote: post #59

I recently switched key layouts and learned to properly touch type at the same time using keybr.com and a game called Typing of the Dead

The Typing of the Dead (tutorial mode) is how I learnt touch typing.

Also, you can selectively scramble the keycaps of your keyboard : way cheaper than getting a Das, but as efficient!

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#85

Post by Symbiote »

dsego wrote: post #45
flipactual wrote: post #24

Switch to an ortholinear keyboard like [the Preonic from OLKB][1] These designs reduce motion (speed) and are uniformly laid out (accuracy) which is crucial because typing faster alone is not enough [1]: https://drop.com/buy/preonic-mechanical-keyboard

Ortholinear isn't necessarily better. I have a Plank collecting dust in my drawer. These designs are not anatomically better shaped than the standard staggered keyboard.

An ortholinear split keyboard is better (it's easier to rotate either half without the normal key stagger getting awkward), but I don't see any reason to buy a Plank.

I have two Ergodashes [1], one for home and one for the office.

It's also not going to increase typing speed. Learning to touch-type can do that, but 99% of the gain from changing the physical keyboard layout (ortholinear / split etc) or logical keyboard layout (Dvorak, Coleman etc) are for typing comfort.

[1] https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#86

Post by Symbiote »

dempedempe wrote: post #77

Mapping backspace to right command and swapping ';' and RET have been a complete game changer for me. Most people don't think about the cost the extra 300 ms it takes to hit the regular backspace key, but given the frequency that you use it, it really adds up. Ditto for RET. Try it. And read this XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/1205/

https://xkcd.com/1806/ is more relevant for you :-)

But more seriously, if you're using an external keyboard you could look into buying one with thumb keys.

I have alt, backspace, control, enter and space at my thumbtips:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/501437fce9123e...

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#87

Post by bashwizard »

dukha wrote: post #44

First, you need good mechanical keyboard. Some people will advocate for specific models or switches, but you need to choose one by yourself by typing on it. Second, you need to learn touch typing. There are some tips: a) buy keyboard with blank keycaps; b) if you can't buy such keyboard (you really should), try to pull out keycaps and randomly change their order; c) put blanked or some non-transparent sheet over your…

"First, you need good mechanical keyboard."

No, you don't.

"a) buy keyboard with blank keycaps;"

No need. Just don't look at the keys while typing.

"b) if you can't buy such keyboard (you really should), try to pull out keycaps and randomly change their order;"

No need. Just don't look at the keys while typing.

"c) put blanked or some non-transparent sheet over your hands."

No need. Just don't look at the keys while typing.

For real, there is no need to complicate things. Just start out slow and you'll gradually increase your typing speed as you go as long as you're touch typing.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#88

Post by richajak »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #26

Context here matters. Why are you trying to increase your typing speed? Do you hunt and peck, and you want to type faster? Do you feel you "don't type very fast," compared to some kind of standard? Are you competing in typing competitions? If you hunt and peck, your best course of action is to break your habit and learn to type on homerow keys. If you feel you don't type fast enough using homerow keys, your best bet…

I agree on the context issue as I have been surviving on my simple typing skills for drafting business reports and writing codes. One trick that I use to speed up is by using muscle memory, in the sense that I will estimate exact position and distance that my fingers have to move. I am comfortable using Thinkpad keyboard, however I would be at lost if I have to use other laptops.

As for speed of typing vs mind, I use simple words that requires less characters to express my initial idea. I will gradually revise my sentences to elaborate or simplify it. Perhaps it is my workaround to overcome my shortcoming. Coming up with something to write or code is my bottleneck.

I learned about traditional typing skill using mechanical typewriter. However, I am more at ease with my 1-1 finger movement (1 index finger plus thumb on each hand) on my laptop.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#89

Post by blablabla123 »

_5659 wrote: post #78

Practice practice practice. More obviously, you can't type faster than you can think. Take the effort to prepare your thoughts. Develop a flow for your stream of consciousness. Typing on the fly requires a kind of cadence and rhythm that only comes with developing a proper form. Honestly best advice is just get a keyboard you're comfortable with. I'm quite fond of my WASD keyboard. The sticky keys on my MacBook Pro j…

> Practice practice practice.

> ...

> Honestly best advice is just get a keyboard you're comfortable with.

Exactly that. My typing improved extremely by typing a lot, although I'm not sure if it's necessary to know every single keyboard character by heart. And of course the keyboard must be comfortable. I think everybody has different preferences though. Personally I used to like ergonomic keyboards but at the moment I'm really comfortable with the Apple butterfly keyboard ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Best way to increase typing speed?

#90

Post by mh-cx »

dasKrokodil wrote: post #83
mh-cx wrote: post #54

I can only tell how we were taught 10 finger typing, some 30 years ago: Don't aim for speed! Aim for typing without errors and - more importantly - a constant rhythm. Music helps. Start extremely slow and spell out each word letter by letter in your mind. You should find many exercises out there for how to get started with all fingers. But the key is really to slow things down. It's very much like learning an instrum…

I agree with the part about aiming for accuracy instead of speed. But I disagree with the constant rhythm thing. Maintaining a constant rhythm will slow you down, as there are always words or letter combinations which are slower to type. Thus, if you strive to maintain a constant rhythm, you have to adjust your rhythm to the slower parts, which means it will slow you down for the faster parts.

I disagree. That's exactly the point: If you practice to achieve a constant typing rate (and start slow!) there will be no hard combinations anymore.

In fact it's exactly because of these "hard combinations" why your overall speed is slow, because you can't keep the high pace of the rest. So you have to master them first.

It's pretty much the same if you e.g. learn guitar: If you play a scale of notes you want to play it nice and smooth and not suddenly slow down at the hard part. If you can't play it smooth you're practicing to fast, so slow down until you mastered it.

Post reply on HN