[HN Gopher] Learning to Touch Type Again
___________________________________________________________________
Learning to Touch Type Again
Author : Decabytes
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-07-13 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.deusinmachina.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.deusinmachina.net)
| YellowSuB wrote:
| I spent a long time trying to learn touch typing on a regular
| keyboard but I could never get it to stick, it always felt like
| the keys were off, due to the stagger, and I would frequently hit
| two keys at the same time. Getting an ortholinear keyboard
| (planck) really helped me and finally I can touch type at about
| 70-90wpm without the awkwardness of staggered keys. It feels like
| the keys are exactly where they are supposed to be, instead of
| always being slightly off angle. I guess my brain is just wired
| differently or something. I don't think there is any way to go
| back to a regular keyboard for me, which was a minor issue when I
| started working, but I started bringing my ortho to work and it
| has worked nicely for me.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I would frequently hit two keys at the same time
|
| For me, it was as simple as switching out my mechanical
| keyboard for a mecha-membrane keyboard, thankfully. Although,
| now I struggle with anything else! :shrug:
| medeshago wrote:
| I had the same experience, but with a preonic. It's not that
| hard for me to use a regular keyboard but it definitely feels
| akward and when I do I type slower and more prone to errors.
| YellowSuB wrote:
| Yeah I've been thinking about getting a preonic, or at least
| something slightly larger than the planck, at times I find it
| a bit too minimal, also I would like to have two orthos so I
| don't have to lug one to work every day.
| rgoulter wrote:
| For emacs, I've found that putting the modifier keys on home row
| works well. i.e. tapping the key works as normal, and holding the
| key acts as Alt/Win/Ctrl/Shift.
|
| An advantage to doing things this way is reducing hand
| movement/stretching.
|
| Another advantage to that technique is it'd work with pretty much
| any keyboard. (Even keyboards which have large spacebars).
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| I've been toutchtyping from late elementary school, and do it
| "too much" especially with a genetic predisposition for fine
| joint problems, so I'm always trying different input devices.
|
| I do OK on splits, except for tending to reach for "b" with my
| right hand. I've mostly corrected that as I've used them more.
| They certainly help with wrists and shoulders, especially being
| able to tent, and take the least retraining per ergonomic
| benefit.
|
| I haven't tried an ortholinear/columnar, it's somewhere on the
| list.
|
| I _can not_ get myself fully acclimated to a non-qwerty layout,
| whether mechanically conventional or not, its just too deep in my
| hands. I 've been making an occasional pass at dvorak since the
| mid 2000s, and somewhat more frequent and dedicated attempts to
| get a BAT/Spiffchorder style chorder (specifically a left handed
| one) into my fingers for the last decade or so, and I always end
| up sore and slow because I start to twitch toward the qwerty
| motion before making the right one for the other design. It
| doesn't help that they're unusual enough that there aren't (AFIK)
| any good tutor programs suited to the progression on that style
| of chorder. Better every time I try, but never quite good enough
| for real work.
|
| I suspect a certain degree of limited benefit using something
| unusual, in the same way using a non-bash shell increases
| friction with the rest of the universe.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I wonder how words per minute (WPM) is actually measured. For
| example, an illustration in the article seems to indicate that
| the speed of 1 minute of typing with 12 errors is a valid data
| point.
|
| I learned touch typing on a manual typewriter using Gregg book[0]
| (summer school prior to freshman year of high school), and seem
| to recall that the official WPM test involved something like 5
| minutes of transcribing a provided text, and nothing you typed
| after the fifth error counted at all. So obviously a much
| stricter standard. My best at the end of the class was something
| like 42 WPM, and I haven't tested it since then, but I do think
| I'm pretty fast and with good accuracy.
|
| The errors mattered a lot more on a manual typewriter due to time
| needed to correct (or start over). And of course most typing
| nowadays is probably to generate original content rather than to
| transcribe an existing text.
|
| [0]https://archive.org/details/greggtyping191se00rowe/page/n9/m..
| .
