Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I'm always shocked to see a developer not touch type. I just can't understand those 10% or so, that spend their life essentially editing text and yet can't touch type. It's one of those essential skills that you learn once and reap the benefits for the rest of your life.



Where do you get 10% from? Most programmers are fast on a keyboard, but being fast != touch-typing. Admittedly, not all touch-typists train their fingers to properly remember the numbers row or the set of accompanying punctuations and symbols, they might sometimes need to look at the keyboard to find stuff like tilde, pipe or the underscore.

However, if you catch yourself needing to even just glance at the keyboard while typing basic stuff, you're not a touch-typist, no matter how fast you are.

Many people feel that being fast is good enough. It has been my observation though, that the lag between typos and their fix is considerably shorter (almost instantaneous) for touch-typists (they're looking at the screen as it's happening). Indeed, I'm always a tiny bit annoyed when while sitting next to someone editing code, they accidentally turn on caps and it takes forever for them to realize it (like 10 characters later).


This is vastly, vastly more than 10%. Where I work at, hunt & peck is the norm. Now, many hunt & peck typists I see at work type relatively fast, without looking at the keyboard too much.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: