Slashdot Mirror
Is Typing a Necessary Skill?
cloudwilliam asks: "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on how many schools have stopped teaching touch-typing as a necessary office skill and are now often saying that basic computer skills are more important. I'd agree with the latter, but what about typing? I learned to type on an IBM Selectric II (and still own one, as a matter of fact) in the mid-1980s, and the last time I was tested, touch-typed at around 60 wpm. Is this an obsolete skill? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
Better to understand how the computer works, and learn to type as you use it. I don't think that voice and other technologies are going replace the KeyBwa anytime soon though.
Sum say its a negessary skill.
Of courdsee typing is not necessary... It's prefectly possible to use a computer without knowing how to type.
tpyyng is for old peopole who doenst knw how to operate a mouse...
how long until
Last time I was tested, I was at around 105 wpm with 99% accuracy. That's just a byproduct of using computers day in and day out for years though, and not a result of any typing class. I gradually developed my own touch typing system, I guess.
I dont thiunk typiong is a necasary skil ath all!
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
It is. If you work with a computer, you life is much easier if you know how to type. I learned this the hard way.
*sighs* people should be able to type.
Typing one-handed, though, there's a skill...
Too many people I know don't know how to type correctly and use the hunt-and-peck method. They're amazed when I'm able to type up a 100-word paragraph in a few minutes, when it takes them up to half an hour. (I'd also classify them as AOLers, i.e. people that say "wut r u doing 2nite?" on IM services.)
I thnik that it still inportant to be able to touch type quickli and acuraetly.
absolutely necessary.
:)
how could you post to slashdot without knowing how to type?
incidentally, how many of you out there are traditional touch-typists?
i took a typing class waay back, but can't force myself to touch-type. but i still get around 80wpm using whichever finger happens to be around the key that i need to hit
Yes! Typing is still a necessary skill, just like writing. There are always situation where you need a certain skill sets to accomplish certain tasks.
And I believe voice and handwriting recognition technology ain't quite there yet.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I had typing in the 8th grade, and it was the single most practical class I ever had in school, period. You can type so much faster when you learn properly. There's a closer connection between your thoughts and getting them down in the computer. If anything, the prevalence of computers is making typing skills MORE crucial, not less. Before e-mail and word processors, bosses had clerical staff to type. Now the boss himself has to be able to type, too. So everybody needs basic keyboarding skills.
Whye shood we lern tiping wen most of us cant even spel?
><));>
I definately agree that basic typing skills are needed. The difference today is that the good majority of kids already know how to type, because they spend all day on aol instant messenger with their friends. Maybe schools are not teaching how to type, because they assume kids already know how to? who knows.
imEnsion
When I was in high school, I tested at 96 wpm using a manual typewriter. If we continue to use keyboards instead of other HIDs (such as voice recognition, optical, etc.), then other muscles would be more important than fingers.
Perhaps having a background as an auctioneer would finally be useful for something.
*resists teptation to correct typos*
I think taking tpyeing wuold have helpeed me now, since I'm rather poor at it today. No wonder the backspage key on my keyboars is worn out.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Ob cousre it snot!
Whpo ne3243eds toppph tyyyyp3 top usee a PPPPPPPPPPPPPPC?
I never took a basic computer, typing skills class when it was offered in high school and I still do more wpm than many other computer users I know. I attribute my learning the keys to Tribes 2 and repetition.
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. - Albert Einstein
is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?
:)
It is if you want a first post!!!
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
well, i would say that its still necessary, but i feel like it's a thing that is self-taught now. honestly, i learned to touch type in the 8th grade (i am only 21 now ) because i couldnt keep up with people in instant messenger convos on aol. i believe this is pretty common nowadays, at least in homes with computers and the like. my little sister probably does at least 40 or 50 wpm, also because of AIM, and she has since she was about 10 years old.
No. I typed this with body parts that you don't want to know about.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I can type way faster since I switched to Dvorak. Wish I'd learned it as a kid. It also taught me not to look at the keyboard at all (as the keys don't match)
It's not even inconvienient to switch on a modern OS... just press 3 keys (windows) or click an icon (kde) to change the layout.
I think ideally both should be taught. Maybe have an intro course where the first half of the class is working on typing skills, and the second part of the class is on general computer skills. Most younger people I see (junior high or high schoolers) can type, but not properly. Bad technique will never yield high speed and accuracy.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
Wha? I dont remember last time i wrote something. If anything, typing is More important than writing nowadays. If only they started teaching the dvorak keyboard...
I use Dragon Natural Speaking to do all of my web coding.
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
Ask adults who use compuers a lot and can't touch type if they wish they could. I hear a lot of, "Yes, I wish I could type."
60 WPM isn't necessary. 25 would be better than hunt-and-peck.
Last I checked, it was the QWERTY keyboard.
Knowing how to type means knowing how to input computer information faster: whether it is programming, word processing, or slashdotting.
For at least the next decade or so, touch-typing will be a critical skill for all information workers. That's just common sense, right?
Yes, it's important.
:(
If I typed faster, I might have gotten first post!
it's boring and frustrating to watch someone type slowly, especially if you are helping them.
Give life
I still think typing is much faster than handwriting recognition. With whatever I use (Taablet PC, PDA, etc.) you have to pause and let it enter becauseit won't fit on the screen. Typing is the easiest and fastest way to go right now and should be taught in some level of school for at least a few days a week for a semester.
I learned to type by programming late at night with little or no light. I saw a marked improvement in my typing skills over the course of a few months.
You get to know how to type once you do it enough. I'm typing pretty fast, still I had no formal ryping training, just the usual sit-in-front-of-a-workstation for aboout 12 yrs.
I've said it before and I'll say it again...the most useful "elective" course I took in high school was touch typing. (It also included "Word Processing", but that term in 1990 meant something different than what it does today.) A reading-specific class (included speed-reading exercises) is a close second.
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
"Typing", i.e., the act of operating the keyboard effectively, is of course necessary. "Touch typing", as taught, is not. I use 2 fingers (4 if you count the use of keys like shift and return), and can type over 80 words per minute without looking at the keyboard without trouble. There's no need to learn conventional touch typing.
Dvorak keyboards, voice recognition, and future input methods are all another story, however...
In my opinion, typing is more critical today than ever before. In fact I have been advocating typing as a MANDATORY class for High Students in the U.S. for some time now. Voice recognition, handwriting recognition and the like are all fine and dandy, but the Qwerty isn't going anywhere anytime in the forseable future.
for example: games, you can't say "walk forward, strafe left, fire, fire, switch weapon to pistol". It just wouldn't be efficient. You can do all of those in rapid succession with a keyboard. Voice is better for natural language, which was set up for the human voice and not for the keyboard (the keyboard is unnaturally clumsy at emulating language). Software that was specifically designed around the keyboard input shows the true power of 108 keys (or however many there are). Until direct input from the brain is invented (keyboard without the clumsy fingers interface and an almost infinite number of "keys") the keyboard is here to stay.
Besides, programmers don't just type long screels of text. They jump about from one line to another, cut & paste, moves things around, etc etc etc. That kind of random activity is a lot more common for manys a programmer than the acutal typing of code, and the keyboard is the most efficient way of performing this.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I never took a course in touch typing, nor have I ever really learned it other than just typing alot. And I'm a 27 year old professional developer!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Back when, few people had computers at home, or typewriters. The only place to learn typing skills was at school, or some sort of specific training.
Now, everyone has a computer, everyone knows how, or will find out how to type intuitively.
I've never seen typing as something that need be taught, if you spend enough time in front of a keyboard, you pick it up.
I picked it up as a wee lad from my C64, just sort of naturally discovered the "home row" and all that jazz.
For the secretary who wants/needs really mega-typing dictation taking skills, she can always practice with Mavis Beacon.
Similarly, I never needed to take driver's ed, since as a pseudo farm boy I'd been driving all kinds of stuff around the fields since I was about 10. And kids who live in Hawaii probably dont need swimming lessons, etc.. Unless you want to be a NASCAR driver or Olympic relay champion.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And I still don't type. I use like 3 fingers and hunt and peck the keyboard still. Everyone is shocked at how fast I can do it. I'm no 60wpm guy but I can hunt and peck as fast as I can speak and/or think with very good accuracy. I spend a little to much time looking at the keys but find that even without looking at them I'm accurate maybe 99% of the time. I just never saw the point in learning to type. My dad started me on computers years ago and since he's missing a couple fingers due to a table saw accident I just sorta followed his lead. It hasn't crippled me in any major way, although I am now an english major and hopeful writer so someday I might actually regret it. So maybe I'll learn, maybe I wont. If someone has a good reason for me to learn I'm all ears.
...to see anyone in my office *NOT* use a standard qwerty keyboard as the "UI" to their PC. So, in a word, NO. Typing is not an obsolete skill.
And have you ever used speech recognition software? It's largely crap, IMHO, even after training it's neural networks for days. Great concept, horrible execution.
I am a Computer Engineer and I can't type. Although my style of typing is probably inefficient, I learned to type really quickly through years of use. However, I truly wish I was given a course on how to type efficiently. I think it is a really important skill to develope.
have stopped teaching touch-typing as a necessary office skill and are now often saying that basic computer skills are more important.
I consider being able to type IS a basic computer skill. Being proficient in touch typing will accelerate the learning of those other basic skills.
When I'm coding, the slowest piece of the process is efficiently getting all of my thoughts into my editor. If I was a two-fingered typist, I'd probably still be working on stuff several projects ago.
I am very glad that my high school made the keyboarding class mandatory. The time it saved me in college alone was well worth the semester of "asdf-jkl;" I can not imagine typing all day having to look at the keyboard.
" Is this an obsolete skill? "
I dunno about obsolete. Consider, though, that many people these days are forced to learn to type fast. It's sort of like running.
"Derp de derp."
Phone calls are used for informal communication, but the ability to type allows you to focus your attention on the content of what you are conveying rather than having to "hunt and peck" and struggle with the mechanism of communicating rather than the content.
The half year course I had on typing early in high school was enough to give me the foundation that I could develop a full touch typing ability when the throughput of work required it.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
Dude, when's the last time you've seen someone *seriously* using a voice recognition system, or anything other than a qwerty keyboard?...'Nuff said, you need to stuff this question away for a few years.
BTW, hand writing recognition? *cough* talk about slow as heck -- there's no way hand-writing recognition would replace typing, like, ever, it takes way too long to write something.
It still should be taught, but along side computer usage and without strict usage of the "home keys".
For most advanced computer users using the "non-letter" keys and the ability to quickly delete characters is a must. I find my right hand tilted up towards the backspace and []\-= keys. I find myself using my pointer and middle finger to cover the most of the letters on the right side of the keyboard (those two finger typcially hover over the K and L) and my pinky and ring finger covering the other charcters (on the right side). Not the official way of doing things, but I don't know anyone (coworker or friend) who types faster.
Casual Games/Downloads
If it'll help them squeeze in some witty one-liners than the same old boring FP posts.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
I personally never had any typing or "basic computer skills" education. Since I started fiddling around with programming at 7 years of age, I have been a hunt-and-peck typer until probably around 11. At that point I stopped looking at the keyboard, and started paying more attention to the emacs buffer....
Touch typing is a skill that comes naturally... at least for me...
Does that mean teaching students how to operate Windows? All that does is further support the Microsoft monopoly...
Worst "Ask /."... EVER.
...is exactly how I learned to type. I never was officially taught touch typing, but I can program and write without looking at a keyboard and at a rate that has never prevented me from earning my keep.
I took typing in high school so I learned the traditional way (correct finger on correct key, etc.). And I have always used a computer at work, so my skills have never become rusty. But by far, the single most significant event that affected my typing speed was using IRC in the mid 1990s. I went through a period when I chatted a lot, and it caused my typing to become almost conversational in its speed and fluency. My speed probably improved by 50% in that period. Responding in real time to a spirited conversation is just different than typing a document by yourself or taking a classroom exercise. So I guess my point is that exposure to the online environment is likely to cause natural improvement. But I'm still glad that I had the formal foundation.
Anyone who's actually learned how to type should be able to achieve 60 wpm without too much trouble. Stubbornness is the largest reason for not learning how to type (although its quite easy). While for 99% of people fast typing isn't necessary, it is a useful skill that will increase one's productivity. Most experienced computer users type around 100 wpm rather than 60 wpm, which is an enormous increase compared to 15-30 wpm hunt-peckers.
but slashdot forces me to type in these comments and they claim to not be able to communicate with me through brainwaves. And I thought they called themselves geeks!
Nothing hurts more than watching a developer hunt and peck.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Is this an obsolete skill? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?
Uhh... Last I checked, it's the year 2004 and we haven't stopped using keyboards. How could typing, in the furthest stretch of the imagination, be an "obsolete skill?" Let's ask this question again in a decade from now when people might actually stop using keyboards. Unless I'm horribly misinformed, voice recognition is nowhere near popular and just about 99% of the population is still using the QWERTY layout.
When I have to work with clients, they are usually impressed by the fact that I type very quickly, around 60 wpm as well. Then I see them type an email or a document, and they type at the speed of minutes per word instead of words per minute.
If the person needs to type up a Word document, a Functional Spec, emails, etc... They just can't be very productive when they touch-type. Even the best touch-typist can probably only do around 15-20 wpm.
I like the fact that I can type about as fast as the thoughts come out, and I think that it would be very frustrating not to be able to get your thoughts out as fast as you'd like to.
My school district uses the Mavis Beacon software. From what I remember, we're required to do it starting in Grade 2. I should note that I'm able to do the whole "quick brown fox" sentence blindfolded and type at 50wpm at last count.
What kind of basic computer skills are they referring to? Using a mouse? Ok, so you can click. Can you really create anything substantial by just clicking?
:-) Which is technically true if you do it all with Mathematica, I guess.
I can't think of many skills more basic than touch typing, especially since people communicate more via email and instant messaging and less in person and on the phone. I don't think voice recognition is there yet.
Next they'll be saying that you don't need to know how to add in order to do calculus!
We should be using this.. the DataHand
This is written in true disbelief: when did touch typing not become a basic computer skill?
I grew up taking typing courses. I can't imagine using a computer without knowing how to touch type.
I can say that the smartest most prodigious student in our class (he was doing senior projects in his 3rd year) was an incredible typist. The speed at which he both coded, and typed allowed him to do things like a 2-week homework project in 4 hours.
Also, even for non-coders, typing is becomeing incredibly important... in a project chat meeting the other day (our manager permanently telecommutes), my ideas and concerns got more coverage because I could effectively outtype everyone (and fairly accurately, I might say).
I can see all the people who are anal about other people's spelling and grammar online saying how typing is important and that real geeks or power users will learn how to type...
On the flip side you'll have all the people who DON'T care if someone uses "there" instead of "thier" on a forum post saying that typing is not esential because their chicken pecking typing skills go just as fast and are just as good...
Really it comes down to - some people think typing is great and like it and can type really fast; and other people can chicken peck at extremely fast speeds and will not see a need/reason too learn the "proper" way to type.
In a lot of ways I think the "proper typing" skills are a lot like the "proper dining" skills.(you know, knowing which fork is your sald fork) - In all honesty it DOESN'T matter if you use your little or big fork to eat your salad/steak with - no one should care about that IMO. So it would make sense that it shouldn't matter anymore if someone can type 100wpm using the home keys as a starting point or if they can type 100wpm using chicken pecking.
Ave Molech Setting
I type very ad-hoc, usually with about 6-8 fingers at a time. I type fairly well (barring typo's made by being tired, or whatever). I type at a decent pace, though not on the level of touch-typists. And I can type blind, with my eyes averted from both the keyboard and the screen, if need be.
I'd say that most people don't *need* to type at 80 words per minute or higher because that would remove any thought from what is being typed. Barring dictation or copying, I can't see any use for typing at such speeds.
I was never taught touch typing and was able to pick it up subconciously and increase speed over the years. Just as long as you use the keyboard you will slowly but surely pick it up. There is nothing to be taught here, its a skill. I'd rather they spend time teaching about drivers, OSes, the Internet and basic netowrking.
Darn.. typed too slow.
I took a one semester typing class in 6th grade.... I think the old BBSes at 2400 baud helped my typing the most.
Typing (for me) is still far faster than writing. I don't have problems with cramping or messy hands. With common words, when I know exactly what I want to say, it's faster than speech. I know I'll get a +5 Nerd for this, but there are times when I IM someone across the room simply because it's better for reasons of efficiency, organization of thoughts, or attention-getting (i.e. headphones being on). Keyboards will always have their place, IMO. Just as a pen and paper still has its place.
I type pretty damn fast, I'd say. I haven't had it checked in a good, long time, but I'd say 50-60 wpm sounds about right. However, I haven't actually ever taken a complete touch typing class. In fact, I use the so called "hunt and hit" method. Well, I should say, that's how I STARTED typing. However, I know where all the keys are by now. I don't have to even think about it. I use two fingers to type but there is very little time between any key stroke, and the only thing that is slowing me down is my thinking speed.
Thus, while I don't type the "normal" way, I'd say I type almost as good as most typists, anyway. So, while I do believe it helps to know how to type in some way, shape, or form, I don't think it has to be with the standard model. Whatever way works for you.
Also, just because I type this way doesn't mean that I use poor grammar on IMs, despite the stereotype. I'm a grammar nazi at times and my whole body cringes anytime I hear "words" like "lol" "ic" or "omfgrolflmao!!!!11111111"
lest we forget that computers are meant to be tools to accomplish work, such as writing stuff. Is it important for people to understand how it works? Sure. Is it MORE important that they can leaverage the machine to produce something useful? Yes. Why? Well, most people in the world do not just want to use computers for the sake of using a computer. They don't want to call someone on the telephone and talk to them about telephones. They want to write their reports, do their research, et cetera. Of course, we all can type rather effectivly anyway (although most of us can't spell and ignore grammar), so our point of view is jaded. But the fact is that there are more secretaries than their are UNIX administrators or C programmers and they needed to know how to type quickly likes longer than 'cd /usr/src/sys/i386/'
The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
I taught myself shorthand from some 3rd or 4th hand Gregg texts I found in used bookstores. I can write at 150-200 WPM, notes that I read at about 1/4 the speed of typewritten notes. Now, would you say that this is an "obsolete" skill? I find that I use it for all sorts of purposes, including writing at what is much closer to the speed of thought than what a typewriter or computer word processor could manage. I suppose dictation offers comparable speed, if you have a personal secretary. Typing is today's broadly taught system of high speed input, with a huge installed base of devices that enable it. Transition to an alternative is more than a decade away. Anyone old enough to learn to type will need the skill during the next ten years. Of course, I'm waiting for a device that will understand a series of hand gestures, like shorthand, that enables input at speeds approaching 150-200WPM.
Good typing means wrists raised in order to get the most strength and endurance, needed with the old manual typewriters. This also means better blood flow, which prevents RSI, at least to some degree.
It also means less time waiting for your hands to catch up with your mind, and so gets out of the way of the creative process.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
Is the question,"Is it a neccesary skill?" Well, for anyone looking for a job outside of manual labor, I think it is a excellent skill to have. Walk around at any major corporation. Count how many QWERTY keyboard you can find. After that wasted few days of counting, try and find a voice recognition anything. You won't find much of anything.
Pretty Pictures!
I went to a small private high school. In 1990, typing was taught on Electric Typewriters and a majority of the class were males. We learned how to center things and format text, etc, knowing that we would never use it. We all saw touch typing as a required skill in the new computer age and only one student was interested in becoming a secretary. It is a decision that I have never regretted, not even once.
I think teaching correct typing is absolutely necessary in school. When I was a kid tinkering with computers, I learned to type using hunt and peck. By the time they tought it in high school, it was difficult because I was used to my own method of using three fingers. I eventually got up to about 60wpm typing "the right way", but I found I could type faster using my own method and eventually switched back out of habit.
If they would have only tought it sooner, I might not have picked up the wrong way of typing. I'll admit, even though I was faster using my method, there is a speed limit I am capable of reaching, whereas I believe the "home row" approach has a higher limit.
My $0.02. Why do they wait so long to teach typing?! Like we didn't use computers until we were in high school??
With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
I don't know about you, but comparing my handwriting and typing speeds, I find I can type much faster than I can handwrite.
Oddly enough, as a sidenote, this proves rather inconvenient. I can type about as fast as I can think, and as a result, the words spill out onto the screen. When I handwrite, while I'm writing, I can formulate the words I'm going to use in the time that I'm writing the words before, which leads to higher quality writing overall. However, when I'm typing, I rarely have time to consider the words I use, hence, the tendency towards verbal vomit.
As a result, for long bodies of writing, I usually do a rough draft by hand, and then transcribe it into a word processing for editing. Nothing beats being able to bck^H^Hackspace and forward delete!