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I found this at archive.org from a Gregg book circa 1960s.
| Items 1-16 not shown are about mistakes relating to pagination,
| margins, characters too light to be easily read, etc.
|
| There was a time when this test was a primary factor in certain
| job interviews.
|
| ------------------
|
| Calculation of test results
|
| 17. Gross Strokes. Strokes are counted correctly by considering
| the entire copy as having been typed in one continuous line.
| Each character or space in such a line counts as one stroke.
|
| 18. Gross Words. The total gross words are the total gross
| strokes typed, divided by 5. Do not add strokes in repeated
| matter or subtract strokes in omitted matter. NOTE: The count
| given with most test copy is the cumulative gross word count
| (strokes/5).
|
| 19. Penalty. For each error charged under these rules, 10 words
| must be deducted from the gross words.
|
| 20. Net Words. After deducting the penalty from the gross
| words, the remainder represents the total net words. The
| typist's net rate (words a minute-- wam ) is computed by
| dividing his total net words by the number of minutes he typed.
| Fractions of .500 or less are discarded; fractions over .500
| are credited to the next whole number. EXAMPLE:
| A typist writes 5,808 gross strokes with 8 errors in 15 minutes
| -- 5,808/5=1,161.6 or 1,162 gross words
| 8(errors)X10=80 (penalty) 1,162 - 80=1,082 net words
| 1,082/15 (minutes) =72.1 net words a minute
| trane_project wrote:
| GNU Typist was good enough when I had to learn to type on a
| similar keyboard.
|
| Ironically, I am now very slow to work with normal keyboards.
| melling wrote:
| "As someone who easily spends more than 60 hours a week at the
| keyboard gaming, coding, working, and writing, I am no stranger
| to wrist pain. Particularly the part where my thumb and wrist
| meet on my right hand."
|
| Patient: "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this."
|
| Doctor: "Then don't do that!"
|
| Perhaps it would be a good idea to reduce typing in general?
|
| We've got voice input that's getting much better.
|
| We had this a decade ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI
|
| Some sort of gesture based input? AR/VR has helped improve this?
|
| Hopefully a combination of keyboard, voice, and gestures could
| reduce RSI issues.
| iib wrote:
| I've been trying to find the modern equivalent of that video,
| and nothing seemed to be good enough. Do you know of a good
| setup, preferably local and emacs-based?
| aliceryhl wrote:
| The best tool for voice-to-text for programmers is Talon.
|
| https://talonvoice.com/
| dietrichepp wrote:
| > We've got voice input that's getting much better.
|
| Voice input for tasks like writing has been "solved" for at
| least twenty years now, you just need to get your software set
| up to use it. As I understand it, the improvements to speech
| recognition these days are making it easier to handle noisy
| environments, different accents, more languages, that sort of
| thing, but if you just care about accuracy and productivity in
| a controlled environment, then we've had good solutions
| available for a long time now. If you travel back in time to
| 2003 and decide to write a novel using speech recognition, it
| will still be a pleasant experience--you shell out some cash
| for a system like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, train it to
| recognize your voice, and get working. Your accuracy and
| productivity will improve over time as you get in the habit,
| and as the system adapts to your voice.
|
| If you can do a portion of your 60 hours using voice, I
| recommend it. Take some load off your hands.
| bsder wrote:
| > Voice input for tasks like writing has been "solved" for at
| least twenty years now, you just need to get your software
| set up to use it.
|
| So, where is the Linux writeup on how to do this?
|
| The last time I tried to put my control keys on a footpad, it
| was a pain in the ass. The issue was you couldn't send a
| modifier from one HID device and a key event from a different
| one and have the OS pick them up and combine them. So, you
| had to get a special keyboard with a special footpad that you
| plugged into the special input on the keyboard.
|
| I'd love to do a hybrid of voice/keyboard but I haven't seen
| any good writeups. I don't need everything on voice, but it
| would be nice to get some of the things that cause me to move
| my hands in the most contorted ways to be better. Hell, just
| putting _scrolling_ on voice would be a big win given all the
| web "progressive scrolling" shittiness seems to require you
| to scrub the hell out of the scroll wheel nowadays.
