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?"
I dont thiunk typiong is a necasary skil ath all!
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
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.
It's a pity one of those keys isn't "shift" every once in a while.
For some reason, I keep thinking of a scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty is seated at a circa-1980's computer trying to get it to operate.
Scotty: "Computer!"
Man in room (handing him a mouse): "Maybe you use this."
Scotty (speaking into the mouse like it was a microphone): "COMPUTER!"
Man in Room: "Maybe you should just use the keyboard"
Scotty: "A keyboard? How quaint!"
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.
words per minute? you insensitive americans. i believe the SI measumerunt is l/s (letters per second).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
As bash.org says in one of the best quotes:
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse" and "helping your uncle jack off a horse".
--
Shameless Karmawhoring for Charity
That's because the Mac UI is so unbelievably perfect, that it hasn't changed in the period between a Mac SE and the NCC1701. Hadn't you noticed the portrait of Steve Jobs hanging in the back of the engine room, all these years?
Flame suit on!
So, the Mac UI is a bunch of unlabeled switches and random blinking lights? ;)
--RJ
I was a fast enough typist that when some joker hit the 'bold' key on my typewriter and it had to double-strike everything, I'd have a whole line in the buffer by the end of a timed test. The teacher would call 'stop' and all the noise in the room would stop, except for one single typewriter - mine - going clickety-click, clickety-clik all by itself.
Then there was the blonde next to me who always used 'bold' because it sounded like she was typing faster...
Weird, so do I. For the record, I have all 10.