Of course, we could use OCR (optical character recognition) for that transcribing process, but current systems show little improvement in recognizing human handwriting than their predecessors. Not to mention I want to be able to keep my current handwriting style and not have to change it to some "graffiti" style.
In short, typing IS a necessary skill.
Of course teaching touch-typing is important! If no one learns to type decently, how do we expect to convert everyone to GNU/Linux?!?
Why feel the need for formal a formal education that many people wondered about the usefulness of at the time, when most people who use computers now see the value of it and find their own ways to learn it to the level they deem necessary?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Being able to type very fast in university (I used to get looks of disgust from those around me)made a *HUGE* difference, especially when you consider the fact I was in Computer Science. I could bang out code faster than the others, compile, go back and correct, all before other people wrote their initial program. Documentation was easy, as I could type it out 4x faster than the majority of my classmates.
I have to agree with what an earlier poster said - typing class was one of the most usefull classes I ever took in high school. Before I took it, I used the hunt and peck method. Afterwards, I was up to 50 wpm and steadly progressed to about 105-110 now.
Oh, and because everyone and their mom is doing it - yhw do yuo need to tpye fsat?
As a programmer, and having this conversation with other programmers, I feel that it's best, in the world of software development to learn typing as you go. A friend of mine said that at 30 wpm, he was just dangerous enough to get stuff done, but the slower speed allowed him to evaluate the stuff he was writing as he was writing it. Of course this does not preclude an attempt at proper planning, but if you're doing XP stuff, you really don't need a blazing fast typing ability, that will come with practice. What you really need is the ability to think critically.
With all the programs that school budgets are faced with cutting, it's the lesser of two evils to cut the typing class. I'd rather have a programmer working for me who can ask pertinent questions than one who sounds like a machine gun on the keyboard.
nerdsonice
I learned to type by myself on keypunch machines in the 6th grade. Give each school a room full of keypunches and part time data entry jobs :-)
when he went back in time to the 80's, then I don't either. One old Mac mouse and you're good to go.
"Hello, Computer..."
if that doesn't work, speak loudly into the mouse.
Then about a decade later I took a position as a programmer in a mumps shop. If you've ever worked in mumps you realize what I mean. Almost everyone I know who worked im mumps for more than a few years uses about 5 fingers and a thumb.
Anyone have a spare PDP-11/44 with DSM-11 on it? I miss those days...
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I work for a company that does IT and Heathcare training, as well as IT consulting. Certainly with the jobs that are IT related we expect someone who can type. Even on the Healthcare and non-IT-jobs, computers are so involved in our buisiness that most employees could not do their job effectively without them.
That said, during the hiring process, the question "do you type" is probably not asked very often. It is such a key skill that it has moved beyond being a nice thing to know, to being expected if you are to ever work in any type of office setting.
I type at around 70wpm with 85% accuracy.
...like holding the icecream
Such a low accuracy score would have got me sacked from the typing pool, but with the backspace key every present, its more than enough for typing reports, assignments, scripts, slashdot posts etc.
I've never had a formal typing lesson, tho I've tried a couple of the "Mavis Beacon" things years and years ago. (Never stuck with it. Too boring). This is obvious to anybody trained when they look at some of my funky cross-hand boogie techniques.
The more you use a keyboard, the faster you get.
Even though I'll easily be beaten by a trained typists two hands, I can usually do better than them while typing one handed, and have the other hand free for doing more pleasurable things...
(dirty dirty slashdotters)
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
well, let me see. my computer's brain recognition system has been a little under the weather lately.
so, it looks that i'm basically stuck inputting the vast amount of wisdom that i offer to slashdot by using that old, antiquated "keyboard" concept.
In order to use a computer for anything remotely interesting, most kids will figure out how to type on their own.
It used to be more necessary to teach students how to touch type because computers weren't as common as they are today. Before I graduated high school in 1991, I wrote nearly all of my term papers in cursive, and I never took an official typing class, yet I still knew how to touch type.
Today, most kids have computers at home and many write their term papers
If you want to use an instant messenger, you need to learn how to type somewhat efficiently. Sure, many people speak some 'dum pidg3n lol' language, but they'll quickly learn that using 'u' instead of 'you' won't work on a resume or business document.
They'll figure it out on their own.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I do however look great in comparison to my own boss. I laugh to myself everytime I see him "hunting and pecking" with his index fingers. I bet it takes him all day to draft a simple letter that way....
...was first learning to type in elementary school, and then forgetting because it was something I never used.
Then in highschool I took a touch-typing course. By the end of the quarter I was typing 60wpm. Years of working on computers has brought that up to an average of about 100wpm with 99% accuracy.
Kids today have an advantage that I didn't have. When they get home from school they get online and instant message all their friends.
I think it's a great idea to teach them to type as part of an introduction to computers. They don't necessarily need to become proficient at it, because they can practice as they work with the computers. But they should at least be given the basics.
Learning to type properly is a very useful skill. Using a keyboard is a very efficient way to write out your thoughts.
The subtle benefit of knowing how to type properly is that you can actually type in complete sentences, and not come accross as being retarded in an e-mail or instant message conversation. You will still make typos and spelling mistakes (as I am sure I have in this post), but the post is in recognizable english.
when u dont use sentences nd use lots of abbreviations but not punctuation it tends to b noticd
END COMMUNICATION
Typing is not just a "good skill" it is essential in the preservation of a free and open society. How many journalists do you know who are not skilled typists? How many programmers who aren't fast typists, for that matter?
At the turn of the century, super-rich industrialists created planned, forced schooling as a means of limiting the intellect of the masses, making them easier to control. One of the great achievements of this system was to reduce literacy from levels before forced schooling, with restricted, age-graded curricula and "scientific" methods such as see-and-say reading. (see here for more, frightening, details.)
Not content to merely extend childhood and condition sheeplike mass consumers, the beast bears on, attempting to mitigate the speech-multiplying effects of the computer age by crippling students' ability to interface with computers.
By limiting the number of fast touch-typists, the dumb-factory ensures that not too many free citizens will be expressing their minds, promoting discourse, and exercising their reason in debate with computers.
Paint your keyboard so you can't see the keys. Worked for me!!
"...is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
No, the real skill is in using only 5 fingers.
I took a class last year called Applied Information Technologies that taught basic skills (spreadsheets, word processing, webdesign) as well as making us pass a touch typing test. Though he didn't really teach us typing (we were expected to learn outside the class), the ability to do it was a fundemental part of the course. So I guess it is possible to incorporate both in one course.
That said, I found the class incredibly boring as I've been around computers for as long as I can remember (there was one in the house before I was born), so I didn't really get taught anything new. I guess that's why I was able to skip the class fairly often and still get a 97..
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Is comfort. I find touch typing much easier on my hands than the weirdish hunt-and-peck variant I used to use. (Maybe "know where it is and peck" would be a good name...)
...he wouldn't have handed Moses a couple of stone tablets and a chisel.
Oh, come on, what do you expect? Christian... "Science?"
Here I was thinking Slashdot was a nice safe place for atheists to hang out without fear of persecution. Sigh.
Of course typing is needed!
:(
I have a hard time imagining writing code via voice or using hand-writing. Think of all those exams where you had to write your code using a pen! Nasty
Perhaps voice is good for prose, and hand-rec is good for notes, but I think for code, nothing tops the mighty keyboard.
Let's not sacrifice one skill for another and I am not trying to say that everyone should be required to type 60+ WPM, but I cannot stand a hunt and peck person. Makes me want to revoke their computer privilege. I put them in the same category as people who drive slow in the fast lane and people who still use paper checks to pay for shopping goods (sorry, that's what check cards are for, you are wasting my time and yours..swipe, sign, leave).
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Yes, I'd rather have someone that knows how to use every program and just is a little slow at typing... but seriously, who CAN'T type more than 60WPM? Granted I use a computer a lot and type faster than most, but even my little sister who doesn't use the computer for more than IM and e-mail can out do 60WPM. It's very frustrating to try to get your point across in a chat when you can think 10 times faster than you type. Basic use of a computer should eventually yield everyone to have better than 80WPM. I capped that and never took anything that taught me how to type.
At some time in the programming process it is necessary to type the bloody thing into the machine. Anything which reduces the time spent on this boring task just has to be a good thing. The guy I envied most of all at college was a Navy trained typist who spent most of his lab time watching all us two finger schmucks.
Perhaps schools are teaching typing less because they are finding that by the time children come to these classes, they have already developed their own methods of typing.
I know that when I went to grade school and began typing classes (in the late 80's, early 90's) I had already developed my own 6 fingered method. So I blended that with the home-row style and came out with what I use now. 60+ wpm, and it's not the stationary-wrist home row style. It just works differently.
I agree that spending time on computer skills would be more effective than spending lots of time correcting years of improvised typing habits.
I have never touch typed and I have probably logged 30% of my life on the pc... I also never got carpel tunnel syndrome... I also type fast enough for MMOs and IMing that is all that matters, not touch typing. Also btw I never learned cursive and teachers told me that would ruin my life...
Typing is not as important as it once was. There was a time when documents were retyped every time they were redrafted. Even into the eighties, in business environments documents got retyped all the time. Faxes were a major means of transmitting documents, and the paper and print quality meant that they often ended up getting retyped, too.
Also, typing was once much more of a specialized business skill. If you didn't take a typing course in high school, your first exposure to a typewriter would be on the job or at college.
In today's business environment with e-mail and word-processors, documents are edited, not retyped. The actually time savings of being a super-fast typist are much less, because less typing has to be done. And even when typing, your full-bore typing is interrupted by mousing and keyboard commands. In addition, most people nowadays pick up a minimal typing ability through the use of home computers. Certain jobs where documents are composed from scratch still benefit from high typing speed, but basic self-learned touch typing in the 30-50 wpm is easy to achieve, and focusing training on computer skills for editing makes much more sense.
More and more of them are like I was, when, in the 7th grade, we had a touch-typing requirement. To pass the class you had to be able to touch type at 40 wpm or better. I got out of the requirement by sitting down and "hunting and pecking" at better than 40 words per minute. I had simply picked up how to type fast enough by using computers all of the time.
I don't tell that story just to sound clever, of course. The point is that kids these days are further along than that. Plus, it turns out that very few jobs requiring computers include a great necessity to type quickly. The computerized workplace isn't quite what people imagined a decade or more ago.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010321
EVERYONE should be required to take a typing course. Furthermore, they should address specific disabilities therein. I personally have only 9 useful fingers for typing, and still type at around 60 wpm.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I have nothing to say to this, but it's a keyboard related topic and I must thus write something about Dvorak keyboards, in which I type and which are so much superior to Qwerty.
Can someone tie Dvorak into the subject a bit better?
According to Fred Brooks the average american programmer only creates 11 lines of code a day.
You don't need to be able to type 80wpm to achieve that.
Wow, look at that. 8 more lines and I can call it a day.
Wait, I'm not American, D'oh!
With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?
Handwriting recognition isn't much good at all yet, and voice recognition isn't much better. Besides, have you ever known anyone to write code using a microphone?
Full-size keyboards are still the fastest, easiest, and most cubicle-friendly way of entering data into any computer for about 99.9% of all users. (The last 0.1% use chording, and they spent their own time mastering it.)
I'm not a *great* typist, averaged around 40-50 wpm on the old word processors and typewriters back then, around 80-90 wpm on computers now, but still good enough. I can't even imagine not being able to type well, especially as a programmer.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
... but I don't think an office where everyone is shouting out things like
"Return parathesis zero parathesis"
is going to get alot of coding done.
-Stu
I would have had first post, but I had to correct all of my typo's...
What was the question again?I had to teach my typing teacher that computers need you to really type 1 and that I was not a substitute. I don't think she really believed me. She must have asked someone in the math (they had the computers) department. Because the next day she agreed not to count me off for the extra time it took to reach the 1 key.
In the end typing was one of the most beneficial classes I took in high school.
I'm a System Administrator and I failed my middle school typing class. My problem was that I had already been programming in basic on a PC XT (no thats not an ATI video card for you newbies out there) for a few years before the typing class. I had already come up with my own way of typing. I started out hunting and pecking with two fingers, then it gradually became 4, then all 8 fingers (poor thumbs, all they get to do is hit spacebar (which is never long enough now a days)); I know I'm not the only one in this camp. Trying to unlearn something is nearly impossible once you've got your own system in place.
;)
basic computer skills, even if they are just windows skills, are very important. I dont understand why they dont teach things like how to defrag or scandisk your hard drive, or how to uninstall applications. These are the primary skills that most people need help with. Spend half the class on typing, the other half on actually using the computer (and no not just word), and they'll pick up the typing thing as they learn. I'm sure most of them can type pretty well already (prolly dont spell 2 well w/ AIM, Y!, and MSN IM @ home ne-way
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
The only thing I learned in high school of any value was typing. Everything else was a waste of time.
In 6th grade, we had a mandatory semester of touch typing. Even with that, my touch typing skills never ended up perfect, as I never seem to use the right side Alt, Shift, and Control keys when typing. Still, I'd say even learning and getting down the basics of where the basic letters, numbers, and symbols are using touch typing is definitely worth the effort it takes to learn it.
Enough Said.
(disclaimer: I have NO idea if that is right. Don't speak 1ee7)
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Typing in indeed an essencial skill, but it's quickly learned through computer use. Personally I type at an estimated 100-120wpm (Last test showed 109wpm, but it varies daily, and with the language typed).
:) The point is that I think that touch is an essiential skill, but that it's quickly learned thorugh intensive computer usage.
I learned touch-typing on my Amstrad in 1990-1991, without any external help (not even a touch-type program). In school I got an A (or at least, the norwegian equivalent which then was "S") - and learned to use the proper fingers at the proper keys, which I didn't know before - even though knowing the keyboard pretty good.
Since then the speed has, of course, only increased. I no longer use any programs to estimate my touch speed. I've sometimes just timed the speed with a simple "date ; cat | wc ; date" , and then used bc to calculate the speed.
Just did a quick test where I wrote out of the top of my head, and came out with a nice 616 characters/minute, or 118 wpm as it was. Not too bad, but on the other hand, I had to find something to write, and did a lot of manual corrections/rewriting of sentences.
Ahwell, enough bragging.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I can hardly print by hand anymore.
... i wouldn't even attempt it.
and cursvive?
When I was in school in around 6th grade, I had a teacher who typed using the "proper" method and was typing around 60-70wpm. While me, I typed using my "free-style" method. In reality I type similar to the way you're supposed to, just kind of adapted to however I feel. I was averaging 20-40wpm faster then my teacher. Then the jerk makes some remark like "well your score doesn't count because you don't type using the proper method." He hated me, but that's another subject. I now type much faster than I did back in those days and I still use my own method. I don't ever look down at the keyboard. Shit, I've even memorized the locations of the buttons on my TV remote. It's not that hard. As for teaching typing in school, sure, fine, just as long as that people can adopt to their own methods and might end up working better then some kind of preset standard. Currently in real life, I don't know anyone who types faster than I do, but I'm sure many people do. I'm just tired of schools teaching in that "this way is the only way" mentality because it's bullshit. And that's on top of the already large amount of flaws the school system has.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Having the ability to type accurately at a high rate is absolutely necessary. First of all, I don't know of any employer that has computers for secretaries or other "general typing" positions that have speech recognition. Traditional typewritter courses may be obsolete, but typing on computers is not.
Think of jobs like programming where high computer skills are obviously required. Good programming requires you to be able to input code at fast speeds and accurately so that the code runs without error. Unless you work for Slashdot, producing buggy code that took you all day to input won't get you far in the business world.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I for one will be sending my children to school with a Dvorak keyboard... Like in handwriting, there can be no one accepted way to type. I took a typing class in 9th grade and my teacher hated me because I kept my left hand at the row above home, and my left hand on the row below. It was just easier for me, and I got some of the highest numbers in the class on the typing clock application she tested us with. Typing should be something you learn on your own time, or at least with fewer constraints.
Not to brag, but I type fairly fast, yet I never learned. I type using 3 of my fingers and my thumbs, but because I do it so often, I have gotten fairly fast at it. I'm probably not fast enough to be a proffessional typist or anything, but I do type fast enough to do any computer task quickly.
The point is that typing is something that comes with practice and teaching it is kind of pointless. It will come with time to the kids.
A few years later, in 1976, when I was first introduced to a VT52 (and UNIX) with its lovely, long-throw keyboard, I quickly developed from hunt-and-peck to my own form of touch-typing -- I learned that if I set my fingers one space out from the traditional "home" keys, I had easier access to the keys one needs in using a computer -- Escape, /, and CTRL (and of course BKSP). I have no idea what my speed is, but it more than acceptable, and after nearly 30 years, I'm pretty good at it.
I would argue that it is high time that someone develop a new form of touch-typing that takes a computer keyboard layout into consideration. If anyone has, I haven't heard about it.
But to those who think that typing will diminish because of vocie recog or some such -- phoey. Can you imagine an airplane or coffee-shop full of people yelling into their computers? Yuk.
-- gnet
Typing is an applied skill, just like reading and writing.
In the same way that speed-reading is probably not a critical skill to teach to every child, typing at 120 wpm is probably not necessary either.
But just because speed-reading is too specialized, doesn't mean that reading at a comfortable speed isn't important!
Teaching kids to touch-type, not necessarily speedily, but comfortably, should be a priority for schools everywhere. I'm amazed that anyone could think that proficiency at this incredibly common medium of communication is not critical.
don't mess with those geekgrrls
The more interesting question is, will typing skills remain as essential in ten years as they are today? And to that, I'd say: absolutely...for some people.
I've written several book-length projects. One I did through voice recognition, the others through typing. If you haven't used voice recognition lately, you're in for a shock. On any current computer, the software has no trouble keeping up with you, and if you train it properly, you'll get 95% accuracy.
I'd be stunned if we don't get 99.5% accuracy in ten years. So, will typing be an essential skill then? For some people, perhaps not. But for writers and thinkers, yes.
What I've found, is if I'm trying to communicate something simple and straight forward, voice recognition is better. You can speak close to 200 words a minute, but you're a fantastic typist if you can do 80. So for simple writing, you can double your productivity using voice recognition.
Trouble is, sometimes you can't -- and shouldn't -- think as quickly as you can speak. For making complex arguments, or for writing in a way that carries a rhythym, you're still best off typing -- assuming you know how to type!
And for anyone who's ever had to edit text, let me say that there's no way you could ever edit as accurately and quickly with speech recognition as you could at the keyboard.
I can envision ten years down the road most people doing emails and surfing the web mainly by voice recognition and mouse input. But if typing skills vanish, certain types of writing and communication will suffer enormously. And I worry that tomorrow's creators, trained on voice recognition and never learning to type -- will never realize what they're missing out on.
Picture Hemingway with a microphone and you'll understand. For some writing, there's just no substitute for typing your words directly onto the screen or page.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I learned to type by stroking across an Atari 400 membrane keyboard. After 30 years of computing, I type so much faster, with fewer mistakes, than anyone I know, without formal training. My keyboard chops help me to think about programming and English communications while I communicate, without getting consciously hung up on the words themselves, which mostly just flow from my fingers. Although the immediate feedback from the typed words on the screen, in the form in which the compiler or human reader will consume them, improves my style. I can type faster and more eloquently than I can speak, either to people or computers. I do wish that I had learned a more action-equitable layout than QWERTY, like Dvorak, but I also wish I'd been born into an Italian speaking family. I'm comfortable typing with the tool, even more comfortable than speaking without one.
--
make install -not war
Typing was the best class I took in High School and the skills learned in it I use daily. I too learned on a Selectric. It would be a shame if people think it is not a worthwhile course. Watching hunt and peck "typists" drives me up the wall.
I cun do bttre thna thta yuo lmaer.
I dont think a class devoted to typing is really needed anymore simply because computer use at home is so common now. When i was in school taking typing class my family hadnt purchased a PC yet. Now i dont know a single family that doesnt own a PC.
that using the CAPS LOCK WHEN TYPING will MAKE YOU LOOK SMARTER.
I agree with you on the keyboard being the fastest input device so far (regardless of layout), as we are most adept using our hands and the keyboard suits itself well to making the most of our dexterity.
But knowing how to touch-type, I'm not sure is so valuable as more and more programs have heavily customized keyboard maps.
Over the years I've developed my own form of touch-typing - modifed heavilty to favor the use of Emacs, making it super-easy to use the modifier keys and so on. Someone using Photoshop heavily is using the kayboard quite a bit as well, but in a pattern very different than that a traditional touch-typing will teach you.
Instead I feel it's best for a user to optmize thier own typing style to a set of applications they use the most. No one form can really serve everyone as well as it might, especailly as we make more use of Ctrl, Alt, and Meta (Windows/Mac) keys in everyday typing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My boss uses index fingers only while constantly staring at the keyboard; not only is he slow, his keyboard prefs could be Swahili and he wouldn't notice.