| [deleted]
| kortex wrote:
| >> keyboard gaming
|
| > We've got voice input that's getting much better
|
| I have this hilarious mental image of someone playing Diablo
| by yelling "Double-you Double-you Double-you aye aye dee dee
| dee dee"
|
| Jokes aside,
|
| > If you can do a portion of your 60 hours using voice, I
| recommend it. Take some load off your hands.
|
| is great advice. Much of preventing repetitive stress
| injuries is reducing repetitive motion. I definitely ought to
| use more voice input, but there's an inertia aspect to it I
| need to overcome.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| The keyboard injury makes me wonder why this is a problem for
| some people but not for others.
|
| Like shouldn't this be an epidemic?
| jstanley wrote:
| I think it comes down to how you're sitting, and whether you do
| something about it when you get the first hint of pain.
|
| I don't get any wrist pain at all when sitting at my desk and
| typing on my keyboard, but if I try to type on a laptop while
| lying down for more than about half an hour, my wrists start
| hurting. Part of me wants to carry on, but I know it's just
| going to make the wrists hurt more, so I just stop if they
| start hurting, and the problem doesn't seem to be getting any
| worse.
| ff_within wrote:
| bad wrist genetics/poor posture/weak wrists/grip
| strength/uneven floor/uneven desk. i have noticed many of my
| ergo issues are reduced/eliminated if i have been exercising
| regularly, particularly using my forearms.
| ff_within wrote:
| I really like full maks minimo. Once I got over moving the
| modifiers the increase in comfort over qwerty or even colemak is
| really good. Its basically a different typing experience
| entirely. Just rolling your fingers over the home row randomly
| will shit out half the words or more in most sentences. people
| who have not tried a better layout don't realize how much more
| work qwerty is to type for no reason. Thats most of the reason
| for all of these split keyboards and other ergo shit. Qwerty is
| just that bad to type on.
| junwen wrote:
| [dead]
| mattrighetti wrote:
| I started touch typing with keybr too, took almost two months to
| get to my usual 90 wpm.
|
| I remember practicing for an hour a day, it is fun after you nail
| the first 4 letters so don't give up too early.
|
| Now I am using a Corne v3 which I built myself and I am
| considering investing more time switching to another keyboard
| layout like dvorak or colemark, can anyone recommend it? Was it
| worth it?
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| Both Dvorak and Colemak seem better than QWERTY but it's
| difficult to choose between those alternatives. I started using
| Colemak a few days ago because it's more modern than Dvorak
| (whatever that means) but I'm still not sure if it's the best
| choice.
|
| One bonus of Colemak is that it has the same location for the
| keys XCV used for cut, copy, and paste.
| TheRoque wrote:
| To be fair, I think that DVORAK is overkill. If you want a
| good compromise between ergonomics and ease of use,
| definitely go for Colemak. Also a way better choice if you
| are European, and occasionally need some accents or
| characters that are not on the Dvorak keyboard. If you are
| crazy about min-maxing every aspect of your typing, IMO it
| becomes a rabbit hole: programmer's dvorak, colemak DH and
| other mods etc. etc. Don't forget that the more your setup is
| away from the standards, the more it can be a pain to go back
| to the standard, or have other people use your setup
| IndrekR wrote:
| Used Dvorak (with some modifications for Estonian language)
| for few years around 2005. Then switched back to QWERTY as
| this is available on almost every computer. Was hard to
| switch back, but got used to it again in a week. Based on
| this experience I think alternative layouts are a bit
| overrated.
| masters3d wrote:
| I am learning a new layout that does not have xcv in the same
| place but I fix this by using a layer that keeps the same
| positions for xcv when holding down cmd/ctrl
| rgoulter wrote:
| Dvorak is much more comfortable to use than qwerty.
|
| The main cost is the fingers needing to re-learn motor memory.
| Likely with QWERTY your fingers 'knew' where the letters where.
| When I learned to touch-type Dvorak, my fingers took some time
| to adjust, and I had a hard time typing on QWERTY.
|
| With a separate column-staggered keyboard like the Corne, I
| imagine it's easier to retain the row-staggered QWERTY on
| standard keyboards, & touch-typing whatever on the Corne.
| nico_h wrote:
| There are other layouts, like BEAKL, MTGAP, Hands Down (Neu,
| Gold,Vibranium...). The current recommendation for Colemak on
| split kb is Colemak Mod DH, but i think the optimal layout
| depends on the ratio of code to prose that you use.
