That's kind of sad. The most productive 2 week class I ever took was a touch typing class in 8th grade. We learned on mechanical typewriters where you really had to hammer the keys. This has paid off for me enormously.

> quite slow by coder standards

I spend very little time typing code in, that's not where my typing time is spent. For example, I am typing this while looking at the screen, not the keyboard. I catch and fix mistaeks much faster. When I'm transcribing text, touch typing doubles the speed because I read the original while typing.

I also try and optimize my code for readability, not minimal keystrokes.

I sort of agree, but anyone typing out code at 120WPM isn't programming, they're writing. Programming is an intellectual activity, not a physical one so learning to touch type is worthwhile but might only gain you a few minutes a day of productivity over someone doing 40WPM in a home-grown hunt-and-peck style of typing?

Touch typing is a special technique. Typing and touch typing being distinct things isn't a "way of thinking", it's a clear fact. It's not open to interpretation.

The keyboard is an instrument. Anyone can use it without learning the proper technique, but the technique helps a great deal. That's the whole point.

It is greatly comparable to musical instruments. For instance you can learn how to play the guitar yourself, but if you know the proper technique, you'll have better mastery in a shorter time. This is why it needs to be teached, especially to knowledge workers, who type, type and type all day long.

Maybe the skill you currently have is enough for you, but you shouldn't dismiss the proper technique, especially if you haven't tried it (you sound like you didn't really).

Though if you can answer yes to all the questions below, then you probably don't need the technique:

- Can you easily do 80+ wpm whether it is prose or code?

- Do you have more than 95% accuracy at all times?

- Do you never (no exceptions) look at the keyboard?

These things all make a difference. Having less friction with the input instrument results in a higher stamina in a knowledge worker, which means more productivity per unit of time. Few realize this.

I think this is mostly an illusion, unless your job is writing. For stuff like SW, typing is usually not the limiting factor. Thinking is. For management, typing a lot usually equates to a large bureaucracy (and lots and lots of pointless emails).

Me? I can type without looking at the keyboard. One of the stars in my team cannot.

Flip the principle over: How many people have suddenly become more productive and "moved up" because they learned to type faster?

> But all other things being equal – and they never are – the touch typist will have an advantage.

Will they? I type at over 100 WPM compared to the author's 80, and I never bothered with learning to use the home row, etc, nor did I dedicate any time to the practice of typing in and of itself.

> The best way to become a [better] typist is through typing, and lots of it.

This I can get behind, at least. And if you have kids, start them with it early on in life.

In my opinion, no. It always amuses me when somebody wants to learn to touch-type just to learn touch-type. If one really needs it (i.e. writes a lot on a keyboard), they'll learn it soon enough just from the practice.

That said, you may grow with time using more of your fingers. It may even be because you decided to try using those fingers that otherwise were idle (maybe one at a time; that was my case). But forcing yourself to learn? I would say it's not worth the hassle.

What actually matters to me is how fast I type and how accurate it is. You may want to check your results in some on-line test. If you have typing speed average or better, don't bother with specifically learning more.

I have not found typing speed to correlate well with productivity. I spend quite a lot of time thinking while coding.

We use to have 7+-2 layers of thinking. When you program, you hold in these layers: what word are you typing, where are you typing, what problem are you solving, what parts of codebase are you changing. If you do not touchtype, you are wasting at least 1/9 of your brain's possibility. Each time you are interrupting your stare from a screen you actually performing some extra scanning job which gives you nothing except of fatigue.

Actually my first programming decision which I did in my tenths was to get rid of QWERTY and it was one of few things in my life which I did absolutely right. So telling me that touchtyping skill is not important is just counterproductive.

> I wouldn't put that much importance into a specific editor

vim does to my text editing experience as much as touchtype does to my text input, no not-touchtyping person can understand how cool is to make all kinds of edits without getting my fingers off the 5 rows of keyboard (3 rows plus digits plus space but in default configuration you also need Esc).

I used to do something like this. Developed some real bad RSI that was only partially alleviated when I got a split keyboard (which forced me to learn to touch-type). Now that I’m used to that I’m finally starting to touch-type on a normal keyboard, which also helps quite a bit.

YMMV of course, but in retrospect I really wish I learned to touch-type to begin with; I think I ignored it during typing lessons as a kid as my typing speed was honestly pretty good, but now I regret that.

I found out the complete opposite. I'm a pretty fast typist but I learned touch typing at a rather late age, at around 26 or so. I still don't have a perfect technique but I have not really practiced it either.

Typing slowly pinpointed several flaws in my technique, some which I wasn't aware of. I already knew that using the "y" key with the wrong hand, but playing this game for some minutes also pointed out that I use the wrong hand or finger. For example I noticed that I use my index finger to type out x and c (rather than my ring and middle fingers).