Correction - misspelled Swahili.
I use my index fingers for every letter, pinky for enter, thumb for space.
Back in high school, grade ten, they were trying to force us to home row, but I got to the point where I was typing so fast that as they were walking beside us, nobody could tell that I was not doing home row.
For the record, last time I tested myself, I was ~95 WPM. Two years ago or so, and I've been doing tech support since, typing up notes and stuff daily, so..
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
Like using any tool, proper technique helps get the best results. Proper typing technique should be taught in the first week of a computer class. Then just practicing the technique while programming will be sufficient. Everything about typing technique is taught the first week of class, the rest of typing class was always about how to format various letters, envelopes etc. We have Clippy to help us with that now :)
That's not 'pretty damn fast,' that's 'good.' I type around 100-110wpm raw, which goes down to around 90-95 after errors. IBM Model M keyboards rule. :)
I learned on an IBM Selectric (original model), with no letters on the keys. Ugh. Worked, though.
While handwriting and voicerec technology has greatly improved over the years, it's still lagging when using it for freeform data entry. It works fine for non-freeform type of voicerec (Such as Apple's first level tech support, where a machine has you speak the name of the product you need assistance with.) but I'll take a keyboard over either any day. It's nice for bumbling around with handwriting on my PDA, and I work for a living admining voice recognition systems, but it's still a required skill.
However, whether you need formal touch typing, or just need to spend a lot of time typing on a keyboard however you like, I'm not sure what to say. I've never taken any typing classes, and after playing with computers since age 7, I type around 80-100 WPM with my own weird style I came up with, using only the thumb, index and middle fingers of each hand...
I started using computers when I was 9 years old, but didn't really have great typing skills, despite writing a lot of programs. Then when I was 14 years old, I took a required typing course for one semester. We learned touch typing on these crappy typewriters. We weren't allowed to look at the keyboard. I was slow at it and could type much faster if I actually looked at the keyboard and just pecked away at it.
I didn't really realize how much it helped until a week after the course had ended and I put my fingers at the home keys of my computer and touched typed without looking at the computer and did it pretty fast; something I had not done before with my computer. Ever since then I was glad I took that course.
Yes, I may have errors in this message (go ahead grammar/spelling nazis, have at it). But I believe if you take a typing course at an early age it will really help your typing skills.
Music, Art, Cursive writing, basic arithmetic(without using a calculator), critical thinking, home economics(which is more than just cooking, also teachs how to do a home budget), woodshop, english grammar, and spelling. All have been severely cut due to budget constraints and because students are more difficult to motivate these days. (I suspect because you can't slap them around anymore, plus video games, plus becoming sexually mature at a younger age).
Also they needed to make room for sex ed classes. I don't understand why, but they gave us sex ed for entire semesters in 3 different years, I came out with a better understanding of sex, reproduction and disease from biology and human anatony courses that only lasted a semester.
If you want your child to be a teenage mother or drug addict, then public school will give them the skills necessary to have a fine career in cashing welfare checks. If you want to get your tax dollar's worth, get a voucher and send them to a private school, or even a religious school. If you cannot get vouchers in your state/country, write your representive.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Drat, too late...
If only I knew how to touch-type.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
I use a modified version of touch typing: left hand is still on jkl;, but my right hand hovers over SHIFTasd. I think I do this because I've spent years programming in Windows using the CTRL shortcut keys constantly. So, if I need to hit CTRL, my pinky is sitting right over it... have to use it a lot via telnet/ssh, too, to backspace with CTRL+BS or CTRL+DEL. I think I'm around 75-80wpm doing that, with a decent accuracy (not great, by any means.)
I learned to touch type in 7th grade, tho, and still practice once in a while, and classify it as the most important part of computer use... cause the less you have to think about it, the more you can think about WHY you're typing... and the WHY is what employers pay for, right?
expletives welcomed
So, if touch-typing is still terribly important, then getting rid of the QWERTY keyboard, and replacing it with one optimized for modern technology would be helpful. I don't pretend to know how to arrange the keys to so optimize things.
In addition, the ease of correction of computer-input text (backspace key is so much nicer than white-out) eliminates some of the issues with touch-typing. It's faster to blast through, making mistakes and correcting them on the fly than it is to do it slowly enough to make no mistakes in the first place.
I am sorta touch-typing this, using anywere from two to six fingers in any given ten second span (I'm paying close attention to what I do, so I'll probably drop it big time any second now). My typing speed is not the limiting factor in this post, however. Seems deciding exactly what I want to say is taking longer than the typing is taking. Which suggests that classical touch-typing may, in fact, be obsolete.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
... now typing, is an essential everyday commodity. People learn how to do it because they need to. I am typing this very quickly without looking at the keyboard and have never taken a typing class; I just became adept at something I needed to do. Imagine if all high-school classes were taught with the perspective that it was something you needed, rather than something to be swallowed and rote regurgitated. Think of the learning...
I don't have anything against formal instruction, and I know that typing "right" will result in increased performance. But I'm sceptical that the amount of increase will matter much. The practical difference between 5 wpm and 40 wpm, is far greater than the practical difference between 40 wpm and 80 wpm. IMHO there are better things to spend time developing. [Agenda mode on] Teach 'em Python instead.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Speak up. I can't hear TFA.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I learned touch typing in High School - one of the better classes actually (though not the most interesting). I eventually evolved my own touch typing method - one finger reserved for backspace, and switch to a hunt and peck with one hand while doing capitals (one shift just always felt natural, one didn't). I can type fairly fast when I'm on a roll, but the backspace key is an integral part of it - half the time I don't even know I've hit it until after I've moved on.
Composing at the keyboard is the other skill to learn, and it can take longer than just learning to type. Once you have them both down, you can really fly.
I used to sit in class and write my notes out. They were quite neat, but I write very slow to stay relatively neat. I may have been lefthanded, who knows. But I always lagged behind my profs.
When I use my laptop, I can copy down most of what is said, near verbatim, as he pauses for people to finish copying, while I can be more verbose. I type 80wpm
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Once you can type as fast as you speak on average, you can train yourself to stream consciousness onto the screen. It's interesting to do sometimes. In terms of utility, I can still type 2x as fast and more accurately than any other means. I'm sure input/output systems will evolve to a point in the next decade that makes typing seem like a fading relic. But once the Terminator fails to prevent the nuclear war, post-holocaust you may be happy you retained your typing skills so you can coordinate the efforts of people and become their new fast typing overlord!
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
ant speeling aint e mpotent too, no be grmmr
I was speaking to a colleague who was running interviews for a post in his organization when he told me that part of the interview he made them do a typing test.
:)
His reasoning was anyone that has spent a decent amount of time in front of a computer will be a good typist - it was a good way to see who was just talking the talk without the know how.
Pretty clever I thought
To me this seemed liked the craziest thing considering that the girls you were excluding from typing were the ones you also thought were most likely to go onto higher education and need the ability to type
Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily - Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
I think it's implied that students would still learn typing through basic computer use. I learned to type long before I was ever forced to take a typing class, and I learned simply by using a computer. If students are immersed in computers, they will learn the methods needed to communicate with those computers--one of those methods being typing. It's like walking. Most people don't actually take a class on walking, it's simply something you learn as a necessity.
And of course, this is all on top of the fact that students still have to write papers and the like, which are generally typed. Again, more learning through necessity. We don't always have to *officially* teach things. Sometimes, they're learned because they must be.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
I never took a typing class. I've had a computer since I was eight. I don't type in the best way, but I type fast enough. I'm also a programmer. Unless you are in a job where you really need to type fast I don't think you need to take a typing class. Heck, my company hired a guy who only has one hand.
Most of my typing knowledge I got from Insant Messaging people in college all the time. I think that is one of the best typing teachers out there.
Besides, if you are sitting in a library working on a paper, people aren't going to want you dictating everything.
I'm quite appalled at the lack of coherent thought-making ability of the current generation of computer users. IM grammar != real grammar (no pun intended), but don't tell that to the leet. I really wonder if they could type as fast as their ADHD minds could form their best version of a coherent thought, would that improve the quality of written word?
;) :O ^_^ was created by the lack of graphical capabilities a decade or more ago and by the archaic input devices (read: cell phone keypads) that require legible thoughts to be short and sweet. As a fellow text-messager without a qwerty keyboard on my phone, I appreciate the bastard that is T9 and quick replies.
All you philosophy majors are going to go into the dialects of language and how periods (time, not punctuation) influence dialect, but my point remains.
I will give some credence to the fact that todays "shorthand"
Short attention span version: Please learn to type quickly - regardless of how that is accomplished. U wil luv teh rew@rdz when you dun git pwn3d in teh engrsh claz.
Even for the most basic of computer jobs, the call-centre operator, touch-typing is absolutely essential. I could never understand why managers of such companies were complaining about the lack of "office skills" of interview candidates until I realised they meant touch-typing and basic computer technology. Anyone with those skills could find higher paying jobs working as help-desk operators, technicians, admins, receptionists and database operators.
It makes me grateful to think that because my first home computer had a full qwerty keyboard, I learned touch-typing automatically. I could never understand what the big deal when so many IT teachers/ trainers made a big fuss over the fact that I could touch type (this was the first new skill that most new staff had to learn; followed by ergonomics; how to adjust the brightness of the monitor and the height of the chair).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
In fourth grade we were required to take a keyboarding class every monday and wednesday, this was in 92. I think it was a good thing I can type today at 125wpm with 97% accuracy.
I had avoided fluffy classes in high school such as driver's ed, basket weaving and, yes, typing.
Then, as I started university I discovered that typing away on a terminal would really be more efficient if I had some QWERTY skills.
So I specifically enrolled in a typing class just long enough to get up to about 35 wpm before stopping (and technically failing the course).
But I got what I wanted. I needed to learn how to do keyboarding so that computer programming and creating documents on the computer was tolerable. I've hardly ever touched the IBM Selectric since the class.
Fortunately, I've never had quite the frequent need arise to learn how to 10-key, but I've been impressed by the people who do know this skill.
At some point I might try to become proficient with the Handi-Key chorded input; it seems like a great way for one-handed input, especially for small devices, in meetings, riding in cars, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yes ! Of course it's a necessity ! Handwriting and speech recognition is still years away from being able to replace the keyboard. How many of you can honestly say that inputting information into the PDA is as easy as with a keyboard and mouse !??
What baffles me more is that so many people @ slashdot actually feel that typing isn't necessary anymore.
Yes - it should be taught....with
The Typing of the Dead!
As stupid as it sounds - this game is SO cool. And it showed my how badly I really can't type.
Anyone who chats online any decent amount has probably gotten pretty good at typing a large group of common words. Anyone who has this skill regardless of how they accomplish this, whether it is because they have perfect or horrible form, can accomplish almost all jobs that require any sort of typing at some significant (70 or 80?) percent efficiency as compared to the speeds they have when they are talking to their friends online. For things like programming (which is much more relevant for slashdot), which uses all sorts of funny non chat like typing behavior, it is not like you can think as fast as type anyway, so typing is not the bottleneck there.
Heck yeah, typing is essential. I would argue that it is especially essential to any programmer or network administrator. The faster and more proficient you are at typing the faster you can get your ideas into production or solve problems. Not only typing out words, but also keyboard shortcuts in programs you use everyday will make you a better programmer/network admin. The less you reach for a mouse the faster you go and the less breaks in thought a worker will have. Also, when working with other people it is a great help. For example, if I ask a coworker to help me debug some code, typing proficiency makes the process so much easier. If you can navigate as fast as you or your fellow coworker can think there is no hindrance to your work (navigating with a keyboard is much faster than with a mouse in most cases). Bad typing skills, just slows everything down. This is costly when your work environment demands results ASAP.
Nuttles
Voice recognition isn't perfect, doesn't work in noisy environments, and has inherent privacy problems.
Admittedly, there's probably not much need for typing classes, or rather, there are programs to teach typing, so that the instructor can concentrate mostly on things other than the mechanics--though you'll always want a sentient instructor who can watch you type and keep you from learning bad habits, just as you need one when learning to use the 88-key flavor of keyboard.
Take a civil service secretary test if you truly want "tested". You need formatting for addresses, lists, proper letterhead headings, etc.
Any decent typist can type plain, paragraph-form text at a fast clip.
I hire people who claim they can type $x words/minute only to find out they hunt and peck for keys, and type in all caps with no punctuation.
I'm sick of it. If everything is going to be computerized, people need to have enough respect for their positions to learn to do things properly.
I took a typing class in high school (when they were still using typewriters, and it is useful every single day!
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
(although I do type incorrectly, I can hit over 80 WPM)
This comment made me realize that I had no idea how fast I could type (never took a course). So, after a quick search here are some free on-line typing tests:
TypingPal.com
TypingTest.com
Turns out that I'm in the 2nd decile with a respectable 58 wpm (mean is approx. 40, and anyone who claims >100 is either in the 99.8%-ile or is full of BS). A thorough analysis of typing speeds can be found here.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
There's a limited amount of time to teach students how to do anything in school and even students who want to go into technical careers need to learn the other things. I'd certainly rather hire a developer who is proficient at mathematics than one who can type using all his fingers, let alone the two superfluous nubs we call pinkies.
/.ers and people who make money from computers, shouldn't we do all we can to keep people away from them to keep our wages up?
Lets say students have 2 hours a week of mandatory computing classes, It would be better spent teaching them how to learn to use a computer on their own, or how to research things, how to figure stuff out, how to have fun and otherwise get the most out of a computer so they'll want to learn more, rather than forcing them to pound on keys.
If high speed typing is so damn important the school boards should switch to Dvorak and we all know it.
Besides most jobs really require very little computer use, even good jobs and seldom do they require touch typing. Only typists, dictators and secretaries would truly benefit from spending hours learning that over say learning how a computer works.
And as
1. Voice and handwriting recognition are no where near good enough right now! I've tried them all, they all suck for meaningful input.
2. With the current trend for office space being the cubicle, how can you ever imagine that voice recognition would be an option in a serious office? Although my cubicle neighbor may be distracted by my typing, there is virtually no way that he can tell what I am typing; not so with voice recognition.
3. For serious coding, typing speed is not so important; I code for a living and most of my time is not spent inputting code, it is deciding what code needs to be input. I have also written many technical manuals; again, most of the time is not spent inputting text, but deciding what text should be input.
Sitting down at a different keyboard can slow me down. However, on my own wave keyboard, with all its letters worn off and well-known key action, I'm fast enough. I can hardly bear to watch people a non-typist hunt and peck. Pathetic.
Say hello to my little sig.
Am I in a different dimension? When was the last time anyone used voice recognition for any serious, and lengthly, computer input task? And handwriting recognition is nice for PDA's, but I can type much faster than I can write ... my typing is probably more accurate than the handwriting regocnition that's out there, too...
Who doesn't like free music?
Nowadays, typing is a necessary life skill - far more so than knowing how to write in cursive, which I'm sure the schools are still teaching. It's all about being an efficient communicator - as a touch typer, I can bang off an e-mail or memo or whatever in a couple minutes, and saying my thoughts on an instant message program only takes a few seconds. Without that, I take far longer to say not nearly as much. Diarrhia du clavier aside, this gives me the ability to make a better impression not just on my boss, but on my coworkers (on both a professional and personal level) and friends and family.
As computers become more prevalent, I think that questioning the value of being able to touch type as a career asset is going to become more and more akin to questioning the value of a working knowledge of basic personal hygiene techniques as a career asset.
If you can't type you can't be productive on a computer, period. Maybe, maybe, if you're on a terminal and all you have to hit are arrow keys, function keys, and Enter. But most workers are expected to send email all the time. How the hell can you be productive in the age of email if you can't friggen type. Emails take time to write. They take a really long time to write if you have to hunt and peck all over the keyboard.
capitals provide a clear visual distinction between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.
well, so does a font with a decent-sized period glyph, not the one-pixel flyspeck of Times New Roman 16px. the Toki Pona language manages to get away with using capital letters only for foreign words, where the grammar is such that a foreign word cannot begin a sentence.
Now that we have cars that keep straight in slippery roads, and have airbags to protect us, is learning to actually steer and drive necessary? Of course it is.
Typing is bloody essential to using a computer, and if the hamhanded dolts in education think that they can somehow bypass this by raising more moronic mouse-only users interacting with their computers like gorillas, we're in trouble.
I took a typing class during the Summer between fourth and fifth grade. Why? I couldn't read my handwriting; my teachers couldn't read my handwriting; my parents couldn't read my handwriting. Typing was a necessity - and did eventually lead to my programming career.
I'm concerned that people are becoming ever more dependant upon more and more sophisticated technologies. Many kids are being taught basic mathematics using a calculator. Yes, I use a calculator when doing work but at least I was taught how to work with a simpler technology (paper and pencil) in order to complete a task. Now children will be taught to interface with a computer using a voice recognition system. What happens with all legacy computers - present everywhere - that don't have sophisticated voice interfaces? How will these kids interact with a computer - very, very, very slowly?
Are we actually trying to ensure that future workers are utterly dependant upon sophisticated machines to accomplish any task?
Incidentally, my handwriting did get better.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
I think the single most important factor in learning to type properly is that it can make a major difference in preventing repetitive stress injuries. I'm a self-taught typist and somewhat abysmal at that. I really don't care how fast I can type, but I do care about the chronic pain I have in my neck, shoulders and wrists. If I had learned proper posture and hand positioning when I was a wee lad, some of these problems could probably have been prevented.
All that being said, the true culprit in my case is the mouse, combined with obsessive web browsing.
There is a market for fast typists, but really, if you were hiring a code jockey, would you make your decision based on their wpm?
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
If theyre using computers enough, kids will learn to type on their own however is natural to them. I BS'd my way though the typing section of 7th grade computers c&p-ing and having an idiot teacher, i won some certificate for getting severl hundred words a minute... Yeah, anyway, i dont type "properly", first 2 or 3 fingers on each hand mostly, but i do fine and have good speed with decent acuracy. My last job was data entry even. Typing classes suck and everyone hates them (except for mario typing tutor :D), but i think with enough general computer learning, kids pick up decently paced typing on their own.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This removal of drudgery has reduced the amount of dictation, as has the use of email and, when something more formal is needed, templates for business correspondence.
The result is that typing skill in itself will no longer qualify you for a job, while more people in all kinds of work do their own typing.
Typing skills make anybody who types more efficient, but not much more employable. it would be a good idea for everybody to get some exposure to the bare techniques of touch typing; finger placement, a few minutes of drill. What else is there to it?
Once that's provided, practice is easily pursued by anyone who feels it would benefit them.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
I don't type so fast, but I delete a lot of stuff anyway - so what's the point?
Being able to type quickly and accurately is absolutely a necessary skill for anyone going into almost any line of work today. I would consider 50-60wpm a bare minimum for someone who wanted to keep up in most offices.
That said, however, I don't think it should be a separate course in schools. Basic computer skills are essential for any student; typing should be just another basic computer skill that they need to master. We are many years from a time when voice recognition or other interfaces might make keyboards obsolete, and any student who knows how to use Word and Excel but can't keep up when writing emails is going to be in trouble.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
Like another poster mentioned earlier, you'd only really need a typing class if you wanted to be a really fast secretary or something. Like needing professional driving lessons for NASCAR or professional swimming lessons for the Olympics. If you are exposed to an enviroment that needs a skill, you will likely pick up that skill on your own over time.
I may not be the fastest typist, nor the most acurate, but I also didn't kill Mavis Beacon after months of typing exercises.
BTW, this is my first /. post. Yay! :)
I'm similar to a large portion of the population on this particular story. I can type at 40-50 words per minute with nary so much as a single error, and I do not use the typical method of typing. I simply hover my hands, independently, over the keys I know I will be typing soon, most often overtop the QWERTY row, since it is where most of the vowels happen to be. (With the exception of 'A', and that's close enough)
When I type, I often readjust the angle of my hands over the keyboard where I want to type, so as to cover the necessary keys. This has the interesting advantage; there's plenty of wrist-movement, so I have not, in 21 years, even had a HINT of carpal-tunnel syndrome.
Well, okay, I've had a few hints, but that was usually after a few hours straight of nothing but mousing, during specific video games.
The Penguin Producer
I think some of you are missing the point. This has nothing to do with the emergence of voice recognition or anything else. It has to do with the incredible availablity of PC's: When you've had access to the home PC to play 2006's version of Reader Rabbit since you were 3, you don't need typing classes.
Keyboards are now so ubiquitous, that typing classes would be like pencil-writing classes. Most people pick up the skill naturally, and don't need the tried and tested technique for 100wpm. They develop a natural relationship between themselves, their keyboard, and their mouse. For no other reason than necessity, people develop a perfectly reasonable way to interface with their computer--all they need is skills training in the important software.