|
| There is a subreddit dedicated to this very discussion, and the
| more general subbredit ( r/ergoMechanicalKeyboard) migrated to
| Lemmy https://lemmy.world/c/ergomechkeyboards
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/KeyboardLayouts/comments/14m5hpy/no...
| bbojan wrote:
| I've tried many (too many) layouts and my recommendation would
| be Colemak-DH.
|
| If you have a programmable keyboard, feel free to experiment
| with symbols, letters, etc. Home-row mods are also something
| that I warmly recommend.
| dannyz wrote:
| I was starting to get wrist pain in my right hand at the end of
| the day. I believed it was from never learning to type
| properly, I only used two fingers on my right hand even though
| I could type relatively fast.
|
| I tried many times to re-train myself to type properly, but
| with proper technique I was only typing at half of my normal
| speed and would give up quickly.
|
| In the end I switched to colemak to force myself to re-learn
| how to type with proper hand technique. It took a year but now
| I can type faster than I used to be able to with QWERTY and
| without any pain. It was definitely worth it for me, but there
| are enough annoyances with everything being QWERTY by default
| that I wouldn't recommend anyone make the switch without a
| reason to do so.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| I had the same experience switching to Dvorak. It forced me
| to relearn how to type, and when I was relearning, I made
| sure to learn properly. The switch, and relearning to type,
| 95% solved my RSI problems.
| catboybotnet wrote:
| keybr.com is a neat site. Used it a lot when I was working hard
| on fixing my typing posture (don't knock it, it'll save you from
| a lifetime of RSI ;v;).
| Decabytes wrote:
| Lots of Dvorak users in the comments, but does anyone use colemak
| or workman? How does it feel? Is it awkward from programming?
| Also for those using Dvorak, How is programming and gaming?
| rgoulter wrote:
| For gaming, I use the same solution as the OP: have a 'profile'
| where I switch to QWERTY for gaming.
|
| For programming.. for vim and emacs (or helix, whatever) you
| end up memorising the mnemonics by the letters rather than by
| position.
|
| Specifically for vim's hjkl (where the positioning of the
| letters is significant), Dvorak is not so bad because the jk
| keys are together. (And h is to the left of l).
| ff_within wrote:
| colemak is fine for both. the odd game or two may have
| something hard coded, but its usually zxcv.
| dgrabla wrote:
| To learn in a non-tedious way I recommend the games "The typing
| of the dead overkill" (Linux Port) and also the more modern
| "Epistory"
| rcarmo wrote:
| I'm doing something a little more extreme: I decided to get
| myself an https://artsey.io 8-key Bluetooth keyboard, not because
| I was aiming to type faster (I do just fine with QWERTY, and
| would find it really odd to depend on a different layout), but
| because I wanted something I could use for short sentences
| alongside a mouse.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| As someone who is teaching themself to type properly (home row
| keys and multiple fingers) but can touch type somewhat fast (130
| wpm) this website https://www.keybr.com/ is truly amazing. I
| struggled teaching myself how to type properly and this website
| is really good at abosrbing the good patterns. Funny enough
| practicing correct typing (home rows + all fingers) lets me type
| faster and more accurately with my own system Ive designed. I
| practice typing speed tests daily so I can confirm this is true.
| IndrekR wrote:
| I started practicing with Keybr few years ago, but switched to
| superb https://monkeytype.com/ at some point when Keybr
| capabilities started limiting the progress. Usually using
| English 10k database.
| bobobob420 wrote:
| I use monkey type for sprints, see the max I can output in
| 15sec, 30sec, 1 minute. I improved my speed from 105 --> 130
| primarily using 10fastfingers.com I find typeracer to be the
| most superb site as it includes punctuation and is actual
| real life passages. You can also compete with other people
| which is very useful. I find sites like monkeytype better for
| benchmarking speed than learning to type.
| Zambyte wrote:
| A few years ago I also got a split + columnar keyboard (ZSA
| moonlander). When I made the switch, I also switched to Dvorak
| from QWERTY. It was a brutal first month grinding typing
| practice, but I'm really glad I did it. My posture has felt much
| better with the split keyboard, and my hands have felt much less
| strained with the columnar + Dvorak.
