Those are for people who can type without looking ;)
Are questions memes now?
A lot of schools don’t because there isn’t a standardized program for teaching it. I know we used a very tough typing game for when we were taught. Not sure if I was slower on the uptake but I worked real hard to get good at touch typing.
Fyi, typing games are weirdly making a comeback on steam and I’m here for it
I played Typing of the Dead a month ago after not playing it since I was a kid. Holds up. I love typing games.
Who hear took a keyboarding class? By keyboard I mean a typewriter.
Me, haha
As Mavis Beacon gently weeps…
I only learned a few years ago, she was not a real person. Just an actress that was used to create a persona. It did help me type tho.
If the dishonesty bothers you, I recommend a more realistic tutor for learning to type: Typing of the Dead.
Turning in her fictional grave.
Carriage returns from the grave.
I had to take “keyboarding” my freshman year of high school ( mid 90s), they had an option to opt out if you could type something like 30 words a minute, which I could, from all my messing around on my home PC.
I will say though, I have long fingers and it’s extremely uncomfortable to type in the “proper” position using 8 fingers across the rows. I ended up making my own hybrid 6 finger system that has served me very well to this day, typically I can average around 50 WPM this way.
Anyways, bypassing keyboarding allowed me to take Basic Programming it its place, and each year after our awesome teacher created a new programming class for us, Pascal, C++, Visual Basic and Java by the time we graduated.
As a gamer I always wanted one of these on the W.
searches
Cheap clear nail polish.
To make it really easy to know where U and H are, because you never want to be unable to type uhhhhh without looking at the keyboard
This comment has been brought to you by Dvorak, it would be great if it were more supported
Why would we need dvorak?
I found it to resolve the problem of my wrists hurting when I type too much.
But the lack of support is basically that for some reason games tend to use it as my keyboard layout (it’s my default) even when I switch to qwerty before starting it up, forcing me to respec the controls. Still worth not being in pain after typing up something, and definitely lower priority than left handed controls, but it is a minor annoyance.
I was required to take typing classes in middle school, and the teach put cardboard over our hands
That must’ve been really uncomfortable with the cardboard bouncing up & down on your knuckles while you’re typing 🤔
The best typing training I ever got was IRC. You had to learn to type fast or some idiot wouldn’t know how wrong he was.
This definitely prepared me for a career where 90% of my interaction with coworkers is via chat.
RuneScape
IRC and Diablo 2 for me. You had to type fucking quick if you wanted to say something while your character was running to the spot you clicked on because you couldn’t click again until you finished and hit enter on that message lol.
it took me quite some time to learn not to automatically append “:D” at the end of messages in business chat
Lol
I took typing lessons back in the mid ‘90’s, which was VERY uncommon for teens to do. When we got the first online multiplayer games, they only had text chat. I certainly had the fastest, foulest mouth in chat 😂
I had a high school class in the mid-90s that taught you how to type. It was taught on typewriters.
There we go!
I spent more time socializing on World of Warcraft than actually leveling. Had lots of friends, and since been happily married to my best one!
Touch typing skills were essential, especially mid-combat.
…Or being the undiagnosed ADHD socialite I was, keeping like 8 running whisper and guild chats going in the game’s single chat window at once… 😂
Arguing with strangers on the internet taught me more than any teacher ever could.
Nuh uh! :p
JK, me too. XD
While I can also say IRC, wasn’t anything like proving someone wrong, just keeping up with the speed of the conversation required being able to type without looking at the keyboard.
Yeah, for me it was all AIM chats, though I had a couple friends who used IRC. But if you wanted to be part of the conversation, you better know how to type. You wanna make a quip? Better be quick, because so does everyone else.
Yeah, I feel like Discord (ugh) got that way quick, too, in more populated rooms. IIRC, IRC didn’t have that “quote for context” either, so if you were hunt-and-pecking the conversation already moved on lol.
Also a great way to learn Dvorak. Memorize the key combo to switch between the two depending on how detailed you need to be in telling them they are wrong, but as long as you keep making yourself spend a little more time on the less familiar layout, you’ll eventually become fluent and won’t have to contort your fingers as much regularly to type quickly.