If you're talking about clerical work, typing is absolutely still a necessary skill. Whoever said that employers no longer specify WPM or that 30 WPM is sufficient for most clerical jobs was simply wrong. Read the want ads. I got a typing test at each of the three temp agencies I've worked for and over the last 5 years been administered several typing tests applying for jobs.
It is not a substitute for computer skills. You need both in any modern office job with an emphasis on writing. I don't think typing should be required (I never took it in school, I taught myself to touch type, it ain't rocket science). But it should be offered.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
From an ergonomic standpoint if for nothing else. You're supposed to be looking at your screen, not scrunched over your keyboard hunting-and-pecking.
back in the day, women were especially hired at low wages to work in "typing pools", where they would be given some hand written notes or previously typed documents to type or retype up for the managers, who were universally men.
typing was seen as women's work, and typing classes were basically for women to learn to be secretaries for men and do their typing for them.
The advent of the photocopier blew away the typing pool. Then the personal computer and low cost printing eliminated the job of "secretary" and brought in the advent of the executive assistant (which is a glorous word for what used to be a secretary). such must have typing skills, but it's not quite the day in day out focus, as many managers can now type faster than they can write, and the software helps them with spelling and grammar.
So, I think some basic typing skills are useful, but not as necessary as they used to be. eventually we will see the advent of really good voice recognition, and that will also remove the need for a lot of fast typing.
From this, it is clear that the historical necessity of widespread skills in rapid accurate typing is no longer present (we don't have typing pools or secretaries) and with advances in software, the needs get simpler and less taxing, allowing people to focus on the ideas being communicated, rather than the machines doing the communicating.
This doesn't mean that the quality is higher...
It just means we get more of it...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I am an IT manager and am ridiculously more effective at my work because I can type. I audited typing in high school (and a good thing too because I clocked in at about 8 wpm by the end of the course!) -- I still think this was the most valuable course I took in high school. Now I can type somewhere in the 40-50 wpm range.
:-) (The second will be building a computer -- my kids are going to know what is *inside* a computer and why it works!)
Also, since my kids are homeschooled their first computer class will be typing
That's a problem. It brings accents into the typing realm. British people AOLspeak very differently from Americans. Australians tend to just type relatively well, which is odd, but they do have their own short forms.
The various slangs are based on whatever shorter way there is to spell the way the typist pronounces a word. Unlike the original online abbreviations such as LOL and ROFL, these new ones are not based on the typographic version of the word.
Accents online is something we don't need. The beauty of someone typing properly is that anyone can read that text and understand it, short of something like "lift" vs. "elevator". I couldn't walk into Manchester's poorer districts and converse reliably. I now find the same is true of typing with Manchester residents.
With Brit AOLSpeak, the first phrase you have to learn is "soz wot" which I think means "sorry, I don't follow." The second phrase is "i fink u spk 2 mingin posh u bastard" meaning "I am angry that you don't type the way I do." I'm not making that up, though I profess no great mastery of the form.
Even within the single local group, the AOL speak tends to vary based on what kind of half-assed typing is being used. People who use three fingers on each hand choose different short forms than those who use only the indexes.
Just as we need other web standards, we need a standard way of writing. It's not unprecedented... consider italic and cursive.
And I must say that typing was one of the most useful classes in HS I ever took - I'm still using those skills today! And I would recommend it to anyone who uses a computer for anything.
AC comments get piped to
I remember my first computer class. They brought Apple IIe's into my middle school. By this point I had one at home for nearly a year. They didn't know what to do with them so they gave them to the typing teacher. Since she didn't know what to do with them she taught us how to type for most of the year. It improved my typing but not my computer skills. I think it is whatever your used to. I hear the Dvorak and other configurations are better. Remeber why qwerty was invented?? http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/procon.html
With minimal computer and people skills, but being able to type, you can quicky get a decent temp job in any major city in America. As Steve Buscemi said "Two words: learn to fucking type".
It also provides a clear visual indications of the areas of focus (proper nouns, beginnings of sentences).
There do exist some written Languages that begin every Noun, common or proper, with a capital Letter. At one Time, English showed the same Tendency.
Properly capitalized text is easier to parse than noncapitalized.
This is true only for those People who have been brought up with this Habit. In fact, some People learning German as a second Language complain that they have Trouble distinguishing common Nouns from Surnames that look like common Nouns.
By the time I had taken a typing course in high school, it was far, far too late. Years of typing PEEK and POKE commands into my Commodore 64 pretty much ruined my ability to learn how to touch type. My brain was already trained to type my own way.
I think that if you are going to learn to teach youngsters how to touch type, you had better do it before their cerebellum has been ingrained with their own natural typing method.
I teach weekly computer lessons to my class. I stopped teaching them typing quickly after they found out about MSN. The need to communicate is very powerful. In order to communicate over MSN, typing fast is required.
:)
Quid-pro-quo - I have to teach them that proper grammar is not using MSN shorthand
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Not every computer has a voice interface. In ten years, maybe. But for now being able to do an accurate 60+ WPM is a useful skill.
"is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
You mean I'm not supposed to mash the keyboard with both thumbs?
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Picture little Scotty, 10 years old at school, whining, "But Mrs. Crabapple, when are we going to use a keyboard?"
"Quiet, Mr. Scott, and just do the assignment!"
Turns out she was right. If Scotty had skipped class that day, the earth might not have been saved.
Same goes for the day when Mrs. Crabapple taught the class how to use 300-year-old MacPaint as a chemical engineering program. You just never know when the little trivia you learn, may be useful.
Kirk probably couldn't have done that, because when he was in school, he hacked the computer to let him run a real chemical engineering program, instead of MacPaint.
"Stupid Mrs. Crabapple. I bet she never rotated the display of a Aluminum alloy structure in 3D, by using the airbrush tool. Well, I'll show her!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I practiced and practiced hoping she would notice me and became the Second Best Typist in that Class!
of course, the story ends typically: Did Not Impress Girl.
oh well, at least I can hold my own in a chat room without those stupid abbreviations.....
I look down my nose at all those who make more money than me that can only "hunt and peck".
*sigh* I don't know...is the ability to Type a Gift or a Curse?
I like microcars
Because voice recognition is not really there yet, plus having everyone in the office using voice recognition would be pretty irritating. As for handwriting, anyone can type much faster than they can write with a little bit of practice, so typing is still a good skill to learn.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I do network administration on a variety of small networks. I've seen a lot of secretarial type people doing around 30-45 wpm. So I'd say that no, typing is not necessary at the moment. Even computer literacy seems to be way down on the list of requirements for people who sit in front of a computer most of the day. Problem solving and organizational skills seem to be more in-demand. But more than that, I think that appearance and demeanor is the selling point when it comes to an office job these days. Sure, they talk and talk about someone's qualifications and everything.. but in the end, they hire the one who instills confidence by lookin in your eye and smiling and has a good looking resume. That one is going to make your company look good.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
I think it's always going to be necessary, if for no other reason than that the centers for recognizing speech and written words are different and expect (require?) different input. Something I dictate to my computer is going to look weird to me if I give it in natural language when I read it, or it's going to require me to speak as if I'm writing, which is a skill that's a lot more difficult than learning to type.
I do think that we're going to continue to see more and more exotic, quick, and low stress keyboards, though. Things as simple as the "natural" keyboards with the broken apart, humped design would have been freakish even as short a time ago as my childhood. Ten years from now, everyone might own a datahand, or even something more exotic.
adam b.
"farva, what's that resteraunt you like with all the goofy stuff on the walls?"
"shenanigans. you guys are talking about shennanigans right?"
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
nt
With so many learning to type at a younger age because of the influx of personal computer usage we should see a transition with the need to teach keyboaring. At one point keyboard was a professional's only skill, today it's a hobbiest skill. Because of how common it is I don't think there needs to be as much training.
Perhaps it should still be taught but less of it at an earlier age.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
youcantotallyunderstandmeifijusttypewhatiwanttosay right?
Thedifferencehereisthatinspeech stresshelpstodelimitthemorphemes.
Traditional Typing is less useful, what with all the ctrl/alt keys, and the disproportionate number of times that !@#$%^&*(){}[]|\ need to be used. Not to mention frequently switching between keyboard, mouse, and numberpad.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
how could you post to slashdot without knowing how to type?
;-)
Many people post to slashdot apparently without having the ability to read
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Just ask one question: what is the most common text input device on a computer? The answer is probably "The keyboard.". That right there says that typing is a useful skill, because the faster you can use that keyboard the more work you can get done.
Now, lots of the ancillary stuff that went with typing when we were using real typewriters, things like knowing line spacing, how to deal with corrections, that stuff isn't needed anymore (unless you have to deal with a real typewriter). But the basics of hitting the keys still applies to computer keyboards just as much as it did to the old Underwood.
I too learned to type on an old IBM typewriter back in the 80's, and to this day I still tell people that typing was quite possibly the most valuable class I took in high school. I didn't know back then that computers would become such a large part of my life, but I am very thankful today that I took a typing class when I was in high school.
I thought everyone here loved the little guy? ;)
http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/
I know that to each his own and all of that, but I learned how to type on an IBM Selectric myself and I'm sitting here blazing along watching my cursor, and not even glancing at the keyboard. I definitely had no idea how important that silly little typing class would be later on...
My brother types with his two index fingers and swears that he has no problems. I've watched him. I can accomplish as much in an hour as he can in two days. Touch typing is a skill, and a vastly underrated on in my opinion.
The thought that typing may be a lost art saddens me. Seriously. It is important for a school kid to know what a mitochondria is but it isn't important for them to know how to type? HELLO?!? How many workplaces can you honestly step into that don't have a QWERTY in use somewhere on the premises on a daily basis?
Oy, I'd better quit before I get myself all riled up. Besides, I'm starting to go into Doom 3 withdrawal already. Must... get... back... to... game!
words per minute? you insensitive americans. i believe the SI measumerunt is l/s (letters per second).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
I, too, typed this with body parts that you don't want to know about.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
People often comment (and occasionally criticize) how I type, because it is definitely not standard.
I learned to type, many years ago, while playing a text MMORPG (Gemstone3 in the GEnie/AOL days, if that means anything to ya). As I was not properly taught, it looks like "hunt and pecking"... until you notice the fact I am exceedingly accurate and quick. I average ~90 wpm if I am ignoring occasional errors. It drops to around 80 - 85 wpm if I'm correcting things.
I have had coworkers suggest I "take a class to learn how to type"...but why should I bother? Sure, it's not orthodox, but it works for me. I don't have to look at the keyboard or anything. It just doesn't look like it is the correct way to type. If it's better, why should I change?
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
My sophomore year in highschool keyboarding became a graduation requirement (I'd already taken it) I THINK for the whole state....to pass you have to demonstrate at least basic touchtyping skills as well as some other things (mostly office skills)
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Typing fast is all well and good, but the real skill is being able to quickly formulate what you should be typing.
If I'm a hiring manager for a job that uses computers, I'm going to expect that you know how to use a keyboard with a reasonable level of productivity. The only reason I would care about your typing speed is if you're doing data entry (i.e. a task where thinking is totally unnecessary).
The reason isn't because I don't want more complex work done quickly, but because the bottleneck isn't how fast a hypothetical worker can spit words out of their fingertips but the quality of those words. Whether you are writing code (where I'm going to care about ultimate efficiency and syntax and readability, not to mention documentation) or a press release (where I'm going to care about vocabulary, tone and marketing), the work that's happening in an employees head is much more important than the speed at which the keys are clicking.Everyone should know how to type; it is the most effective way to use a keyboard, and the keyboard is the most effective input device to the best communication device, the networked computer. The real question is whether a formal touch typing class is necessary.
:) Everyone I know that types well touch-types. I don't know anyone that picked up touch-typing without taking a class.
I have watched a number of hunt-and-peck typists; they don't type very quickly. You Slashdot freaks that say you can do 100wpm must be typing very short words
This leads me to believe that touch typing is a valuable skill that should be taught in our schools. It should be taught early; I think many kids would be able to use it even in elementary school. If typing classes were taught on computers it would drive computer literacy as well.
English is fine.
Steet b good.
H4x0R iZ l333t.
Remember, French and Spanish are later day "ghetto Latin". Languages evolve. What's wrong with trying to use "u" for "you"? The Dutch do it. Our evolving, everyday language could tolerate the fast paced nature of IM, email (and slashdot posts). U shuld kum 2 aksept alternit typin modz.
Actually I don't hunt, I peck.
In fact, Sholes and other early typewriter makers designed their products for exactly this sort of two-finger pecking; touch typing was invented later. Had you known this, you could have probably got away with claiming that you didn't know that the patent on touch typing had expired.
one of my freinds moms taught herself to type, and could type FASTER than you or I could talk
Did this mom have a disability such that the keyboard was her assistive device?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
One of my most used High School classes is Word Processing I. This help my speed in typing. I get frustrated sometimes when I see people who can't type, but are really good at what they do. The hunt and peck system really blows.
Those hacker movies are amazing. The typing speed that those people have!!! And most amazingly -- They don't need a spacebar!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Do you want to write stuff in long hand and have somebody else type (and possibly botch) it up?
Save yourself $$$ and the hassle and type your stuff up yourself....
I've played piano since I was 6. I took a "real" typing class when I was 12. I've noticed over time that people (friends of mine) who play piano have decent typing skills. I think this is because when you learn to play on a keyboard (dur hurr, pun), you NEED to be looking at the music, so this helps with the "I can just look down" syndrom of hunt 'n peck people.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Ok as I sit here speaking into my tablet PC with voice recognition software I see no reason for keyboards.
Seriously though a) how many people actually have a place in their lives for a PDA for their primary source of data entry. b) how many people own a tablet PC at home. c) With voice recognition how often is that the primary source of data entry?
Given that all three of the above might account for 1% of the population I would think that keyboards will be around for quite some time. I remember taking keyboarding back some 12 years or so ago. I still keep up the skills and it has proven great for me.
I think that what is being suggested is right and wrong though. As a whole we do need keyboarding classes just so we can get data entered quickly and spend more meaningful time on other things. On top of that we need to be more computer literate as a society. Out of all you on tech support how often do you still get hit with the laugh material of people turning on and off their monitors to reboot their computers?
We have a great tools at our finger tips but very few people know how to use them well. Lets get people using the technology well before we start worring about how to improve it.
You should learn to type in DVORAK rather than QWERTY
Imagine using CLI with voice recognition.
. .. DOLLAR...SIGN...CAPITAL...PATH...COLON...FORWARD.. .SLASH...U.S.R...FORWARD...SLASH...B.I.N"
"L.S...SPACE...FORWARD SLASH...D.E.V...SPACE...PIPE...SPACE...LESS"
Or worse yet, adding something to $PATH
"EXPORT...SPACE...CAPITAL...PATH...EQUAL...SIGN
That just would be a pain
Serious touch-typing (as developed for 50-key typewriters) is a skill most of us don't need. It's useful for entering large amounts of alphanumeric text, but few of us do that very much. Heck, typing snarky remarks into Slashdot is probably the most typing many of us do. Even codemonkeys probably spend more time looking at code and/or manipulating it with the other keys and with mice, not actually typing it. Typing on a wide 104-key computer keyboard is physically more like playing am 88-key piano keyboard than it is like typing on a 50-key typewriter keyboard. Sure, it helps to be able to do that without looking, but it's not that great an advantage as it for the traditional typing mode of the secretary or the novelist, where speed and accuracy are (were) more advantageous.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I'd also like to take a moment to plug the Dvorak keyboard layout. It's 10x easier than QWERTY (the home row is aoeuidhtns, compared to asdfghjkl;) and up to twice as fast. If it would get taught in school typing classes (perhaps along with QWERTY--it's not too hard to learn both) maybe it would be more popular and save a few people from RSI.
--If the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
One thing that touch typing has alowed me to do, though, is quickly and easily type in large amounts of text - like replying to emails or posting to discusions like quite quickly and easily. I know in me current work, I'm not creating code as much as replying to emails and *writing* about stuff. Should it be taught - I think it should be an option. I'd guess you'd get a fair amount of takers. Mavis probably helps, but I don't think it's a replacement for some face time from a real human.
One time at a job interview they asked me if I could type 40 words per minute. So they sent me into the back with the computer, I come out an hour later with a printed piece of paper. They asked me what the hell took so long? I asked them, "What are you talking about! No one can do it quicker!" And I handed them the piece of paper they wanted, it read, "40 words per minute."
Ues, it is ansolutely inportant ro learn how tp touch type. I amswered tjis in omly 30 swcomds, and look at hiw accorate I am. 80wpm rox.
Honestly, Im my office i would gladly trade everyones typeing skills for some basic understanding of cut and paste, how to minimize, mazimize windows, and switch between windows.
Most of the stuff we need to type has already been typed over and over, yet some dont even know how to ctrl+c and ctrl+v
Computer literacy includes touch typing,
use gtypist ! on
on linux or cygwin.
It is a simple little typing tutor.
People are usually excited
to learn to touch type.
Elementary school should teach children clean and readable handwriting. I often received handwritten notes from people and was barely able to recognize what they intended to write.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
There's nothing that can humble you more quickly than playing trivia on an IRC channel. Knowledge is often only about 50% of what's required. Speedy and accurate typing is just as important.
Unfortunately capitalization is not required in these games, which is why you're probably seeing a bunch of people bragging about their 110 wpm typing skills with a complete inability to capitalize a sentence properly.
Seriously true. I never learned typing in all my life. I have been working for past 9 years in computers (programming and other stuff) and i have been quite fine.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
THe issue is- do you need to touch type, or just to type? I don't touch type, but I can type extremely quickly. I don't have a speed number, because I completely don't give a shit. But it gets the job done, and it doesn't hurt my wrists like trying to touch type did.
Basicly, if you know the layout of the keyboard so you don't have to hunt, any way you peck them works just fine.
Besides- typing speed means relatively little. Typing speed isn't the limiting factor on any activity I know of- the speed of gathering your thoughts, and putting them into coherent English (or code) is. You never find yourself with more to say than you cna type, its always the other way around.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Shawnmchorse and all you other typing speed demons, you're fast becasue you're already plugged into the computing world; you have to type fast to keep up. The article is more about kids who are being shut out of computing because they don't have the KB skills to get in the door yet.
I touch-type in two different systems; my SO hunts and pecks at amazing speed. Both of us are the product of using computers for over 20 years (and, probably more importantly, MUDs and IM for over 10).
Should young kids start being introduced to basic keyboard skills in school? Absolutely! We don't need to mass-produce 60-WPM touch-typists, but we owe it to the kids to teach the skills they need to effectively use computers.
In highschool I was made to take the stupidest typing class ever. We had these ancient PCs with Win3.11 and this stupid security software that made it so you could only run notepad, paint, and the typing software. I was required to sit for ~50 minutes typing the same pages of text over and over (a mix of random non-sequitors, scientific text, and literature reviews). The computer was so slow that anything over about 40wpm would get buffered. Eventually I got it so I could type the entire thing before the first paragraph was displayed, the max WPM the software could calculate was apparently 150 also because I could consistently get it even if I paused to run down the count.
After a few weeks of this the teacher got bored and started leaving me alone while I was in "class", I used notepad to hijack the security software and had some fun.
Anybody know of any good touch typing tutors for Linux? I'm going to try gtypist and see how it is, but maybe there are better?
Basic typing will come to you, its the driving people to 40wpm and more that I find unnesessary.
A new article just showed up on Slashdot. You have 20 seconds to type something substantial that won't get moderated to hell. Would you rather have 30 words per minute or 85? Or do you just subscribe, read a story in The Mysterious Future, compose a first post in an editor, and paste it into the reply form once the article hits the public view?
I learned to type in high school in the late 1960's on a manual Underwood typewriter with blank keys. No corrections possible. Looking at your fingers didn't help. I can still type faster than many "professional" typists and it makes my job a lot easier. I can type a long hex key accurately without looking at the keyboard.
> Is Typing a Necessary Skill?
Well, DUH!
Is typing a "necessary skill"? Will it get you a boost in salary? Is it worth putting on a resume? Probably not. But I sure am glad I can type.
I took typing class in high school ("secondary school" in most countries) in 1990. I consider it one of my most valuable classes in high school. Very few people around me can touch type. In fact, many of my coworkers poke fun at me for my typing speed. But when someone is breathing down my neck to get a project done, I'm very glad I don't get slowed down by having to hunt and peck.
I also think it is important to actually use full sentences, with proper punctuation, even in "informal" communications like IMs and e-mails (even Slashdot posts). Being able to touch type makes this so much easier.