|
| I don't think I type much faster than I did before switching
| (maybe from like 80 WPM to 90 WPM), but I feel much more
| comfortable typing as fast as I can for much longer.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I'm also a happy Dvorak convert. Yes, it's tough at first.
| Switches back to Qwerty also take some getting used to.*
|
| I believe there is a universal benefit of learning a non-QWERTY
| layout. Many people learn QWERTY first when they are young, and
| as a side-effect, they carry with themselves the baggage of bad
| typing habits. While making an intentional effort to touch type
| with QWERTY can help significantly, I believe it can't compare
| to the benefits of starting from fresh with something new.
|
| *I think I was lucky to have a job where I needed to make those
| switches often, so I gained proficiency quickly.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > Many people learn QWERTY first when they are young, and as
| a side-effect, they carry with themselves the baggage of bad
| typing habits.
|
| Absolutely! This was a huge factor in my decision to switch.
| I learned to type quickly on QWERTY mostly from FPS shooters
| - which meant that I would start typing while moving my hand
| from my mouse to my keyboard, which meant that I would type
| much more with my left hand than my right. I probably used my
| left hand for 60 to 70% of the keyboard, rather than 50/50
| for each hand. I really wanted to learn to type properly, but
| breaking old habits on such a familiar layout was hard.
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| In the last couple years I tried a couple resources to practice
| touch typing and even decided to build my own, I practiced mostly
| on it now: typefaster.app
| mellosouls wrote:
| Another upvote for keybr here, a couple of weeks last year half
| an hour a day got me touch typing.
|
| Also recommended: typelit.io, where you type books out.
|
| For a small subscription you can upload your own books,
| convenient for bookclub/typing practice killing-two-birds
| efforts.
|
| https://www.typelit.io/
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Typing books is half the battle for programmers (if you are
| one). I bet your wpm drops in half once you start needing
| common-code characters:
|
| http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/
|
| The one thing I struggle with is arrow keys and/or ctrl+arrow
| to go the end of the word or needing home/end to go to the end
| of the line. I don't want a non-standard programmed
| keyboard/layout, but it really slows things down when writing
| code.
| brenainn wrote:
| https://typing.io/ is a good one for practice
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Definitely, I was even going to pay for it, but I feel like
| I need to dedicate at least 30m to an hour a day for a
| month, and I just can't be bothered.
| smokel wrote:
| Some people are asking for advice on switching to Dvorak. Here is
| my life story:
|
| I grew up typing Qwerty using only four fingers for typing
| letters, and my right-hand thumb for pressing the space bar. I
| could type pretty fast, which was especially useful for having
| heated discussions on irc. My typing speed also got me a job
| offer during the first dot com bubble.
|
| At around 20, I switched to Dvorak, because I learned about the
| silly history of the Qwerty layout, and how Dvorak would result
| in more typing in less time. Over a period of two weeks, I worked
| my way up from the Beavis and Butthead lessons (uuuu hhhh ...) up
| to using all ten fingers (apart from the thumb on my left-hand,
| which isn't doing much apart from the occasional Alt or Super
| here and there.)
|
| In this training period I suffered from terrible headaches. In
| retrospect, I think the main pathways in my brain connected my
| thoughts directly to the Qwerty layout, and this needed a
| complete rewiring. Also, during this period I could not respond
| quickly to people on irc who were obviously wrong about
| something. The frustration was enormous.
|
| Eventually, my typing speed on TypeRacer plateaued somewhere at
| around 100 wpm. That's a lot less than Sean Wrona, but still
| requires you to perform a test to check if you didn't cheat.
|
| Switching from Qwerty to Dvorak was really hard, especially in
| the beginning. It took about five years before I could work on
| somebody else's machine. I'm also hardwired to Emacs key
| bindings, so that's a limiting factor as well. Also, I can't seem
| to type Dvorak with only one finger, when I'm eating a snack for
| instance. This is still possible with Qwerty! And I can recite
| the entire Qwerty layout in a pub at night, but I require a
| keyboard to say aoeui.
