(interested in what all the fuss is about? Read the original post)
Wow! It has been a great week of typing practices. Lots of people took up the challenge and began practicing home-row touch-typing. There were people who were starting from scratch, unlearning years of existing techniques, and some who took the opportunity for further refinement, perhaps getting those pesky numbers and symbols under control (something most people have trouble with). A bunch of people frequented typeracer.com for incredibly fun car-racing action. At Eden Labs, they even did a video of two employees racing (Aimee Daniells and Tom Crayford). Watch and see what it looks like when someone types 100+ wpm.
Rather than write a teary-eyed, looking-back account of the journey through the week, I'll end with a challenge: Keep It Up! This week was an intense series of 30-minute sessions every day, but it was just a start. If you continue to practice frequently, either while writing blog posts, coding or just doing focused transcription practices, you'll find your speed increasing and your errors decreasing. Transcription is an important way to learn and practice the techniques, but the real stuff comes when you are producing content. Write a blog post with a paper over your hands. How did it feel? When you get back to coding, are you looking at your hands when you hit the funky symbols, like ( or { or [? If so, why not do some practices to get those under control.
And remember, typing is a fundamental skill, not just in coding, but these days, in life. Is it the only skill you need as a developer? Not by a long shot. However, chipping away at impediments to getting your ideas out there is an important step towards improving your competency. Having a strong and fluid command of your keyboard is a valuable first step towards the goal of mastering your toolset.
Posts
As someone who only recently learned to touch type (despite years of trying to learn), I'd like to make a suggestion to those that are struggling:
ReplyDeleteLearn and use Vim and/or Emacs.
The learning curve is pretty steep, but they're insanely powerful text editors, and you almost never have to take your fingers off the keyboard. I owe my touch typing skills to about a week or two of learning and writing Ruby code in Vim... despite the many years typing in Visual Studio (waaay to much distraction with the mouse).
-Charles