Are you kidding me? I type so much that I've almost completely forgotten how to write longhand! My handwriting has gotten so bad that on the rare occasion I have to write a check it looks like a 3-year-old got hold of the checkbook...
Eh, I never really put the typing I learned to school to use - I was self-taught at 70 wpm, mainly thanks to the Internet - you'd be surprised how fast you can learn to type with 5 fingers while in a chatroom.
Years ago I was getting interested in ham radio and had to go take my morse code test. It was all rather disorganised and informal - I sat in the radio communications room of a large British coastal radio installation while someone went and dug out the test books.
There was a telegrapher in there with headphones on transcribing Morse Code at about 100 wpm onto a mechanical typewriter. She looked at me and pushed one of the earpieces to one side and introduced herself. We had a conversation about why I was there, the weather, radio and and other stuff. All the time she was - and I couldn't believe it - simultaneously transcribing 100 wpm 5-letter groups onto the typewriter. I asked if it was unusual - she said no, all the operators did it. They would type and talk at the same time, never looking at the keyboard.
A few years later I learned to touch-type. I found that I could program AND talk to management people at the same time. The stuff I was doing and the stuff they were talking about live in different bits of your head and don't overlap.
It was the BEST ten hour course I EVER took. I still do it now, I can write stuff and talk on the phone simultaneously as long as one of them is a brainless activity.
Probably the biggest single payback of anything I did.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
I would argue that hand writing is the obsolete skill. Being a college senior, the only time I even make use of hand writing is during tests. And even then, the only time hand writing comes into the picture is during essay type exams.
The last thing a upper level prof. ever plans on grading is a hand written paper (and heaven help the poor sod that turned it in). If anything, just shift the focus from "typing class" to word processing class. Teach the tools, and through use the typing ability will follow.
The word "desegregate" might also work. Not sure on what kind of pictures you might be looking at, though...
You don't have to type by feel, you just flick your fingers, listen for the "click" sounds.
Is this a Model M keyboard click or a synthesized millibeep?
I've been writing for 20-some years. I've yet to find any hardwriting recognition software that can read my chicken scratches, much less a co-worker.
--Chemguru
I use Dvorak for all my day-to-day typing. I wish schools would teach that since I'm in the mid hundreds now with decent acuracy. It's liberating to be able to type just as fast as I can think without having to worry about thinking slower and thereby losing potential thoughts. Starting in the schools and working outward to employers etc would surely make my life easier and typists everywhere who feel limited by QWERTY's reign.
If you want a job, that is, a job worth having, you still need to touch type.
Everything in business is in writing. Which means you need to be competent in producing written material in a reasonable amount of time. If everyone in your company is more competent at typing than you are, your position and advancement is weakened.
This also goes without saying (or it should) that you need to know how to say what you want to say in a straightforward fashion. Critical Thought is a minimum competency for most jobs.
I do not think that your voice will replace your keyboard in any future time. Just try to dictate a letter and then format it look the way you want, and you will immediately see that typing it yourself is way faster than dictation and formating.
If you can't type, buy Mavis Beacon and use it. Your survival in school and in business depends on it. It will for a very long time.
Regards,
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
Sorry, no refunds
I can graffiti at 106 words per minute on my palm. What do you think of that mister?
... you know you typed it. BLAH I say... BLAH !!!
-In all seriousness, why in the hell is this a post on slashdot. Who gives a rats ass about this question. Is typing a required skill? Hmm... did the poster write out his/her question on paper, then OCR the beast on here. C'mon
ilhj lh ughs kusdgoub kugoad kugb adiugo kaugd kugqdd kboxohopqy086 ;ijh lihpu plihadp klhado owudghwof lqwihof9809hnwd qd8hgqd od8g8 do dghoqwf wofiu wfd kuhgowfdh908yhol ouqdo qdqd qugdi g diqt dfigu qwfdqo8dy fdqug dfiqfdg qdoud qug qf8oiqyf98yhasd qsidg diqgd qigd qidtgq d9tq gwdugq wd&%^hwd kuhg ugk ilhj lh ughs kusdgoub kugoad kugb adiugo kaugd kugqdd kboxohopqy086 ;ijh lihpu plihadp klhado owudghwof lqwihof9809hnwd qd8hgqd od8g8 do dghoqwf wofiu wfd kuhgowfdh908yhol ouqdo qdqd qugdi g diqt dfigu qwfdqo8dy fdqug dfiqfdg qdoud qug qf8oiqyf98yhasd qsidg diqgd qigd qidtgq d9tq gwdugq wd&%^hwd kuhg ugk!
Who here learned to touch type on a MANUAL typewriter?
Back in '79, I learned on an old Royal manual (that's all the Typing 1 class had). Typing 2 students got to use the Royal electrics.
As a result, I tend to *POUND* on the keyboard. Annoys my wife to no end.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Walking is an important skill but that isn't taught either, as is speaking and using a fork and knife...
Now while I've always been thankful my parents forced me to take a typing class, there is no doubt that typing skills are needed, but shouldn't everyone be taught that "at home" the same way they learn to walk, run, eat, speak and use a fork?
http://www.hawknest.com/
My folks sent me to summer school *ugh* to take typing between 9th and 10th grade. It was short class that only ramped you up to 20 wpm (net after errors). I learned the home keys some basic form. After four weeks, I was free for the summer.
I knew others who took typing for a whole semester during the school year and hated it. In hindsight, I'm thankful that my parent's made me take typing outside of the regular school year. After typing papers as an English major in college then programming for the last six years, I'm up to around 50-60 wpm. Once I learned those home keys, I was able to crank.
"I don't think typing should be required (I never took it in school, I taught myself to touch type, it ain't rocket science). But it should be offered."
I think it should, just like the multiplication tables. The only problem is it takes about a year to get good with the keyboard.
In high school, I worked in the control room at the local television station. One of my duties was to type in all the graphics - names of people in stories, sports scores, that sort of thing.
The sports director could type faster than anyone in the building, and I can type pretty frickin' fast. I bet he was doing 70 words a minute, no errors... with only his index fingers.
So has not been able to touch-type harmed me? Not a great deal. But I still wish that my school had offered a typing course. As productive as I am, I am sure I would be more so if I had really learned how to type.
PS: I like to give 'Not being able to touch type' as my biggest weakness in job interviews.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I learned to touch type back in 5th grade, but have never been able to keep myself from using only two or three fingers on each hand. I actually type faster than with all my fingers as is traditionally taught.
I started playing Infocom text adventures back in jr. high in the mid-80s.
You want to type fast, to keep the game moving and get things done, but you can't be sloppy, because the parser won't understand, and you'll just have to type it again.
By high school, I was pretty fast. In a computer class once, a girl was making fun of me a little, saying "Here's Jon typing", and then flailing madly at the keyboard, because I was AFAIK the fastest typist in the class.
A trained typist would be faster than me, but on the other hand, I'm not taking dictation or data entry or transcribing handwritten documents, or whatever.
If you're generating your own documents, rather than typing something that already exists, the main bottleneck is not your fingers, but your brain. It doesn't matter if you can type 150 WPM if you brain is only composing the words at 50 WPM.
Mastery of your native language, including the ability to express logical thought. In my case, that's English, but you'd be amazed at what some fellow English-speakers attempt to write. Worst of all is when people type in a "dialect", such as "Southern", on purpose to make it look like they have a personality. All that accomplishes is expressing little while consuming my time, while I try to figure out what they wrote actually means.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Anyone notice that no MS ergonomic keyboard is suitable for "home keys" typing? You are supposed to hit the "6" key with your RIGHT index finger. But the geniuses at Microsoft decided to put it on the LEFT side. And even more diappointing is that now almost all keyboard manufacturers blindly follow what MS is doing. Therefore, there are very few ergonomic keyboards suitable for "home keys" typing these days. I took quite a few typing classes when I was in school. And I'll be sure to teach my son how to type properly. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can beat me by touch typing. But the utter lack of proper puncuation, spelling, capitalization, and even grammar from touch typing like a maniac is extremely annoying to me, and makes me doubt the intelligence or maturity level of the person typing out the gibberish. And the most valuable benefit of learning how to type correctly is that you can "feel" mistakes instead of having to shift your eyes from keyboard to keys to paper, etc. I'm not sure how valuable as a work-skill being a fast and accurate typist is now, but I was able to score some great paying gigs when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the cancelled the computer literacy class at my school, so typing was the only other "vocational" class that I could take. It's a great skill that everyone should try to learn.
We laugh but there's a disease that results in poor spelling.
When you submitted that story to slashdot, did you use handwriting or voice recognition?
Didn't think so...
Shell scripts don't write themselves.
Experienced MUD/MUSH players probably have a faster average typing speed. Childhood experience playing a keyboard or woodwind instrument would help as well.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
BOTH. Teach kids how to type in 6th grade with a 1 semester course. They won't be great at it but most of them will do it correctly and they will learn from then on with experience. Once they know how to use 10 fingers (I'm including alt and stuff, so that would include using your left thumb for the left alt) they will be able to learn and develop faster speeds and accuracy without a class, but just with experience.
This is an oft-overlooked feature of dvorak - you have to learn to touch-type. This advantage of dvorak can easily be applied to qwerty keyboards, though. All it takes is a little sandpaper (I've done this on a smaller scale by erradicating the logo off of the windows keys). If I was teaching a high school keyboarding class, the first assignment would be to sand all the letters off the keys. Then everyone would learn in half the time.
-jim
This post made me curious what speed I typed at. I figured there were some free tests on the Internet, and sure enough there were. http://www.typingtest.com/ was the first hit from google. I went through it and managed 81 wpm and 74 wpm factoring in mistakes. I never took a typing class, but learned to type while doing sysop work back in the day when BBS was the word, and the Internet still very new.
Who needs a class for it? Just make sure your hands are generally in the right place, and practice, practice. I've never had pain or problems with my wrists, and I type quite often.
When I got out of college, employers were more interested in the typing class I took in high school, than my college degree (Liberal Arts). In fact, it was that Intro to Typing class I took in 10th grade that helped keep a roof over my head for the first 10 years I was out of college.
It was taught using Macs, and I found out that if you access the menu, it stops the clock. You could type the testing strings and get 100% accuracy with stupidly fast times. I think I got 1400 words per minute.
I never really learned to touch-type, but I don't require the skill. I'm an Electrical Engineer, and I'm programming in some other windows right now. Slashdot is slowing my productivity WAY more than my typing method. (I can type most action words very quickly, thanks to Sierra On-Line and MUDding.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Yes, learning to type is still necessary. However, I think the number of untrained typists these days proves that you can type quite well without formal training. Learning to type the formal way can speed up your rate and accuracy, but it's far from necessary.
I took the general GRE exam last year and found that the ability to type quickly worked greatly to my advantage on the essay portion of the exam. For those who aren't familiar, you're given two essay prompts, each with a time limit (I think one is 45 minutes, the other is 30 minutes).
Friends I know who aren't good typists had to have an outline on paper of what they wanted to say just 10 minutes after being given the prompt, so that they were left enough time to type out complete intro, body, and conclusion paragraphs. But sometimes ten minutes isn't enough time to fully develop the ideas of your essay (although the prompts on the GRE aren't exactly deep), so in this sutation -- regardless of how their outline looked -- they had to commit to their ideas and start typing away, just so they could turn in a complete essay.
I remember for the 45 minute essay being able to revise and flesh out my ideas on paper for 30 minutes before I started typing. Ten minutes later, I had my essay typed in a format very similar to what I had envisioned on paper. I could then spend the last five minutes for reviewing purposes.
Consequently, I got better scores than my peers on the writing portion of the exam (some of whom were English majors, and I'm a CS/EE major for crying out loud). And I think, to a large extent, my typing kills contributed to that.
Why don't they have a "real" computer typing test...perhaps a few hundred lines of perl or C++. I work help desk all day and do some programming also. My wife is shocked that can properly use number keys and all the puncuation keys.
After taking the same test "tigers in the wild" I managed to boost my score to 85 WPM. I'm guessing this is closer to my "actual" score as far as being able to type things I 'know', such as slashdot comments, papers I'm writing, etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Thif remarkable Curiofity moft regrettably went out of Fafhion at the End of the Eighteenth Century. It does lend a certain dramatic Flair to any written Text, as does the lamentably difufed Cuftom of ufing an overfized Letter 'S' in the Middle or at the Beginning of Words, with the Effect that it refembles the Letter 'F'.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
for all the kde komrades, you have one touch typing program built in your DE, KTouch. It's in kmenu->edutainment->miscellaneous->touch typing tutor.
I've thought for a long time that typing classes are an utter waste of time for students. I took 2 days of typing - I learned the basic method, the speed came out of usefuleness and necessity. A student's time is much better spent gaining actual knowledge as opposed to repetitive & pointless tasks.
I understand that these techniques are important and usefull to people typing text, but how useful are they to self-learned programmers? Are any of the general touch-typing courses going to learn you how to type & , -> , main(int argc, char *argv[]), foo.bar, ... any faster?
I have tried some of the online available touch typing learning programs, but the lessons learned always seem to lose their value when coding.
Does anyone have better experience with this, or pointers to typing_lessons_for_coders ?
I'm a policy advisor in the federal government. Typing rapidly (I learned formal touch typing in Grade 9) has been an enormous boon to my career because I can put out product faster than most of my colleagues. When firing around competing policy papers, this often lets me frame the debate because I get my ideas out first. Silly but that's human nature for you. The result is that I look like the "thought leader" when really I just type faster than my secretary.
It's a necessary skill if your job requires it. If your productivity is measured on how fast you can produce 'X' on the computer, then yes. If someone with the same skills can type faster then you, you'll likely be replaced.
I'm a programmer. If it tooks me a week to type out a few thousand lines of code I'd be out of a job. I probably couldn't type as fast as I do today if it wasn't for learning proper use of the keyboard in school.
What the hell are "you" smoking? I mean reall... what value, to anyone, is there in your comment?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You must think pretty slowly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've always wondered at what point it will become 'old shcool' to teach basic writing skills in elementary school.. keyboard input will eventually win out I would think.
I took typing in school because I knew it would very much speed up computer entry.
Typing is still a vital skill. Any other technologies for computer entry (voice rec, mouse, whatever) are a far cry from the usefulness of the keyboard.
Ten or twenty years from now this might change. But at the moment typing is vital. Any friends I have that are also into computers and have failed to take typing have often found themselves at a bit of a handicap.
I do believe that keyboards are very necessary. We use keyboard shortcuts and mice very often when we're not typing short emails. Voice recognition may be accurate but it's still not 100% accurate and you must always have that in the back of your mind, looking out for errors.
k /
I use the dvorak layout on my standard querty keyboard. It's better of course and I'm glad all keyboards are querty be default, since this forces you to memorise the layout and looking at your fingers becomes completely pointless. They should teach the dvorak layout.
This website tells you how to switch to dvorak on your computer:
http://www.geocities.com/robm351/dvora
"Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse" and "helping your uncle jack off a horse".
"
Punctuation is better.
"Helping your uncle Jack, off a horse."
vs
"Helping your uncle Jack off, a horse."
I don't think "computer science" or "computer skills" has any place in high school at all. Provide a public lab for kids to explore on their own.
I somehow managed to earn a degree in Aerospace Engineering without having any such courses in high school or college (ok, I was forced to take fortran, but I didn't really learn the language, I learned more about numerical methods than anything). They were available, but I tended to know more than the instructor at that point. Supporting computer programs (spreadsheets, word processors) we were expected to figure out on our own.
I do, however, use the typing skills that I learned in plain old typing class on a daily basis. Those skills have definitely helped me to be better with computers (my fingers can keep up with my head) than any computer-specific classes ever would.
I don't believe that classes should be taught for things that can be picked up by anybody with an interest. Spreadsheets/word processors/etc all fall into this category.
Now, if you want to teach the kids the basics of electronics, signal processing, logic gates, etc, then you'll get no argument from me.
Touhc typping is ovre rated\
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
If you are planning to be in IT or need to use a computer for communications, it is necessary. It skares mee when I see IT people who type with two fingers and look at the keyboard.
I would never hire a programmer if they could not touch type. In fact, typing is a standard test I give to potential programmers. No touch, no job.
Of course, I use backspace a lot, so my accuracy probably isn't at 99% or anything, but I'm pretty quick with the backspace too. :)
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
I've been a student, worked in data entry, front-line public service (facing people across a counter all day) and as a computing professional.
In each of these situations, being able to type quickly and accurately has allowed me to get through my workload faster and with less hassle.
If you don't own a personal computer or use one at work, then typing is not necessarily a skill that will be at the top of your list. However, for the majority of office and computer workers, it's a very useful skill.
I did take typing in school. On genuine manual typewriters, which the school placed into a room next to the computing 'lab'. The lab consisted of a couple of cheap PC clones where we learnt 'computing' - which consisted of retyping printed pages.
Neither helped, really. Most of my current typing speed and accuracy comes from eight years of hanging out on the type of IRC channels where spelling and grammar errors are mercilessly seized upon and snickered at.
Yes, I realise the irony of using IRC as a training tool for accurate spelling.
And these days? Well, one side effect is that I can intimidate people over the phone by typing at them.
That said, I've always wondered how fast kids raised on first person shooters can type. They use most of the keyboard and both speed and accuracy are rewarded. Bring on _Typing of the Dead_!
No. Breathing and eating are necessary skills. However, typing is a very useful skill.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Seek and ye shall find ...
you need to learn how to type, it's possible to type faster than you can write, and typing is clearer than writing. handwriting recognition, is slow and annoying, and always wrong.
I think kids should learn how to type before they learn how to write.
and today, if you can't type at least, 30WPM, your kinda screwed.
Typing is easyer than writing, and i wouldn't want to use voice recognition, cause thats wrong, plus you can't speak normally, and anyone around you knows exactly what your doing.
maybe someday they will have computer to brain interface, so you type just by thinking, there is already a few games that are "mind controlled", but the most you can control is left/right movement.
I can't touch type. This is a horrible detriment to my career. I am a highly skilled computer user, though I am not a programmer. I wish that I could have been taught touch typing in school so that I didn't have so much frustration today. Computers can be learned by using them. For me touch typing is something that does not come as naturally.
Last time I e^D^Dchecked er^Dvery v^Dcomputer came with a keyba^Doard and would be hard u^Dto use without it. So yes, it t^Dis a needd^Ded skill.(doesnt^D't mean we have to me good at it thog^Dugh)
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
You insensitive clod!
If it's not Consolidated Lint,it's just fuzz!
It's what you type, not how fast.
That would be a good one for the children's Debian distro. Perhaps one already exists?
Jesus Christ!
I think it was "stress helps to delimit the morphemes", where "delimit" is defined here.
So really, it wasn't the Dvorak keyboard that helps you type faster. I think your typing skills increased when you learned not to look at the keyboard, and the layout of the keys is irrelevant? Was there something special with the Dvorak keyboard, or was it just the keyboard that you happened to be using when you learned not to look at the keys?
Touch typing has been an extremely useful skill in my career as a nerd, but I have also had more than my share of tendinitis in my wrists because I learned typing the old-fashioned "right way". In my extremely unscientific survey of my colleagues, those who learned on their own seem to have much healthier wrists than those of us who learned the "right way".
My physical therapist taught me some tricks that have helped a lot:
Unfortunately they still teach the old contorted wrist, contorted fingers "right way", at least in my kids' middle school. Because of computers, typing is much more a part of life now than it was when I was a kid. We still need to teach typing, but we need to bring typing instruction in line with what is known about ergonomics or else many of today's kids will be crippled in a few decades.
Back in 1983 I took a typing class in high school. We learned on IBM Selectric typewriters.
What I remember most was that the size, shape, and layout of an Atari 800 computer is about the same as a Selectric typewriter.
When I "upgraded" to the the 130XE (for the memory) my biggest disappointment was that the keyboard was so poor. After years of broad, deep, responsive keyboarding on the Atari 800 and Selectric, the 130XE was absolutely anemic.
Get off my lawn.
Words per minute isn't really as good a measure (I think) because it doesn't exclude "unfair" combinations.
For example, I can type a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a at probably around...
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
What's special about the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is its more efficient key placement. QWERTY was purely intended to reduce typewriter jams (though not necessarily make typing slower), with no regard given to letter frequency in the english language (Why is "e" not on the home row?) nor the difficulty of reaching different rows. Upon viewing the layout it should be quite apparent to the layperson how much simpler it is than QWERTY. The Dvorak layout not only allows for faster typing, but also a lower occurrence of repetitive stress injury.
One-handed speed typing, for all those moments on IRC or reading pr0n
sheesh, how did that get rated informative???
Either because of bad genetics, bad form or plain bad luck, I am unable to type for more than one or two hours a day without developing wrist problems. These days, I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking for much of my computer work. You cannot do full-blown programming with it, but it works great for all the extra things such as surfing the Web, reading e-mail, answering e-mail, and writing to Slashdot.