|
| In my early days of Dvorak, I wrote some utilities that
| calculated the travel distance that my fingers would make if I
| were to retype the entire bible. Depending on how you looked at
| it, Dvorak required about 5 to 30% less finger movement.
| Unfortunately, when you put in the Linux source tree, with
| numbers, curly braces, and other symbols, the advantage isn't so
| big.
|
| What I do notice though, after ~20 years of Dvorak, is that it
| feels much more fluent than what I observe at my Qwerty typing
| coworkers. I guess what _really_ helped for lowering the risk of
| wrist problems, though, is to remap Caps Lock to an additional
| Control, and using C-p, C-n, C-b, C-f for keyboard navigation and
| C-h for backspace. Switching from keyboard to mouse and back
| really annoys me.
| Tomte wrote:
| Tipp10 is great: https://www.tipp10.com/en/index/
| opan wrote:
| When I last relearned to type with a new layout (Workman), I
| think I started with keybr until I had all the keys in my
| head/hands (One night was enough to turn off the visual of a
| keyboard), then after a bit moved to monkeytype where I turned on
| all the capitalization and symbols and set it to 60 second tests.
| I did daily tests, often many, and would note down when I hit a
| new 5 or 10wpm incremental milestone. I think it was 10wpm jumps
| until progress slowed down, then I went to 5. Within a month or
| two I was pretty close to my old speeds. Once I seemed to stop
| going up significantly in speed anymore, I changed to untimed 50
| word tests, this way I can let loose and it's done when it's
| done. I don't have to worry that I'll get discomfort from going
| all out for too long in a row. I get higher speeds this way, so
| it's not a 1:1 comparison to the settings I learned on, but
| perhaps closer to results I got on other sites in the past like
| 10fastfingers when I used other layouts.
|
| I used to use qwerty, typed over half the letters with my left
| hand, very non-proper technique, but I was quite fast (160wpm is
| the best I recall getting). I had occasional left hand pain, so
| at one point I changed to Dvorak. Fast forward a year or two and
| I've been getting right hand pain which seemed worse than the old
| pain. I built a Pinky4 split ergonomic keyboard (columnar
| stagger). I loved the keyboard, but a month or two in, my pain
| wasn't really solved. I decided to learn Workman because of that.
| I'd considered some others like QGMLWB or Halmak, but Workman was
| pretty unique in that it has 50/50 hand usage, while qwerty is
| left-biased and dvorak is right-biased (the others have a bias as
| well). My hand pain is gone now and I'm extremely happy with both
| Workman and the Pinky4. I configured my layout in the QMK
| firmware, so I can plug my keyboard into whatever and not have to
| tweak OS settings (assuming the computer is set to qwerty).
|
| I would recommend both an ergonomic keyboard and the Workman
| layout, but if you only went with one, changing to Workman may
| have the bigger impact. I would recommend full immersion and not
| running away back to your preferred layout. This ensures fast
| progression and constant progress, though it's frustrating at the
| start for sure.
|
| I use Workman on my phone as well with AnySoftKeyboard. Many
| people say this is ridiculous, but I just don't want to look at
| or use qwerty anywhere if possible. Also, I didn't make the
| layout available, it was already there or I wouldn't have
| bothered probably. I did the same with dvorak previously.
| jedberg wrote:
| It always amuses me when someone sits down at my computer and
| tries to use it. I use the Microsoft split ergo keyboard. It's
| not much different than a regular keyboard, other than the big
| gap down the middle.
|
| But you'd be surprised how many people use the wrong hand for the
| keys near the middle. You can tell every time someone messes up
| when they stab the big empty space and it makes a loud "thunk".
| :)
| thepaulmcbride wrote:
| I went through a very similar exercise recently and wrote about
| it (https://paulmcbride.com/posts/i-learned-how-to-type). I've
| yet to pick up an ergo keyboard, but I can absolutely type faster
| than I once could.
|
| I found both monkey type and keybr to be super helpful.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Tangentially related: I began learning the piano last year at 35
| and, for obvious reasons I suppose, it feels 100% like I'm
| learning how to type all over again. But I'm now old enough to
| really notice and appreciate the progress. Yesterday my left hand
| was jumping around to different chords without even noticing and
| I had that moment of, "oh wow it's happening!"