I thoroughly enjoyed this and found it helpful.

That's because touch-typing on QWERTY by using the home row is stupid and counterproductive. The home keys are some of the least-used keys, and the whole layout was designed to be as un-ergonomic as possible.

If you want to touch type "correctly", you need to switch to a better keyboard layout like Dvorak or Workman.

Touch typing is about the combination of speed and accuracy. You're right that in these discussions people always talk about speed, but that hidden accuracy bonus is useful for everyone.

The problem here is your QWERTY keyboard. We're taught to use the "home row" and to keep our hands in that position, yet the keys are layed out in almost the most unoptimal way for this: the home-row keys are some of the least-used keys! It's an entirely idiotic layout for a keyboard if you want speed and comfort (from moving your fingers the least).

If you want to actually touch-type correctly, you need a different keyboard layout like Dvorak, where the home-row keys are actually the ones you use the most.

Yeah, "touch-typing" is incorrectly used to refer to home-row touch-typing by people who hadn't learned another style.

I use a totally different one, with my left hand resting on roughly shift-a-w-d and my right on j-i-o-; which requires little to no twisting to reach every key. I think I'm also more likely to lift my hands than home-row typists I've seen - those keys are just resting positions between typing bursts, not actually where I move my fingers back to while typing. The whole thing is based on the edges of the keyboard, rather than the nubs on the f and j keys.

I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique.

I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.

It was a loooong time ago but I remember it started with lots of simple repetition. We were all using IBM selectrics and the instructor would call out "J-J-J Space, K-K-K Space, L-L-L space, sem sem sem space" etc. in a pattern around the keyboard while and we were told to avoid looking at the keyboard at all times. Eventually we would start copying simple and then longer, more complicated text, again without ever looking at the keyboard.

Sure, but I don't agree that touch typing is "the" technique and that it's impossible that someone else has come up with a better one independently. Touch typing is a good way to type well, but I don't think it's distinct from "typing", it's one way to type. Just like you can play the guitar even if you don't know the technique.

> - Why do you think you did slow down after the switch to touch typing?

I have no idea, the way to hit the keys just feels less convenient to me. For example, the x and c are harder to hit because my fingers don't like going there, I can't really explain it better.

> - Why did you feel the need to switch to touch typing if the skill you already had was so good?

Half because I got an ortho split keyboard and couldn't use my old technique with it, and half because everyone said touch typing is so much better.

> - Do you regret switching to touch typing? Why?

Yes, my old technique is much more comfortable and faster. I still type the "old" way on regular keyboards, but it's not such a big deal either way, since I'm usually limited by the speed of my brain rather than my hands, and I don't much mind the reduced accuracy either. I'm touch typing this on the split keyboard right now.

> - How many years did it take you to get to 120 wpm at 98%?

I've been typing that way for 20 years, so I can't really say. I definitely remember being pretty good around 4 years in, possibly long before that.

> - Is there anything you miss from your old technique (beside the higher stats)?

It just feels more comfortable, when I touch-type I feel a bit like I'm fighting the keyboard, or as if I'm wearing shoes half a size too small. With my old technique (e.g. on my laptop) I feel at home.

When people say this as a knock against a language I can't help but wonder how they got so far in their careers using only two fingers.

Now, if you want to say that verbosity obscures intent and expressivity, then that's a fine argument to make (you'll have an steep hill to climb to show that types are an instance of this however). But if your development is bottlenecked by your typing speed, there's something seriously wrong.

Care to elaborate? There are people who cannot type (like physically) and yet they are programmers. Also, programming is all about mental gymnastics. Only accidentally (we are in the year 2022) we need to take our hands out of our pockets and type our solutions in an editor.

I sometimes look to align myself when I've had my hands off the keyboard, and now that I've got the wrong keycaps on some letters[1], it throws me off sometimes (I'll start on K or ; instead of L). However, when I'm actually typing, I almost never look at the keys (usually only when I'm pausing anyway, and more to take my eyes off the screen for a second). My only training has been using a keyboard for 20+ years.

It's not 'proper' touch typing - I almost never use my little fingers (I use three on my left hand, but bias towards just using index/index and middle on my right), I've got a tendency to reach across with either index finger depending on what I've just typed, and my hands at rest are around AWD/JIO rather than the home row - but I've never felt limited by my typing speed (80-100 WPM if I'm copying something).

I suspect my typing style is largely habits developed from gaming more then typing when growing up (rest on AWD and being more fluent with my left hand).

[1] Laptop keyboard - S where I should be (I got an S sent by mistake for a broken C key, and the I broke later), moved Fn keys to replace L and E