An unexpected side effect of the software is that you stop saying things such as "like" and "um" because when the software transcribes it, you look like an idiot. Because you end up pronouncing things much more clearly, after a while you also start sounding like a radio announcer. That might not be what you want, but it works for me.
I'm a writer and although I learned to touch type I tend to type with just my index and middle fingers. Most writers I know do the same thing. It's too hard to focas on what you are writing and typing at the same time. I think it's a good skill to learn but it's not critical for most computer work. It's still critical for some office jobs. Typists who can do around 200 wpm are still in big demand.
It subjective. I can only type about 75-80 WPM on something random that I'm reading off a page but can type much faster words coming out of my own head as I would with a stupid message like this, an email, or even a computer program!
I would say approx. 60% or more people at my work do not know how to type. They are also the worst spellers even though they have a spell checker in Outlook(use it!).
I tend to enter my repair data much more quickly than my co-workers, and it helps. I get more work done because I don't have to "hunt and peck" at the keyboard.
I really think that your school is wanting to phase out the class to cut some costs. Typing should be required for college. Further more, it is nice to be able to put it on your resume and list your WPM.
Just my squid to the head.
"Fortunately, I'm adhering to a very strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber..."
Typing is most definately a necessary skill in todays job market. However, it should not be taught by schools or taught at all.
I type over 60 WPM, but I don't touch-type, keep by hands on the middle row, or any of that. I completely taught myself how to type by doing just that: typing. In a little over a month I had my own technique.
I usually just hover my hands over my keyboard. My left hands uses all of it's fingers except for the pinky to type, and my left thumb just hits the space bar when it's necessary, however sometimes it's job is taken by my right index finger when the hand is tilted to reach a far letter on the left side of the keyboard. My right hand only uses the index finger for all of the keys on the right and the pinky to press enter. My right hand does so little on the keyboard because it is constantly switching to operate the mouse. And that's what we have to think about...
When the QWERTY keyboard was devised, the keys were positioned in such a way as to keep typists from typing too fast and jamming a key. But, more importantly, the typing routine (touch-type) that's so often taught was devised when no mouse was involved. I found repositioning my hand on the keyboard after using the mouse to be too cumbersome, so, therefore, I now hover my hands and don't even look at the keyboard.
Lete people devise their own method. Some hands are small, some are big, some are missing fingers, some need to constantly use the mouse, some don't need a mouse.
Thank you,
Xeon
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Spoken like someone who sounds like he did a little "home schooling" for his typing. How many words can you type a minute? Don't give us that "I don't play that game" biz; you are throwing it out as if your way is better than the snobs who learned the "formal," no-left-thumb-using, home-row-resting, no-look method.
Yes, you can learn on your own, but some techniques (usually the ones you learn in school) are much faster. There is a reason why the home-row is taught as the starting place.
Yeah, right.
Typing was THE most valueable skill I took out of school. As a result I can now crank out code as fast as my head can think it up, and I don't loose my train of thought because so much attention is on the keyboard. I have a co-worker, who's job duties were supposed to be about %20 data entry %80 administrative. Because he is a terrible typist he spends %80 of his time doing %20 of his work. And because of this, he realllllllly sucks at his job. So let this be a warning to you kiddies out there: LEARN TO TYPE BY TOUCH, AND ALWAYS WORK AT IT WHENVER YOU ARE AT YOUR COMPUTER!!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Thankfully my mother "forced" me to suffer a summer of typing classes between the 8th and 9th grades - all on manual Royal typewriters. It's always made using computers so much easier. It also helped my finger strength when I started piano lessons in my 30s. I believe (w/o evidence) that good typing skills can immunize you from carpal-tunnel.
There's enormous advantage to being able to type. For me programming languages and shell commands and their standard themes pretty much "chunk" like words. This makes Unix-based OSes incredibly efficient compared to mousing everything (like Windows Sys Admin - blech!). Using Unix/Shell well goes hand-in-hand with typing.
Being able to touch type (like I am now) is even better (BTW "touch typing" means typing without looking at the keys - and some go further and define it as not looking at your typed output either but only looking at some original source you may be copying/expositioning from - all the while hitting >30-40 wpm with high accuracy). The delay between thought and action becomes nearly non-existent as typing becomes muscle memory.
And then there's being able to compose programs in a minute or so (e.g. in perl or C) by touch type using just 'cat > myprogram.pl' and having them compile/run the first time. You're truly getting hardcore when you get to that point! :-) That's generally the point when I feel I've truly mastered a language. I'm working on OCaml now.
JG
Last time I checked, my computer had a keyboard attached. I think *touch-typing* should be taught. All the stuff about how many carriage returns in a business letter or how to align the paper in the roller can be replaced with some basic computer knowledge.
Kind Regards, Phillip
With handwriting and voice recognition technologies, is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?"
I only have 9 fingers you insensitive clod!
It is likely due to the widely held perception that the educational system is a giant feeder system for the needs of the corporations at the top of the world's food chain.
The progression goes like this:
primary school
secondary school
undergraduate school
graduate school
post-graduate school
employment
with "shortcuts" to employment at the various levels of post-secondary school attainment. The primary purpose of education in today's world is not to produce a better PERSON, but rather to produce a more competent EMPLOYEE.
Somehow, I'll bet this wasn't what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he championed the concept of universal public education.
Anyhow, if that is the question, then we are clearly sending textual input (as a career) either overseas or to automation. The side effect of improving keyboarding so as to help students in a world awash in keyboards is as out of touch as promoting critial thought and analysis, which also have no place in the corporate world.
Ergo, no need to teach keyboarding in the schools.
I never took a typing course and my fingers do not rest on the standard keys as taught in said courses, however when I was tested for typing skills for a recent job, I scored slightly over 90 WPM with about 93% accuracy. All that is from using computers since I was old enough to read.
I wouldn't say typing is no longer a useful skill to have, but use a computer enough and you will develop your own typing style that is good enough for most jobs. (A good friend of mine uses the 'hunt and peck' method with his two index fingers, but after playing a text based MUD for about 5 years he can now hit over 50 WPM using only those two fingers)
telnet://zombiemud.org:3000
I'm dyslexic and have the handwriting of a 2nd grader. Almost nobody knows this and it doesn't hurt me a bit because I can type over 200 wpm.
If I were self taught the basices I doubt I would be able to break 40wpm with hunt & peck.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
1 ha3v b33n d0ing 1t 0n WWIV BBS 5ince 1984
i actually hunt and peck around 70-80. thats no BS. i dont really have to look at my hands tho. years and years of IRC paid off!!!!!
every had an online conversation with someone who's in the 10-15 wpm range? you dominate the conversation, its just totally useless. they cant get a thought in edgewise.
the more impedance (keys) you get out of the way, the freer and more fluent the thoughts, and the fewer ideas you lose in the translation.
but also note that everyone i've ever known who actually developed carpal tunnel were people who typed PROPERLY.
You insensitive clod, Japanese letters take more than one keystroke each to type.
Where do those of you who are self-taught typists rest your fingers? I have never taken a typing course and can hit over 90 WPM with over 90% accuracy. My left hand rests on ASDF like normal, however my right hand is shifted over from the standard and rests on KL:"
I believe this came about from the extra keys on a keyboard like the pipe and backspace keys that I use frequently. I am curious what kind of other chagnes poeple have made from the standard 'touch typing' technique that is normally taught to new typists (ASDF for left and (I think) JKL: for the right). As far as I know this is the same technique that was used during the pre-PC, so its not surprising that new techniques are naturally forming.
telnet://zombiemud.org:3000
Your lawyer bills you $175 per hour for his time and $55 for his secretary's time. Your lawyer prepares drafts of your documents, they're corrected and formatted by the secretary, and then your lawyer does the final editing. The secretary then prepares cover letters and address labels before copying, assembling, and mailing them. Would you rather have your legal team prepare your court documents while typing at (a) 90 words per minute (wpm); (b) 55 wpm; or (c) 25 wpm?
You're a daily newspaper publisher who's established an integrated publishing system, and your newspaper production team operates on deadlines that require a page to be sent to the platemaking department every 4.5 minutes. Reporters enter text as they write the stories; editors enter text as they correct and rewrite stories; proofreaders enter text as they make final corrections; then editors enter text again as they chop and fit stories into pages. (We won't go into what the advertising department is doing with display and clasified ads.) Do you define basic competency for your employees as typing at: (a) 95 wpm; (b) 55 wpm; or (c) 25 wpm?
You own a software company employing hundreds of programmers. Would you prefer that your employees spend their time: (a) trying to remember where the keys are on their keyboards; or (b) thinking about their code while accurately and swiftly creating it with their keyboards?
You're going for a professional license and half the score will be essay exams. In preparing your essays, would you prefer to (a) handwrite; (b) type 95 wpm; (c) type 55 wpm; or (d) type 25 wpm?
You're going through college dirt poor, looking for a part-time job to help make ends meet. You have a choice between applying to flip burgers or trying for an entry-level data entry position at double the money paid for burger flipping. Would you prefer to: (a) flip 360 burgers per hour; (b) type 95 wpm; (c) type 55 wpm; or (d) type 25 wpm?
You're a . . . (you get the idea).
I was well educated in a good university in Ireland. My courses involved lots of Math classes in Unix on PDP-11's, lots of mainframe exposure, then Macs an' all. Then I got into the CGI business on SGI's and Suns. It's been 20 years of computers and keyboards. When I moved to the States in the early 90's I was astonished at all the geeks who could type, and i envied them all terribly - I had never been taught to type and frankly I'm shit. I hunt and peck and misspell and CONSTANTLY have to backspace and fix. I've tried everything but I'm always going to be a terrible typist, yet I spend all day every day in front of a keyboard. I so greatly regret I can't type. I think it's an incredibly important skill, and I'm convinced my productivity and stress levels are higher than those who can touch type. I'm also convinced that my shit typing skills stand between me and better work as my stream of conciousness onto the digital paper is so interrupted.
Typing this fast has it disadvantages. I mostly learned to type in high school where I took a typing class on these old, small Macs with very small keyboards. As a result, I developed some form of RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury), and I cannot sustain a ~100 WPM rate for very long (re: a few minutes) without my hands cramping and slowing me down about 10-15 WPM.
Call me a typing elitist but I just can't bring myself to trust programmers who can't keep their eyes on their code as they write it. It just seems so -jarring- to have to alternate looking up at the screen and down at the keyboard every few keystrokes....
I cna typ e300 wrds a mniuet
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
heh heh... typo? or freudian slip???
Arcata High School up in the North Coast of California has a beginning and advanced computer class required of all students. Sounds good except the only difference is that the advanced requires 40 wpm touch typing.
Needless to say the "Computer class" is taught by an ex-business teacher who apparently believes the core buddha of computers is excellent data entry skills. The final project is a Powerpoint presentation preferably using every applause and wipe-segue trick available.
Where is Alan Kay when we need him?
Touch typing is the way to go. Whether you're venting your spleen on an internet forum, blabbering with a supposed hottie on AIM, or writing a long, self-indulgent novel for vanity publication, it is so much more efficient to not need to look away from the screen. A good keyboard is a must. I have the OmniKey Ultra by Northgate, which isn't being made anymore. This thing is steel-reinforced and weighs about 6 lb, and is built for constant abuse by a fast typist.
I don't care if they get taught how to type, provided they get taught how to spell and the correct use of grammar.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Piano playing keeps your arm muscles strong. Maybe forcing yourself to slow down for a while can bring accuracy up.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Do dogs piss on brick walls?
Help us build a better map!
The qwerty keyboard was actually made in order to slow down the typing speeds of the time. People who did a great deal of typing had learned the layout of the old keyboards so well that they actually typed faster than the machines could keep up. What you look at as a standard now was orgionally made in order to screw people up because machines were expensive and people were cheap. Now it is largely the other way around.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Oh absolutely...my Typing class was the very best course I ever took in High School. I learned my way around a typewriter (and nowadays a keyboard) better and faster than anybody I work with. They're continually amazed at how quickly and accurately I can type Unix commands, enter data, etc. Typing is something that a person just must take if they want to stand out, IMO.
Steve
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Keyboarding skills are implied when it is said you require computer skills.
Frankly, I think typing's more important than basic application skills because basic applications are pretty easy to pick up. My first computer was an ancient pre-windows monstrosity that was a left-over from my dad's office - hell, I don't think it was even using MS-DOS.
The most interesting thing about it was that it pretty much prepared me entirely for HTML, because you had to enter in tags for every single text style there was.
Remember, this was an ancient, pre-windows word processor with no mouse and no manual - despite that, I managed to get it to print, to spellcheck, and I also figured out how to use all the tages, and I'd never even seen the OS before - hell, the only previous computer experience I had was playing games on the Apple II at school.
Frankly, I don't even remember a time when I had to sit down and "learn how to use Word." The program goes out of its way to tell you how to use its features, and if you don't like its help, it tells you how to turn the help off. What kind of idiots are we raising that can't figure out "saving and loading" and "changing font sizes" WITH A COMPUTER MANUAL PRESENT?
Seriously, it's not that damn hard - you read the manual from cover to cover, you know how to use the program. This isn't a brilliant or novel concept - a bright third grader could figure this all out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the last year of University I becamme fluent in LaTeX. I started typing my math notes using a free disribution of LaTex. I could actually keep up just fine in math classes giving me perfect notes. Would have been great to have a scribe or something to be able to draw diagrams....pen and paper are still better then trying to draw it out with a mouse.
It's actually one of the most useful skills I have learned. I would say though, that typing IS a basic computer skill, and that learning to type once the first time, is much much easier than after being a 6 finger typist for some period of time. (Let's face it, you never will learn... like all the peeps here claiming you don't need it. Sure, they may say they don't, but then, they never know what that other 40 wpm does for you.) The faster you can type, at this point in time (and this is very likely to change I with other input devices.) I can simply communicate and get accomplished what I want to with much less difficulty. I am one of those people that types > 100 wpm, and I strongly suggest others that are getting computers to learn how to touch type. It's one fewer obstacle to accomplishing your goal, or communicating on a computer. Just another pair of credits.
I started on the computer very young, and for many years my mother bugged me to learn to touch type. I finally hunkered down and took a class in high school, and it would not at all be unfair to say that it changed my life.
Having many years of QWERTY familiarty under my belt, I learned in what seemed like no time, and by the time I had finished the month or two long course I was easily doing 70 words a minute.
It's a skill that I certainly use every day, and lately I had been testing myself with a fantastic program called gtypist, and my speeds have ranged from 100 to 141 words per minute (141 when pushing for speed, ~100 when dealing with words/characters/symbols that I was not very familiar with or something that is particularly difficult to type).
Not only was it a useful skill, but my success in typing inspired me to pursue other things, such as playing the guitar, a first rate hobby of mine now. Also, it impresses a lot of people. ;-)
Whether we like it or not, we all have to type somewhere and somehow, so it's a skill that most everyone who has to use a computer is much better off knowing. Also, considering how little of an investment it requires and how great the returns are, it's a great mystery to me why more people aren't doing it.
I realize that not everyone can type so fast, but at school I run across people every day who show great potential. Whenever I see a classmate screaming along using only two or three fingers, I have to stop and tell them how much faster I think they could go if they actually bothered to do it correctly.
Frankly, I'm a bit disturbed by the idea that the skill of typing has or could become obsolete. I think that it is here to stay, and I know that I will be doing it for as long as I can; I will never write as fast as I type, and I will never be willing to use voice recognition systems [ever].
"last time I was tested, touch-typed at around 60 wpm"
I'm sure. That is the biggest bunch of BS. The only people who can type 60 wpm are professional secretaries and professional word processors. 60 wpm is FAST. 80 is elite. Only the cream of executive secretaries/wp can type this fast.
Bullshit artists who claim 60 should go to an agency and get tested for real. Here are the rules:
- you have to type a long letter
- the letter contains tabs, numbers, punctuation marks, symbols like !, #, &, +, (, @, ? etc.
- 10 wpm are subtracted for EVERY MISTAKE
If you type at a raw 60 wpm and make three mistakes your score: 30 wpm -- not enough to get hired (45 wpm is the cutoff to work professionally). You make more than 3 mistakes, get out you're wasting our time and don't come back !
To break 45 wpm you generally have to FLAWLESSLY touch type without sight of the keyboard. You even look at the keyboard and your rate will plunge.
So stop bullshitting and insulting the pros who can do it for real.
Ig youu doMt typw wEel yoi wiLL habe dIffivult to male y0ur pooint oM a comPuuter.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
It won't display right in large font, making it unusable in IE, and doesn't appear to work in Mozilla at all... (Though mozilla can get around the large font issue)
Dontcha.
Or IRC. Sheesh, I only got 68 adjusted with 90% accuracy. (It helped that they let me backspace within words...)
At the end of each line, it looks like you'd need to hit the space bar to go to the next line. If you do, it flags it as an error. That said, I got 75 WPM, and the only errors were caused by putting the extra space in. Hoowah! :)
Since I type around 80wpm, and I can program? I'll even work for 10% less! Nearly 3x as much coding for less? Whoo!
Tibbon
tibbon.com
What an myth...
The qwerty keyboard was designed not to slow down typists, but to space common letter combinations apart vertically so that the mechanical mechanism that drove the keys wouldn't clash. This spead up typists so much, in fact it won many typing competions held at the time, it became the default typewriter layout.
Later, Dvorak created his keyboard when the mechanical need for qwerty was no longer needed and conducted numberous studies to show how superior it was. Howerver, those studies, of course, weren't independant since they were funded by dvorak himself, who had considerable money to gain. As well, they compared different groups of people as to their learning abilities ie, gifted students from a U of Chicago Lab school, under the supervision of dvorak himself vrs statistics from students from the general public highschool population.
However, when the US government analyzed his layout in 1954 (Strong Study), they found no benifit in retraining exprienced typists to the Dvorak layout. In that test, expirenced qwerty typists were retrained to Dvorak to the point they could recreate their old scores. This took on average 100 hours of training.
Then a new group of qwerty typists was gathered and both groups now got equal amounts of new training. It was found that the team of qwerty typists actually outpaced the dvorak retrained typists and ended up typing faster.
Thus, the government was advised that instead of retraining typists and refitting typewriters, they should just give their typists more qwerty training.
I never picked up proper touch typing from the classes. They bored me. At first with the dumb phrases with the same words over and over, then with the paragraphs that were "cleverly" educational. At that point I did pecking like a little speed demon (no hunting, just pecking. I knew the keyboard). After a couple years of speeding along like that I somehow naturally picked up touch typing. The only difference is that my right hand floats in space and picks up most of the keys with the wrong fingers. Oddly enough, I can force that hand to touch type properly without too much thought, but it's a bit slower.
It's scary being a Flash and Flex developer on Slashdot. You guys are unnaturally rabid.
It's a little late to be posting on this thread, but...I've said it so many times in casual conversation, I have to say it now.
Learning to type is probably the only useful thing I learned in high school. Well, maybe not the ONLY, but certainly one of the more important things.
I kinda annoy my colleagues because I use an ergonomic keyboard. However, that carpal-tunnel-saving device, and my ability to easily type about 50 wpm, is such a boon that I can't imagine not being able to type at such velocity. And without being able to touch-type, an ergo keyboard is pretty much useless.
Typing is even more important in this day and age of ubiquitous computing. Perhaps when we finally have voice-recognition that works well, or some other type of commonly-used input device, typing will no longer be important. In the meantime, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
You know. Like VI. (NOT emacs)
Then you'll be doing mostly cut/paste/search/replace etc anyways...
Ever read a teenie's MSN chatter? Good christ, what a frightful and discouraging lack of writing skills. Spelling? Abysmal. Grammar? None. Coherent thoughts? As if!
Typing quickly is the least of their problems.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Who would be typing comments on slashdot when Doom 3 is out? The only keys you should be using right now is W, A, S, and D.
And perhaps you should be typing your credit card number, too, to buy that new video card.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Oh wait. You must be a javaDeveloper eh?
As long as you're not using wrdHungarianNotation.
Looking online, I found refrences to both answers (several of each, actually). I'll list one for the other side along with the relevant information-
t yp ewriter.htm
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl
"The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine's novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard "QWERTY" keyboard. "
With that said, we may or may not be at a standoff. *shrugs*
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
(1) Out of all the classes I took in high school, the one that served me the best was the half year I was taught typing. (The other half year was shorthand, which was forgotten approximately 10 nanoseconds after the final class bell). I have found typing to be extraordinarily useful. It has gotten to the point I can almost type as fast as I can think (and no, I am not a -=slow=- thinker). It is my preferred way to write; especially if someone sees my handwriting.