|
| I'm entering this phase of what I'll call "general purpose use"
| where instead of building the muscle memory for specific "words"
| and phrases, I'm able to just conjure "words" and phrases in
| whatever order I want. Reminds me of the jump from Mavis Beacon
| to actually typing up school reports and whatnot.
| rimunroe wrote:
| > Yesterday my left hand was jumping around to different chords
| without even noticing and I had that moment of, "oh wow it's
| happening!"
|
| I had this experience when picking up the VR rhythm game Beat
| Saber. It felt a lot like learning an instrument. If you're not
| familiar, Beat Saber is a game where you hold two lightsaber-
| type swords and slice blocks in specific directions as they fly
| toward you to the rhythm of a song.
|
| At some point my hands just started moving into the right
| positions without me even consciously registering every block
| coming toward me. I have a distinct memory of seeing a block
| right as it was about to pass me by and thinking that I
| wouldn't have time to cut it before I realized that I was
| already doing so. Nowadays the limiting factor is overcoming
| the physical inertia of my arms in order to move them quickly
| enough.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| The Kinesis Freestyle keyboards are also split, but have a more
| traditional layout. They come both wired and wireless, with the
| bluetooth Freestyle 2 version allowing you to connect to multiple
| devices with the press of a button. It's also much cheaper.
|
| The benefit to these keyboards is they have a more traditional
| layout. This makes it easier to move to different keyboards.
| While the 360 is really nice, it also means you have to learn a
| new way of typing that doesn't map well enough to more
| traditional keyboards.
|
| My wrists don't hurt since using the split keyboard, and find
| that using the split during the day is enough where when I do use
| a non-split keyboard, I'm fine.
| samsquire wrote:
| I bought a split keyboard but when I realised I had to relearn
| everything after trying to use it, I abandoned it. I once used
| DVORAK but I abandoned that too (not overlapping the split key
| keyboard).
|
| I also really liked vimperator, the firefox plugin that let you
| manipulate firefox and click links through the keyboard and
| scroll with vim bindings.
|
| My tastes have completely changed. I no longer want to optimise
| how I do the work that I do do, but innovate or learn brand new
| things.
|
| Switching machines is painful and jarring when you swap from a
| custom configured machine to a default configuration machine. So
| things like keybindings, tmux bindings, zsh customisations, ssh
| shortcuts. I just decided to remember how to use -W so I wasn't
| dependent on ssh shortcuts.
|
| I am just keenly aware that the profit I get from tweaking
| everything has diminishing returns. I would rather spend that
| time learning a new algorithm or playing with some code on
| repl.it.
|
| There is a case for avoiding syntax highlighting too, learn how
| to setup a codebase from scratch, not use autocomplete so you
| really learn how to read and write code. Those I agree with.
|
| I use a trackball out of inertia.
|
| Please note this comment is NOT against tweaking or optimising,
| it's just I think it's fine to not want to do certain things. I
| don't think it's obviously superior or worse, it's just not for
| me.
| woleium wrote:
| Vimperator lives on as pentadactyl and tridactyl
|
| I believe there was also a vim based chromium fork too, but I
| never tried it
| [deleted]
| TheRoque wrote:
| I learned Colemak a year ago so I could touch-type properly,
| because the regular layouts are so sub-optimal that the balance
| between fingers feel so weird, and being on the home row is
| actually not optimal. I definitely am happy with the change. I
| use Colemak mostly for coding, and writing short texts. I would
| switch to my native layout whenever I need to type fast and long
| texts (AZERTY, french layout). I definitely think Colemak is the
| sweet spot for someone wanting to get a better layout, without
| much hastle: it's already on MacOS and Linux, it keeps a lot of
| keys the same as QWERTY (for shortcuts), and it has a ton of
| built-in dead keys for European accents ! I didn't even need to
| remap the vim bindings using it. I may not actually type faster
| (actually I max at 80 WPM now, before it was 100 WPM), but the
| ergonomics just feels so much better.
| nabogh wrote:
| How does colemak work with the cardinal directions, hjkl?
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