When did you learn to touch type?

[Kola93]

I am still not able to touch type perfectly, but using Black on Black PBT keycaps has made me better!

[JadedRabbit]

Elementary had small sections every week to teach typing, AIM enhanced my typing in late elementary.

Maplestory in middle school helped with touch typing.  No skype then, so you gotta type fast enough to not die.

Are you me? That's essentially how I learned to touch type as well. AIM and MSN coupled with Maplestory drove home the skills my middle school teacher taught me.

[heroinbob]

Sophomore year in highschool. 

Half way thru freshman year in HS I was "encouraged" to leave and go to college.

What would be my Sophomore year in HS, I went to college for computer programming.

Typing was a prereq class.

And YES, they all called me doogie.

Paul (HB)

[Sencha]

This year at age 36. I was typing while looking and only using a few fingers on each hand. I started using an online site and basically learnt from scratch. I really enjoyed it and am now up to 80 WPM. Which I'm very happy with as I don't do a lot of typing throughout the day but when I do its very much enjoyable!

[Keypurrfect]

College.

[SamirD]

Half way thru freshman year in HS I was "encouraged" to leave and go to college.

What would be my Sophomore year in HS, I went to college for computer programming.

That's just freaking awesome.  I skipped kindergarten and went straight into first grade.  When I graduated from HS I was only 16yrs old by a few months.

[theginginator]

I learned back in late elementary school, everyone had to go to a typing class a few times a week. Should be mandatory by now with how useful the skill is.

[happyturtlee]

In elementary school, they taught us how to touch type in our computer classes. I think we used something called Mavis Beacon? There would be these typing games that you could play to help you improve your typing and that's the only thing that made that class mildly interesting. I still don't think I type completely correctly... for example, i never use the right shift for some reason.

[Keypurrfect]

I never use right shift either and I am right handed!

[happyturtlee]

I never use right shift either and I am right handed!

Something about it feels so awkward... I would much rather use left shift and then adjust my left hand accordingly to reach the keys. It helps cause I have long fingers haha.

[SamirD]

I just checked out my right shift usage and I'm using it whenever the left hand needs a shift.  I guess that's the proper form that stuck with me from high school. 

[jonathanyu]

I never use right shift either and I am right handed!

Something about it feels so awkward... I would much rather use left shift and then adjust my left hand accordingly to reach the keys. It helps cause I have long fingers haha.

I only use right shift when I type question mark

[sitch]

I was exposed to computer when I was like 8 years old? and ragnarok online came out at around 12 years old and can touch type maybe 13-14 years old. Perfected it when Dota2 became a hit when you have to flame your team mates 

[SamirD]

Perfected it when Dota2 became a hit when you have to flame your team mates 

[gabba-gool]

Technically, I learned when I was in elementary school. I think 3rd grade? I could do most keys pretty well without looking. But I really came into my own when Diablo 2 came out and I was on battle.net just about every free hour I had. