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Learning to Touch Type Again

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Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#11

Post by iib »

melling wrote: post #7

“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…

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?

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#12

Post by dietrichepp »

melling wrote: post #7

“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…

> 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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#13

Post by dannyz »

mattrighetti wrote: post #8

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?

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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#14

Post by Waterluvian »

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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#15

Post by dietrichepp »

dannyz wrote: post #13
mattrighetti wrote: post #8

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?

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…

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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#17

Post by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B »

mattrighetti wrote: post #8

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?

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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#18

Post by aliceryhl »

iib wrote: post #11
melling wrote: post #7

“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…

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?

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

https://talonvoice.com/

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#19

Post by bbojan »

mattrighetti wrote: post #8

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?

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.

Re: Learning to Touch Type Again

#20

Post by throw1234651234 »

mellosouls wrote: post #3

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/

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.

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