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Poll: Engineers/Hackers, can you touch type?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Engineers/Hackers, can you touch type?

#3
My father gave me a computer in 1992 when I was 4 (why?) so I began typing long before I knew there was a proper way. Neither of my parents were ever good at typing, and still use hunt-and-peck even today.

I remember when I was young, maybe 6 or 7 showing my uncle that I could type without having to look at the keys, and while I use all 10 fingers, my hand position is nowhere near the typical touch-typing one.

Usually my left hand comes at the keyboard perpendicular and my right one comes in at a 45 degree angle, so my hands are like:

    | \
on the keys. My left hand stays mostly stationary, occasionally extending the first digit, while my right hand moves left and right slightly as I go.

So considering this, which option on the above poll should I be pressing? I use all 10 fingers, and don't look at the keyboard to calibrate myself, so I technically do touch type, but I have never used the JF nibs to get my position and certainly don't maintain the traditional touch typing posture. (the fingers on the home row thing)

Re: Poll: Engineers/Hackers, can you touch type?

#7
Yes I can, but only in the past few months did I learn. I used to use all of my fingers but my hands sort of danced around the keyboard and I would have to look down to check alignment every so often. I learned to touch type qwerty for 3 months, then switched to programmer dvorak a month ago. I wish I had stuck with touch typing when I first learned it in middle school.
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