as a blue collar engine tech, I dont think you can segment the part of the population that cant use a keyboard into old/young. I know plenty of people within my age that freeze up trying to type in something as simple as a first name. I work with veterans that cant search for a part number, or a make/model of a vehicle without pausing 5 seconds between keys. My typing speed is great, but its because I got into Linux and programming. The largest determination of your typing ability is whether you spend most of the day with your hands on a wrench or your fingers on a keyboard.
I'm usually looking at people when they type on keyboards. When I was young (1985) most people that had to type, knew how to touch type. Then came a phase where it was hunt and peck when the computers showed up and everyone had to use them for work. Later you were expected to at least know the finger position even though you look at the keyboard while typing.
But I haven't had opportunity to see much people typing for a while until last year. Just last week I saw two people working at a bank not able to type numbers on the numpad without looking and using one finger. Both of them around 25. The optician could not touch type, was using a fast version of hunt and peck with three fingers total. Also around 25. But the dentists and doctors could touch-type pretty fast. All of them 40 - 60. (I started working as a personal assistant part time so see a lot of medical people, Sweden)
Is this true for anybody under the age of say, 40? I don't know a single person between the age of 15 and 40 who can't touch type at least 50 WPM.
I think the main hindrance for most people is not lack of touch typing skills, but more lack of ability or desire to memorize key bindings or the names of commands.
I actually don't know anyone that doesn't touch type that is under the age of 35 (but perhaps I need to pay more attention). Anyone that went and did an engineering level degree surely would be able to (due to thesis writing at least).
Even when I was in high school (back pre 1992) we learned by having a tea-towel over our hands and having to type without looking.
Not sure about that. I know lots of people under 40 years old who can't touch type. Hunting & pecking on a multi-touch keyboard is no worse than a physical keyboard. Probably better thanks to predictive typing and universal spell-check.
The younger generation isn't taught to touch type in schools anymore. I'd be surprised if it didn't significantly drop between two cohorts of regular keyboard users from this generation and 20 years ago, honestly.
> Typing can be the bottleneck
Agree! Learning touch typing (at 30 :)) was a big relief for my fingers and wrists. Also it's important to have a good mechanical or scissor keyboard so that typing actually feels good.
> Hiring is hard
And it's like dating: you only get to know the people who you actually hire and never learn what would have happened to the people that you have rejected. That is some selection bias in the system.
Is there any research about the keyboard issue? Sometimes I suspect that it is simply impossible for adults to learn touch-typing naturally the same way I did as a child (ie, simply by telling myself 'don't look at the keyboard'). Or maybe it's that they never engage in the activities that really force people to become fast typists (in my case, probably IRC) and perhaps never will.
I wonder about the skill level of the writer/typist.
"Forty university students in their early twenties"
Most older people learned to write and only learned to type when access to typewriters and computers became common.
But these forty 20-year-olds? They were probably using keyboards since the beginning, and may have written maybe in grade school or for a signature.
Fluency using a keyboard can be quite easy on the brain. I've been typing a long time and I don't even think of the spelling or word, it just comes out on the screen. In fact, I have forgotten logins and passwords, but my fingers will dutifully type them anyway.
I can also write, but I gave it for keyboards, and now I'm quite rusty. My writing is less legible and requires more concentration.
My Mum is in her 70s and until she lost feeling in one of her hands (chemotherapy 23-ish years ago) she was an exceedingly fast touch typist. Even without feeling in her hands, she could still type at ~40 WPM, possibly higher depending on what she was typing. Arthritis means she now mostly uses a tablet.
But looking at other people in that age range, I can think of literally zero from church who even know how to touch type. It's probably the difference between someone who had to do secretarial work and someone who did not.
I do think your first statement is absolutely on the mark. e.g., "I'm old, and I don't understand it, so I won't try."
The old adage is still true: Whether you think you can or you can't you're probably right.
Maybe but I’ve typing since I was a kid on a Windows 95 and I still only know the gist of the keyboard and have to look down and correct myself every minute or so, so I don’t that’s they only reason. I actually think that typing without looking isn’t as important as people used to say it was for speed.
I used to think the same. When I was in my 20s, I could type super-fast with 4-6 fingers. But then old age hit. My hand-eye coordination and reflexes slowed down, along with typing speed. I'm slowly learning to touch type, and it helps tremendously.
Seeing people hunt for keys with one or two index fingers - not when writing something profound, requiring of thought, but simply filling out forms - is incredibly frustrating. I'm going to argue they can't type when they're still using the keyboard as if it's the first day they saw one.
A day or two spent learning to type would pay itself back with dividends.
I put in the ground work for touch typing at school on the good old typewriters; it was certainly the best extra curriculum subject I've ever done.
You are preaching to the choir, I type exclusively using the Workman layout and very old keyboards, but I do it for ergonomic reasons.
Fatigue may be involved, but I'm not buying the rest of the argument. Most programmers are not touch-typing wizards, some of them still hunt and peck, and a few of them have an issue using a keyboard in the first place. People can adapt, and programming is not a typing competition as I said, it's a thinking and talking one.
One of the best programmers I ever worked with was hunt and peck. I told him learning to type was a godsend. He did not care and continued to crank out tons of code. It was just painful to watch someone that experienced having to search around for keys. He was fine with it though...
I have the same mechanical background as you. It took me years to stop absolutely blasting the keys when typing though. It did speed up my word count doing that too.
For me having to stop and look for a key is a jarring thing. Usually because every manufacture wants their 'own touch' on the keyboard. Laptops being the biggest offender of this.
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