Though typing games can help, too.
I should start out playing Zork with a Dvorak layout.
Zvorak or something
My parents had me partake in a touch typing course. Only a few years later, after becoming a wbb2 forum mod, did I truly begin to appreciate and practice that skill.
Playing MUDs felt like an advanced typing course to me. Especially before scripts and shit became available in the front end. Running around, going through attacks, spells, changing stances, running back to town, roleplaying with other players, reading description text and needing to figure out if a had to go through or climb something and it would get real fun if someone was fighting a mob in the room you entered. Raids and stuff were just insane. Trying to keep up with everything and typing constantly without using the mouse for anything. I haven’t thought about playing those games for a long time, thanks for the walk down memory lane!
I was too late for IRC, but i was just in time for chat websites. Never was interested in 10-finger-typing, until i discovered online chats. After that, i was one of the fastest in my class.
I’m in my 50s. I don’t know anyone who has ever been taught to type.
I’m 52 and took a semester of typing in high school.
30’s, and we definately had typing lessons and practice in Information Technology classes.
30s and me, my parents, and grandparents all were taught to touch type in school
In the warm computer labs that smelled of burning dust and ozone
Maybe people older than me had typing classes and people younger had IT classes then - my age group didn’t have anything like that.
I learned touch typing as a result of MSN messenger, in the dark, with a keyboard that would slide under the desk. I think phone contracts have resulted in a lot of people younger than me not being able to touch type.
My cousin types far faster than me, and he credits Typing of the Dead for that skill.
Yeah I learned how to type in high school in the year 1990. Since the existence of cell phones I have hardly touched a keyboard, maybe once a year when I pull out my laptop to do my taxes. But I was amazed when I learned how to type and amazed how quickly I became a high-speed touch typist and it is a thrill to me that it’s a skill I have because it was a little bit hard to learn at first but so proud that I got it and it feels like magic to be a touch typist!
Shifting of focus (eyes to keyboard then back to screen) can slow you down a lot. With computers I just stare at the keyboard and type. Problem with this is when something happens on the screen and the cursor is no longer where I think it is.
What I hate is the forced use of the mouse. Either make it all mouse or all keyboard navigable. In fact, with people having to use screen readers, all forms need to be keyboard navigable.Is anybody gonna tell this oblivious 30 year old who’s not particularly bad at typing what the lines are for?
So you can place your index fingers on the correct key without looking at the keyboard.
Huh, the more you know. Cheers!
I don’t see how one wouldn’t naturally get that, no offense. I mean, if one didn’t paticularly really ever use a keyboard and typed like gen-x or olders, with index fingers, sure.
But surely if you’re 30 and used a keyboard all your life you don’t need to look at the keyboard while typing…?
No offense. I may just be way overusing one since I was a teenager idk.
I’ve seen an incredible number of people who were never taught to properly touchtype and where each finger goes and developed bizarre techniques to type with 4, 6, or 8 fingers that may be almost as fast as the proper one but horrendously non-ergonomic. Ubiquity of staggered layouts (instead of proper ortholinear) does not help — it’s almost like it’s begging to type Z with ring finger and X with middle one.
I’m deep into my 40s, and I’m one of those. I can get up to 70 words per minute for short stretches, but it’s still a weird dance that combines muscle memory and hand-eye coordination.
I did learn just enough to know to hover my hands and keep my arms at a good posture, so I’ve never had any RSI from typing. That also may be partly because that I’m so inconsistent that I don’t get enough of the R for RSI, LOL.
I touch type , and yes I figured out what the lines were for… But I definitely don’t use them as reference points when I’m typing.
Doesn’t really have to do whether youre good or bad. When they teach you officially, they show you that the j and f are the home row where your index fingers go. If you’re self taught you might not know that and that’s totally fine as long as you can still type.
I’m self-taught as well, and someone knowing the “proper” way to type could probably have a stroke looking at my hands on the keyboard lmao. But yeah since I don’t need to look at the keys when I’m typing, and I still type pretty fast and without mistakes, who cares? If it works it works, even if it looks insane
Wow, they really don’t teach you kids typing anymore, huh.