(2) I often teach UNIX at a local technical college, so I teach mostly from the command line (the way God meant computers to be run, not from some weenie GUI). Few things are more painful then to have students type in commands, and watch the one (or more) student who doesn't know how to type struggle to hunt and peck the command line in. It just slows the class to a crawl, and eventually the frustration level gets very high; on my end, the other students end, and finally on the typing-impaired student who knows he is slowing the rest of the class down. UNIX command line may be becoming history, but there will still be a need to type.
Lets face it, keyboards are not going to go away until they hook electrodes directly to our brains and the computer can just jot down what we are thinking. On second thought, maybe that is not such a good idea.
Just gotta chime in. If I'm chatting, I can do much faster, but the online tests give me about 55 wpm. I know it's not impressive at all, but there it is.
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
I don't know which college these school districts are pushing the kids towards nowadays, but both my BA Poly Sci and BSCS required plenty of typing. After handing in my first hunt-n-pecked paper back in community college, I BEGGED the typing instructor to sign my class add slip.
Most people not taught to type aren't going to be content creators, just content editors. If people are going to college to expand their possibilities, they ought to be given the option to create, rather than buy term papers. Best place to pick up the enabling skill of typing is before college. Will typing be supplanted at some point? Sure, but I ain't bettin' the future of my 12 year old on it happening in the next six years.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I had always thought I typed around 60 WPM until I took a test and found I was anywhere between 80-105.
My question to the speed demons out there, is this:
Any of you use wireless keyboards, and get annoyed that you type faster than it can respond? Or did I just get a crappy wireless keyboard? =)
mat,.
I type about 130 wpm. I grew up with computers, & used Typing Tutor on a mac extensively when I was 12-13. I also had a job for 4 years as a transcriber (of audio tapes -- for documentaries), where we'd get paid more if we typed faster.
http://www.fryth.com/gfx/typing.jpg -- if you don't believe me. (I wonder if my server will get completely slashdotted)
A myth? Hardly. The linkage jamming argument is often used in a misleading fashion. Yes, it's true that key placement was selected to avoid jamming...jamming that happened more often at higher speeds. Even if you don't count that as being 'to slow down typists' (which is arguable) it's still the net effect.
The study you refer to was considered suspicious by other researchers. When attempts were made to look at the raw data it turned out it had been destroyed (details). A single study with no access to the raw data isn't very convincing.
The usual study people mention as proof of qwerty's superiority was written by economists. Also not terribly convincing. Here's a refutation.
Either way, it's clear that the main design decision with qwerty was to in response to an engineering problem.
The best way to find out is to try it. I used to quote the same studies and had the same opinions until I tried it myself. It took about a weekend to get started and three weeks to exceed my previous level of proficiency.
Speed typing courses may be obsolete but I do feel that a component of learning to use a computer should involve learning to type. You may not need to know how to type to use a computer but it is a benefit.
It's the difference between learning to drive a car and taking the BMW performance driving course. You can still drive fast without the BMW course, but it would be preferable to take the course if you want to drive REALLY fast.
-- Cheers!
Why do schools continue to teach kids how to write in cursive handwriting? Unless you *always* write in cursive, and start from a young age, it looks like hell, is slower to write, and really serves no useful purpose whatsoever. My brother, now 30+, continues to write in cursive, and it looks exactly like his handwriting from the 4th grade. Mine probably would, too, if I actually tried.
Typing is a very useful skill in the modern world, and when there is no keyboard around, printing works just fine, too.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
shit yes. are you retarded?
that's to be modded "insightful" - length doesn't beset gravity.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Yes.
Frankly penmanship is what they no longer need to teach. How many people ever use a pen to do more than sign checks anymore? Voice??? That is great think of an office with everyone talking to their computers? Change the name to keyboarding and keep teaching it. :(
I do admit I miss those carfuly handwritten letters I used to get from a friend of mine. Now it is all down a quick email now and then
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
hash symbol, no space, include, lessthan, no space, stream, no space, full stop, no space, greater than, new line, new line, int, main, openbracket, void, close bracket, new line, open curvy brace, new line, printf, open bracket, speachmarks, Hello World, speachmarks, close bracket, semicolon, new line, return, number zero, semicolon, new line, close curly brace, new line. .. you know I'm quite glad i can type at a decent speed or that would have taken me a while :)
It occured to me that young people may not have ever used a real 'smash the ink ribbon against the paper' typewriter.
So I asked the beautiful young woman who was handing out GreenPeace pamthlets outside the library. She laughed and said that 'Yes, she had used one, as a kid, her mother showed her how to insert paper and make letters on it when she found it in the back of the closet.'
Anyway the point is that if you have a PC with a gigabyte of memory, a terabyte of storage, and a multi-gigahertz 64-bit processor, why in the world would you need a manual slow finger-movement input device? You should just talk to the bloody thing, mate, and have it talk back to you. Like Chris Rock said, ' you dumb low-expectations-having motherf***er! '
Ever see the Star Trek movie where Kirk and crew come back to Earth 1982 and Scotty picks up the mouse and starts talking to it? He expected an advanced user-interface system, you should too.
BTW, the schools here are having that debate and it appears that they are going to move touch typing down to third grade where it belongs. Then they won't have to waste time on cursive.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
If you're an IT professional in any fashion and you cannot touch type it tells me that you've probably neglected other aspects of your profession, and I usually don't want to have to find out what that is. It's going to cost me somehow. You can't convince me that with two people with the same skills otherwise, the touch typer won't be more efficient and more focused on what he's doing. If you have to look at the keyboard you're not thinking about what else you should be focused on.
- Sig this!
yes, sometimes it is neccessary to touch- type. sometimes it's not even worth your time. depends on how much you use the computer. so my awnser is mabe
I work as a programmer, and my typing (speed, technique) is atrocious. But whenever somone points that out, I always say "I've never worked on a project that could have met it's deadline better if I typed faster."
I know where the WASD keys are. What else do I need to know?
Would the "Christian Science Monitor" really have an "interesting article"...?
/.
Please dear editors; no religious junk on
I say it time and time again...
The only class that I ever learned anything from, and still use the skills from, is my high school typing class.
100% Insightful
I also forgot to say that the standard touch-typing posture can easily lead to carpal tunnel or repetitive stress disorder because of the angle of your hands on a standard keyboard. This is one reason so-called "ergonomic" keyboards exist. But the way I've taught myself to type, my hands are naturally angled even on a straight keyboard, so I can type for extremely long periods without any fatigue and I've been typing hours per day for 20 years now with no problems at all. Something I think is really important to think about given how much some of us have to type - you can always buy an ergonomic keyboard for yourself if you're a touch-typist but you may not have that luxury at work, or in internet cafes, or wherever else you use a PC. So I think in some ways it's actually better to learn alternate ways of typing; whatever's most comfortable for you.
After many years of working on DOS systems using Brief as my editor, I still could not touch type.
Then I got into UNIX and one day realised that I had typed some ridiculously long "find pipe to this pipe to awk pipe to ed" command without looking at the keyboard.
I have not looked at a keyboard since. (Even worse, I have it set to US ASCII on every machine, even though I'm a Brit.)
Death to the non typists; when did you last pen-write anything?
There's no way you can be a self taught typist at 105 WPM. I have read in many books that anything above 80 is very difficult, and about 90 is incredible, and over 100 is beyond incredible. There is so much technique that without an extreme amount of practice and lessons, it's out of this world(as it has to do with memorized patterns). I'm not meaning to compare, but I consider myself to be a very good typist. I have used a computer since I was about 7(I'm 25 now), and have learned proper skills, and use a computer day in day out, and I top out at about 75 WPM(just did an online test). According to online stats, to type over 100 WPM the statistics are 2/10ths of 1% of typists. So 2 out of 1000 typists are able to do this. For a self taught typist, I highly doubt this is you.
First of all, typing classes are never mandatory, at least not in any American school I've ever seen. So there's no need to "replace" one with the other.
While it's true that some people can naturally pick up typing, it's far better on the average to get some formal training.
I'm always amazed to watch how slow some of my coworkers type. How they get out miles of computer code, I'll never know! I'll grant that use has given them some speed, but a lack of any kind of style means that mistakes *really* slow them down.
Typing, like most low-skill human functions, requires very little training, but does require constant practice to increase skill. So why not spend six weeks or two months out of a year-long basic computer skills class to teach typing? (And while we're on it, teach some actual basic computer skills, rather than the usual "here's how to use Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Access")
At my high school, typing was already being phased out for a "computer studies" course which taught you how to use a computer. Note that this was 1995, and no where in "computer studies" were we to learn about graphical operating systems, the mouse, or, in fact, anything other than dumb terminals running WP 5.1 on a mainframe.
At the end I was able to pass by typing an astounding 120 wpm, but only by fooling the software. See, I could type up to 30wpm, but you were allowed X number of mistakes. But, leave off the last line (just press enter) and that line is completed in an instant! Viola - instant 120 wpm score. I informed the teachers about the bug in the program - they literally didn't care and graded me on the 120wpm test score.
I did eventually become the fastest typist I know (ideal conditions, I can type around 100wpm without cheating) but most of that came from IRC roleplaying games and a history major.
Long story short, sure, kids will pick up on typing on their own - but kids won't pick up on anything that a school does a piss-poor job of teaching.
Okay, I actually did laugh out loud there.
Typing is, now, a necessary skill. If you want to communicate on or use a computer, you need to type - regardless of what technologies are available, this is the one in use.
"is using a QWERTY keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something worth knowing anymore?" :-)
No, I'd say it's not really worth knowing how to touch-type QWERTY..
Dvorak though, that's a completely different story..
I could rant for days, literally.. (I actually could, since I type DVORAK now and my wrists wouldn't start to hurt for a LONG time.. heh) Don't knock it, it really works.
But I have quite a few calls with customers, and I need to take notes. It sure is easy to be able to keep up by typing at conversational pace, and to not have to stare at the keyboard and really concentrate while I type.
I took the included typing tests, and did about 90 wpm on a cheezy laptop keyboard, so I guess I'd be in the vaunted "100" range on a normal keyboard... the smaller laptop keyboards are teh suck.
I really think it's a useful skill, and the fact that kids have plenty of extra classes to take in middle or high school makes it seem worth a semester to me. Lots of typing in my day was crap about form letter spacing, and formal rules... so I think 9 or 18 weeks of fundamentals with a few guidelines would be sufficient. And for that, I really do think it's very very important.
I used to hunt and peck type... and a peer used to scream at me and sometimes eject me from my seat and assume the typing responsibility, even though he was the manager, and I was the coder! I used to deeply resent his brusque behavior, but realized (I highly respected this man) I was slowing HIM down.
If you don't touch type, and you work in a group, or on a team, your slow typing does more than slow you down. It slows your entire team down! This is a skill so easy to learn it is almost disrespectful to those with whom you work to not learn it.
Touch typing is one of the most valuable skills I recommend to people. Heck, it doesn't have to be anything formal, just suck it up for a week, and refuse to enter ANYTHING on the keyboard without doing it by touch. (For the record, this is how I learned..., and I drove people around me absolutely mad for that week..., but to this day, I get compliments on my typing speed. (Especially handy for editors like "vi"))
Typing was probably the single most useful class I took in high school. I certainly use it constantly, whereas even the science and mechanics classes I was really interested in, are of only passing usefulness now.
"The only class that I ever learned anything from, and still use the skills from, is my high school typing class."
Sex-ed obviously was a bust.
In a way, I think I had always admired the Mac. I liked that the machine and the monitor came together, in the same box, and I liked the deep chime it made when you turned it on. I absolutely adored the solid "click" of the mouse, and how the key caps felt so firm under my fingers, unlike all the PC keyboards I was accustomed to. I guess there was even something about that cutesy Apple logo that drew me, a little, from the start.
But it wasn't until college that I learned just how special the Mac really was. Right out of the box, the OS came well endowed with a smorgasbord of utilities to make DTP a cinch. Its color management system, ColorSync, was unambiguously first-rate, and I found that it was easy to make rainbows for my group's posters using the repeated strokes tool in FreeHand. The Mac was much more open and flexible, for our purposes, than any IBM clone.
I was gratified, too, by the processing speed of the G4 and G5. My roommate, a loud and proud Mac user, owned a 17" laptop (that thing was humongous!). I worked on it throughout college and it would always polish off the job lickety-split. It did get rather hot to the touch, as our moist palms could attest. But even so, that titanium beast was so beautiful, so smooth and perfect in design, none of us could keep our hands off it for long.
Now that I think about it, the Mac penetrated our entire collegiate lifestyle. I remember one time, during a cast party, the stereo system croaked in the middle of "Spinning Around". But someone pulled a dusty Quadra 840av out of the closet, and with the help of iTunes, the beats were again pounding fast and furious. We ended up having a fabulous time that night, and in a way, we owed it all to that old beige workhorse.
I eventually grew out of this phase, and am back using Windows and sometimes even Linux (Yellow Dog, for when I'm feeling a little "crazy!"), but the experience just isn't the same. It sounds corny, I know, but I grow wistful when I reminisce on my college days. We Mac users are a happy community, and sometimes I just want to get up and give ol' Steve Jobs a hand.
'nuff said
I got a D in typing in high school (84) because I wasn't interested in IBM selectrics or my well intentioned, excellent and arthritic I might add, teacher. BUT... a few years later, very interested in computers I decied to buy "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" for the Mac and it turns out that I was actually paying attention in high school and I touch type very well now. I feel sorry for the execs I work with now who
a)can't spell and
b)can't type.
Computing is a frustrating experience for them and for me it's been wonderful. I think a large part of love or hate of computers and operating systems comes from accurate (or the lack thereof) data entry.
Last time I was tested, I was at around 105 wpm with 99% accuracy.
Copy-Paste is not considered as 'typing'.
I am sure many computer "geeks" can hit well over 100 words per second.
I was curious and perfromed the TypingTest.com's "Fishing in Finland" with my new computer at work (with a very shitty compaq keyboard I am not used to using) and I got net speed of 107 wpm (accuracy 98% (btw was it ok to correct mistakes in the typing test? I didn't).
I wonder what kind of a score I could get if I a) really tried to get a good score b) typed with my own keyboard with which I am used to type.
My point is that altough I have never attended to a typing class or anything like that, 20 years of fiddling with computers have made me a relatively(?) fast typist (for a non-professional typist anyway). I am sure this applies to majority of, for example, Slashdot's readers.
Sorry about the AC, but I posted this anonymous so that it wouldn't sound like I'd be bragging, or lied about my score.
In a typical elementary classroom, there will be a wide range of skills - some kids will be at 100wpm with 98% accuracy, others will be poking keyboards with their index fingers at 5wpm. Typing's a vital skill, so you shouldn't just overlook it, but forcing everyone to sit through a class will just lead to increased skill levels in lots of online Flash games. Solution: Make it like the swimming test some high schools have - you must pass a swim test to graduate. If you've been a lifesaver since age 16, you just take the test, pass, and boom, off you go. If you've never been in a pool, you take Intro Swimming for gym. If you sort-of-swim, you can drop in on an after-school session or a summer class. Or hire a private swim coach totally unrelated to the school. The school shouldn't care how you learn it - just that you do learn it.
To answer the question requires the answers to those questions.
/., both my work and my main hobby involve typing lots of stuff into a computer. If I were unable to type, it would be really difficult to keep up with either. Even if you're not an IT worker, being able to type is a basic skill for just about any office worker today.
Is typing on a typewriter (on which I learned to type, showing my age) a necessary skill? No, not for most people. It is if you are a legal secretary or (maybe) a paralegal, because law offices do use typewriters for some things even today, but not for most of us. It's been at least a decade since I've even *seen* a typewriter.
Is typing a necessary skill on a computer? Yes, absolutely. Even if you go into a line of work in which computer use if rare enough that you can get by with hunt-and-peck two-finger typing (OK, my dad does that to this day and he's a retired systems programmer, so I suppose that's a counter-argument), you will need to type a lot of things in high school and college. Doing that with two-fingers won't get you a lower grade as long as you finish on time, but it will make the time investment many times greater if you can't type. I don't type terribly well myself, but even my typing is many times faster than my dad's two-finger work.
Like most people on
I also made an interesting observation at work recently. I'm the tech lead on the email security team at, well, an email security company and recently hired and trained several new team members. The new team members with a primarily *nix background type faster than those with a primarily Win/Mac background. Coincidence? Perhaps. I'm sure there are many counter-examples. However, I do suspect that greater amount of time *nix people spend with their hands on the keyboard rather than the mouse may have something to do with it. The ones who came from a Windows background can't stop using the mouse, even for things that are far faster from the keyboard. They're just conditioned that way.
I took some typing in like 5th grade, with some program called PAWS or something.
That taught me the basics of correct typing (or at least enough to fake something like it), but what really honed my typing speed was when AIM and other instant messengers came out. Having a good, fun reason to type made me WANT to type faster automatigically. Kids today will grow up with a lot of these, and a little bit of typing class, like one week in 4th or 5th grade, seems like it would be worth the minimal time investment.
With used copies selling as low as $3, our schools can't afford NOT to purchase The Typing of the Dead for the students of tommorrow. How else will they improve their zombie-blasting typing reflexes? (Might also be able to fulfill anatomy and/or religion requirements.)
If the question is about _QWERTY_, then it's definitely obsolete. QWERTY sucks so much I can't even describe it.
//fatal
Personally I'm using DVORAK on my own computer since that's the best I've found so far.
Anyone have any suggestions on what could be better then DVORAK? I'm still looking for "the perfect layout".
Is this a real question from someone? I mean, seriously... what kind of idiot would think that typing is not an important skill in the workplace for the forseeable future?
Voice and handwriting recognition is nice and all, but lets face it, voice recognition is still many years off to where it will be to the point of normal interpersonal communication. In fact, AI will need to catch up to near-human level before voice regonition actually works, and can replace a keyboard.
Then we have handwriting regonition. I don't know about anyone else, but I sure as hell can type a lot faster than I can write, and typing doesn't give me hand cramps. So why would I use hand writing recognition over typing?
This can't really be a serious question, anyone with even half a brain can see that typing is one of the most important skills you can know, not only now, but in the foreseeable future.
I've unlearded every bit of asdf & jkl; ...and now use my own patented, bastardized, hunt and peck, *optimized* skilz... for all typing.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
At 130 wpm you could write a short novel (40k words) in 5 or 6 hours... that's not how it works. I suppose it might be different if you were writing very systematic technical documentation, but generally the bottleneck is almost always thinking time. It doesn't make much difference if you're typing at 30 or 130 wpm.
Just because you think slowly doesn't mean that everyone does.
I think much faster than 30 wpm. I type about 120 wpm on average on a real keyboard (not a laptop keyboard!) - and I sometimes find my fingers falling behind my thoughts.
So don't try to tell people that there's no difference between 30 wpm and 130 wpm because of some "bottleneck" few people experience in their thought process. I'd wager that most people think much, much faster than 30 wpm.
Consultants are often paid by the hour to produce documentation (design specifications, memorandums etc.) Typing at 60wpm means that I work twice as fast as most of my colleagues. At $100 per hour it certainly means a lot for our clients. Sometimes it has meant the difference between making a deadline and missing it.
I took typing in school instead of accounting. I pay my accountant about $200 to do my tax return once a year. But how much do I save by not having to employ secretary?
The actual SI standard would be ls^(-1), letters * seconds to the power of negative one. =)
Must have been a long time since you were in school! Although I think the preference for using powers instead of division signs changed only a couple of years back.
Bugger!
AT&ROFLMAO
People who cannot touch type (by which I mean type a couple of lines with their eyes closed and not make a mistake) often do not realize just how much time is wasted with moving the eyes between the keyboard and screen, or doing mental error correction.
After sufficient typing experience, the hands take the place of the mouth as the means of expression, and the words simply flow out through the keyboard with little effort. I have had many experiences where instead of typos, I have actually typed the entire wrong word because of a mixup in the virtual speech center of my hands.
This fluidity between thought and keyboard output allows for a much higher level of comfort with the computer. I would argue that those who touch type are easily 5 times more productive with any computer task that requires typing than those who do not touch type.
I can not count the times I have watched non touch typers look back up at the screen from the keyboard and sit dumbfounded for a while as they try to figure out just what happened to the computer. When you look directly at the screen while typing, you know the result of every keystroke. If a popup window appeared while you were typing, and you hit 'y' or 'n' in your stream of typing, and it initiated some action, at least you saw it happen. Many times I have watched people type their entire name or password or whatever into the wrong field, only to stare in confusion at the form, then slowly erase their mistake and click in the proper location. And good luck if some javascript throws their cursor elsewhere based on what they are typing. They may be five pages ahead before they look back at the screen.
And any sort of data entry task takes AGES longer if you can't simply type the data without looking at either the screen or keyboard.
For those who have their own systems of typing that are non-standard, but still move at a reasonable pace (45-60 wpm). Can you put in a few lines without looking at the keyboard? There are many who can, but most folks I see who claim to be able to type just fine without using the standard method can't really satisfy the requirement of not looking at the keyboard while typing.
To the argument that the bottleneck is in the thought processes: It is true that one does not spend very much of the time at the computer actually typing. But being able to type fluidly keeps any extra mental energy away from the mundane process of data entry, and lets you fully concentrate on the creative aspect of what you are doing.
Touch typing is an essential computer skill. Teaching every kid in school how to type would help to dramatically increase computer literacy and productivity. Just think of how many folks hunt and peck their way through emails and im chats every day, and how much more efficiently those could be accomplished if they just learned that most basic computer skill.
I learned to touch type in high school in a 1/4 credit class. About 35 minutes a day for 45 days. I was a very fast hunt-n-peck typer before, but after about two weeks I had completely given up on my old methods. It seems like such a small commitment to make at an early age given the benefits in later life.
p
Well, I can hit about 80wpm on a QWERTY keyboard, but I can't touch a Japanese schoolgirl typing with her thumbs on a cellphone.
I swear to god, some of them hit around 100 doing that...
the point is that you can read a doc and type at the same time: i.e. you can find the keys on the keyboard by feel without having to look at them. if you're typing up what's in your head, this isn't particularly necessary, but if you're transcribing or commenting a doc, it's very useful indeed; the cognitive overhead from looking down at the keys, and looking up at another screen/piece of paper with all attendant refocussing etc is quite high.
No especially not the qwerty idiot layout
Now maybe touchtyping Dvorak
now there's a skill for the new millenium
most kids these days can type pretty damn fast because they sit on msn messenger for hours chatting.
If you are a programmer, I can see how you would pick up typing through your classes and interests. But many of us working in tech-related fields are not programmers, and for me, learning typing in high school is the best thing my mother ever made me do. I'm a program manager, and 60% of my job is answering email. I type at around 80WPM. My colleague never took a typing class -- I answer probably four times as much email as she does in the same period. I also can take notes on a computer, transcribing whatever is being said at a meeting, for the most part. I have no idea how the innards of my computer work -- and it's never mattered for the kind of jobs I'm in.
J Cravens http://www.coyotecommunications.com
...and I learned to type with all of my 12 fingers.
The stress test for any word-wrapping routine (I speak from experience)...
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the existence of the wonderful ktouch program, which is part of the kedu suite.
If you want to learn to type or improve your typing, give it a go. I am using it at a community center and have had great success with it.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
... for spam writers to get through the filters. If you're a good typer, you'll never manage to become a successful spammer!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Just me, the only guy in a class of 50 girls, typing away in the hot Aussie summer heat, best of class, slowly inching my way through all the typewriter exercises so that I could get my paws on the classes one 'word processor' system, an old CPM machine in the back row running Wordstar, something you weren't allowed to touch unless you could master 60wpm. Easy.
That was one of the most memorable summers of my life so far.
A class full of 15 year old girls, newly pubescent and bearing the discomfort of sweaty bra straps not well (mmm... schoolgirl white cotton shirts), me moving up the ranks doing one thing that I was good at (typing) in school, able at the end to spend the rest of the semester hacking away in CPM after coming SECOND in the 'State Typing Championships', a big surprise and
Now, as a programmer, 20 years later, I do about 140wpm. I'd say that typing properly is still one of the most valuable skills you can have as a computer geek. Can't say that about CPM, although I never had a problem with bra straps after that summer, heh heh
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
...that good typing skills are directly proportional to intelligence:
FISRT POSPTS!11
(P.S. it's a joke, kids)
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
That game is keytastic.
There are still a lot of arcades in Japan where virtuoso typists go all through TotD with perfect scores... it's absolutely terrifying.
Pity about the voice acting, though
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
For me, typing will always be the preferred input method, no matter what advances in handwriting and voice recognition come about. I can type much faster than I can handwrite or speak. I can think faster than I can write or speak. Typing lets me input text at a rate much closer to the rate at which my thoughts are actually occuring in my head. This means that I don't have to modulate my thoughts with the expression of those thoughts.
Maybe I just have atrophied/undeveloped writing skills, but when writing out a lot of thoughts, my brain has to wait for my hand to catch up sometimes before it can move on to more ideas.
Some have commented that 60+ wpm typing speeds are not beneficial to a typist over the long run because one does not type constantly. Possibly the interuptions needed for thinking and other activities mitigate productivity gains due to fast typing. For me though, being able to "flush my output buffer" sooner rather than later lets me think more fluidly and effectively. Naturally I assume that other people's mental pattern differences result in different typing benefits.
In terms of interface design, comparison of stylus input to keyboard input bears little fruit because they are generally used in different situations. For voice recogniton, assuming a high quality natural language interpreter, I would still rather type than speak my commands. For me it is faster, and I wouldn't have to sound like an idiot. Speaking "delete last word" is a lot slower than hitting ctrl-shift, <- , backspace. If instead there was a verbal shorthand, that could be fast, but that would be another skill to learn and could sound moronic. Imagine a computer lab full of people uttering strange sequences of syllables to their computers.
Ultimately, for those who use computers often enough and have the right brain for it, almost all input can be done with the keyboard. If you can memorize all the hotkeys, they are much more efficient than button hunting with the mouse. Most people, I gather, dot not make good hotkey sponges. The keyboards potential, though, guarantees that it will never go extinct. At least, not until a long time from now when the world's computing environment evolves beyond recognition.
For people who don't need the computer that much, perhaps it's true that the time would be better spent learning concepts rather than typing skills. On the other hand, the easier it is to use the computer, the more you will use it. The more you use it, the more you pick up and internalize the concepts employed in its design. So I would say that time should be devoted to both typing and understanding. To really determine the best balance to the mixture though, you'd need to do a lot of trials and see how average students do.
"Humanity lives and dies by its capabilities of communication, or lack thereof."
for most people typing on a keyboard, they will only be using one keymap however If you write in other languages touch typing does very little good. The Polish alphabet for instance has ó in addition to a standard english key map and the Z and Y are reversed for a lot of keyboards. As a touch typest I would have no chance of writing on these kyboards but generally I manage ok. A natural Polish keyboard isn't very good for C++ thou, since borland thinks i am using a key board shortcut each time I try to use | (alt w) However being a nontouch typist means I usually review what I have written. perhaps this is a more useful skill than touch typing.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
For now and the years to come, typing is a must. In many companies, too many (often elderly) people in senior management position rely for typing on their secretary or whatever. Besides from the fact that it is expensive, it is also very inefficient. In a time where email is often extremely important, it is a must that you can type yourself! I dare to state that companies, where senior management rely on secretaries for their typing stuff (even simple emails), simply lack competitive edge. And there are plenty of those companies. I mean: I don't want to pay a Euro for each Manager I encounter that calls his secretary to bring up a folder with printed emails, when I say "I mailed you four days ago .... "
:) :)
On typing vs. voicerecog, handwriting and such: right now, no system beats anyone typing. And believe me, as an addicted Palm Graffiti user, I know. I'm fast with it, but I can't beat someone typing. It's good for short notes, but not good enough for something that involves multiple sentences. And I certainly tried: I wrote an 9Kb Xmas story on my Palm using graffiti
Since 4 months I use a P900 by SE. It has a 'better-than-graffiti' (no troll!) handwriting set, but it still doesn't beat a keyboard, so I still carry the foldable bluetooth thing around
I msyelf learned typing blindfolded on old mechanical machines in the early '80's, using 10 fingers. However, back then I was doing something with code and that meant using six fingers at most. Especially since I did a lot of Ansi related stuff. Then I got this internship at the Dutch IRS and they forced me to use all 10 fingers (if you know how, you better use 'm!).... I hated them at that time, because those 6 fingers where sooooo fast, but looking back, I think it is the best thing I got from my education.
No offence ( your typing skill is impressive ) but maybe you should pay more attention to thinking than typing. We all know neurons in the brain fire allot faster than you can hit a key on your keyboard. Templates are usefull.
You know what a template is? Not c++ templates or anything like that but just plain templates. Whether you are programming or just writing. The more templates you have the better. If you find yourself reusing certain blocks of code or text over and over, its useful.
Also, those who use T9 type text on mobile phones will know its use. The predictive text program calculates what you are going to type and then finishes the word for you based on how often you have used words matching part of the string before etc. I think it can even be modified to learn slang and slang acronyms.
These I feel are the ways to typing in the future.
Import a template and then modify it with T9.
Of couse you will still need to do plain typing like I'm doing here right now, but you still can...
Touch typing itself is not bad, the problem is when people are taught old fashioned typing conventions that don't apply to computers. That is the part of typing that is a waste of time.
I can type maybe 30 WPM or so without touch typing. After 17+ years my fingers sort of memorized where the QUERTY keys are, so I can type without looking at the keyboard with very little errors (error rate usually goes up as soon as I realize that I am not looking at the keyboard, go figure). The problem is that my method HURTS!
Touch typists use their fingers more efficiently, so as long as they keep proper wrist alignment their hands won't hurt as bad as a guy like me that types very fast with 2-4 fingers.
Fast typing is great when you are IMing, it is the one thing that makes it feel like a conventional conversation.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Most kids can rattle out 60wpm
The trouble is its on a phone keyboard and cnt b rd b mst ppl.
Funny - everyone, as usual, has ignore most of the question. This was pretty much an opportunity for people to brag about their typing skills. Whatever.
To answer your question, typing is going to be 'good to have' for quite a while. The state of voice recog is silly. It doesn't work that well - try it out on your cell phone, which isn't REALLY doing it. It's a LOT easier to do when you restrict what CAN be said, and even that doesn't work taht well. It's going to be a Looonnngg time before you can sit down at your computer and talk to it faster than a hunt and pecker can enter what you said.
Anyone who says otherwise is watching too much TV.
Basically TouchTypying is a skill that is only useful for COPYING text. You gain the luxury of looking at what you're doing if you are creating as you type. Then review / edit when you've done a section.
Likewise, typing speed is only the most important element if there is no thought required during the typing.
In other words, if you are more than a copyist style and content are more important than raw speed.
Never forget; the qwerty layout is a deliberately AWFUL keyboard design, meant to slow you down; dating from the earliest typewriters which jammed very easily.
Also remember that the very best way to get RSI is to touch type for long periods.
Sure !
Juste compare
- How long does it take to someone skilled to type a sentence
- How long does it take him to write it down
- How long does it take him to pronounce it
Or about accuracy
- How often did you see mistyped sentences (I see them seldom) ?
- How often is a handwritten sentence ugly and almost unreadable ? (for me It's very often. But I'm a doctor, and we are known to write things in an absolutely unreadable way !)
- How often do you find someone who an accent so terrible you can't understand anything ?
And pratical point of view
- Try imagining using auto-completing using voice dictate....
The only advantages of alternate input methods is the learning curve : everyone knows to speak or write, but it takes time until someone learns to type fast.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Typing is still a necessary skill !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
So what the hell is an "EQ'er"? (this could go on forever...)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I guess my grammar school was ahead of their time teaching us to learn typing on typewriters in third and fourth grade. They told us it was to prepare us at a young age for the high tech world we would be living in the future where typing skills would be essential for everyone. How right they were.............
Ask those same adults WHY they can't type. I'll bet it is because they just haven't taken the time to do it. These days, if you work with computers and you can't type (and you want to) then you are simply lazy.
When I was in high school, we had TRS-80s in the computer classes. We also had electric typewriters for the typing class. Back then, if you didn't have a typewriter, it would have been hard to learn how to type because not everyone was into computers. My mom had an old manual typewriter at home, and that thing was a PITA to use. But she could fly on it. When she first started using a keyboard, she almost drove her fingers right through it. :-) My point is that with the proliferation of computers, and free programs that teach you how to type, if you aren't learning then quit bitching about it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Judging by the use of improper English on this site I'd suggest that teaching kids proper usage of the language might be a better focus of efforts in schools.
As far as typing is concerned, again using /. as reference, yes, typing should be taught.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
7" inches? I never really tried any natural growth pills either. and I know fuck incorectly but what is comfortable for me. I think correct fucking is whatever is comfortable and quick for the user, I'm over 9" and do 3-somes consistently. with a 2% std rate.
...so I haf 2 write using voice softwhere ewe insensitive cod!
Rican
Want a free iPod?
Unsolicited advertising aside, when I first learned to type (back as a little kid, probably somewhere around 1st grade), I remember learning the keyboard as a series of word-pictures. I knew that "print" involved kind of a lasso picture on the keyboard as you hit the keys. Ditto with things like "goto" or "input." (Yes, I made my start with BASIC. Please, look away from my shame...) Anyone else find themselves learning this way? You know, seeing the words as chunks to type rather than parsing it as letters initially?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
As someone that has worked the hell(p) desk and done much end user support (haven't we all), please teach the kids some computer skills. Typing will naturally follow.
When I started with PeeCees, I was a hunt-and-peck sort of fellow. Now I can touch-type with the most average of them at ~40 WPM.
And when I say computer skills, Word and Excel and Powerpoint are great, but an entry level PC Troubleshooting and Maintenance class would just rock. I know that I would have been there, at least.
Typing is a basic computer skill!
I learned to type way back in hi-skool in 1984. I remember the teacher with the yardstick, ready to whack someone's hands when their wrists were touching the machine. I think I managed 28wpm at the time. I can pretty much type without looking at the keys, but special characters always throw me off, and I have to look and any keyboard I use MUST have the large backspace key! Any others and I just cannot use it. I never did learn the proper fingering, so different fingers hit various keys depending on what I just felt was best. Since I've always been a good speller, I think it was easy since you have to know proper grammar and punctuation when typing. I can't stand this shortcut typing style (how ru?) It takes me longer just to interpret it. I still see exec types still typing with two fingers.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
How could anyone possibly think touch typing is not a necessary skill for a computer professional? Imagine if you couldn't change gears in your car without looking at the gearstick...?
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
Most people cannot think critically/logically while typing as fast as 60 WPM. In software development related jobs if someone was coding at that speed or even writing documentation, they would probably wasting the majority of their time.
If one has a job that involves writing (documentation, email, advertising), I find it difficult to believe that they would be able to compose well structured documents with good grammar at those speeds.
Seems to me that jobs where it would be a necessary skill would be those that involved dictation or something similar.
If you TOUCH a computer in your job, then it's 98% likely that you have to type. I don't know too many jobs that only require a person to point and click. Not only is it important in word processing, but also in accounting, creating presentations, database entry, programming and using e-mail. Voice recognition has a long way to go to match normal speech speed, whereas a good typist can type as fast as most people speak and be more accurate.
Personally, I think the typing should be learned as early as possible. A child should be exposed to a computer and learn the basic workings of it, but once they learn to type it opens the door to endless possibilities since the limitation of clicking is taken away. My children starting using a computer when they were 2 1/2 to 3 years old. They're quite proficient with the mouse now. As my elder child enters first grade this year, I'm certain it's time to introduce her to the keyboard.
As for me, I learned to touch type in 9th grade on an IBM selectric. I only attended half a year due to a "health class" requirement, but I reached 80-85wpm with 100%. Just took one of the free online tests (thanks for that), and it puts me at 72wpm with 98% accuracy. I type constantly all day: e-mails, documentation, purchase orders, cmd line. I don't even use UNIX that often. Ask a UNIX person how important typing is.
Still an important skill IMO.
I never took a proper typing class but I can exceed 90 WPM with my own personal typing style. Much like having accented speech or walking with an unusual gait, I have a particular typing style. It isn't touch typing so much as "knowing where the keys are" and "knowing where my fingers are" ... it can be problematic on ergonomic keyboards, but otherwise all is well.
I picked up on typing in chatrooms.
Find a chatroom on a topic you enjoy so you're forced to engage in conversation. When typing is the only way to get the satisfaction you're after, you'll find yourself a far better typist as time goes on.
The point is: typing is something you can learn as you go, while basic computer knowledge (the ON button, the difference between a Macintosh and a PC, etc) provides a much better foundation for computer usage. The computer is just a tool--do you want to know how it works so that you can adapt it to your needs, or do you want to only know how to do certain specific things with it so that it is otherwise completely useless? I think that if there were a stronger base of computer users who had this general knowledge, people would be less apprehensive with regard to technology, because more people would have a brother or a cousin or an uncle who had the basic know-how and could make those that lacked even the basics feel comfortable.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Not viable technologies yet. Few people can handwrite faster than they can type and even if they did, recognition software is far from perfect. Don't get me started on voice recognition, probably the single most useless technology I've used in the last 10 years and it keeps appearing!
typing won't be obsolete any time now. I learned as a hunt-and-pecker, due to 20 years of practice I pretty much can touch-type now and I'm quite slow let me tell you, at 40 wpm. But it gets me by faster than any handwriter or voice recognizer.
I can't find it anymore, but Adams used to include a bit in his bio about how typing was the most useful thing he learned in his entire education. If I remember right, he took typing his senior year of HS, while his contender for valedictorian took something like AP organic chemistry. He concluded with a taunt about how he ended up as valedictorian for acing typing, that he enjoys typing every day, and he never would have used organic chemistry.
Yes, I made my start with BASIC. Please, look away from my shame...
Don't be ashamed of getting started with basic. After all, it wasn't alwyas regarded with the distain it is today.
Anyone else remember when Bill Gates challenged anyone to a programming contest? Quick Basic vs. Any language of choice? I can't find a reference on the web -- but its mentioned in "Fire in the Valley" (or at least in my second edition copy)
Required reading for internet skeptics
The myth i was refering to, is that dvorak is so fastlly superior and that the qwerty keyboard was designed primarily to slow down typists.
I'll consede that the dvorak is slightly faster, but being a Java programmer, speed isn't my primary concern.
But to your points...
The net effect of key placement to avoid jamming was to speed up typists. The reason the t and the h key when used quickly together jammed has to do with the location of their strikers in the arrary of strikers. (If you have ever used an old typewriter like that, the closer 2 strikers are to each other, the greater chance they'll jam. Rappidly hitting two letters who's strikers come from completly opposite sides of the array increases the rate at which you can strike them because only the very end of the striker has to clear the strike area for the other key to strike. With keys that are close together, the arms of the striker interfere with each other.)
The point being.. though.. if i consiously trained myself on qwerty using proper ergonomic typing techniques (wrist position) for 3 weeks, I'd be a faster typist then i am now (60wpm), with fewer problems (assuming i have problems now, which i don't).
OK. I scored a 50 with seven errors that brings me down to 43. I'm a sysadmin not a programmer so maybe I don't type as much or something. I don't know. Anyways, obviously I need to improve my typing skills so can anyone recommend a fun typing program? I used to have a game called Typing of the Dead which was kind of a combination of Mavis Beacon and House of the Dead. It was a lot of fun but only ran on Windows 98 and there is no way I am setting up win98 just for a typing tutor. Any suggestions?
Last I heard, only Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, even in high schools.
The only class my mother ever forced me to take was typing. It was the best thing she ever did for me.
Through the constant use of AIM and other forms of messaging people will learn to type faster. Basic computer knowlge is a better than learning how to type. I never learned how to type from school i hated those classes. Giving general knowlege may hold to be a better method of teaching computers to youngsters. Also, as time goes by eventualy typing is going to become obsolete in most areas of technology, due to advances in voice recognition.
The Christian science monitor has an interesting article on how many schools have stopped teaching touch typing is necessary offices due and are not insane that basic computer skills are more important. I'd agree with the letter, but what about typing? I learn to dive on an IBM selected blue (and stillborn one, is a matter of fact) in the meet- 1980s, and the last time I was tested, touch-died at around 60 WDM. Is this an obstinate you? With handwriting and was commissioned ignored is, easy using aquatic keyboard with nine out of ten fingers someone was not a more?
Both original and recognised text included:
The Christian science monitor has an interesting article on how many schools have stopped teaching touch typing as a is necessary office skill and are now often saying offices due and are not insane that basic computer skills are more important. I'd agree with the latter letter, but what about typing? I learned to type a learn to dive on an IBM Selectric II selected blue (and still own stillborn one, as is a matter of fact) in the mid meet-1980s, and the last time I was tested, touch-typed died at around 60 wpm WDM. Is this an obsolete skill obstinate you? With handwriting and voice recognition technologies was commissioned ignored is, is easy using a QWERTY aquatic keyboard with nine out of ten fingers something someone worth knowing anymore was not a more?
Software used: Dragon Naturally Speaking 7, with minimal user training. UK English language profile used, though I am not a native speaker and have some minor speech defects.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Ktouch is good for linux but are there any good free touch typing tutors for windows? I remember looking around a few months when I was thinking about learning to type and didn't really find much.
Thanks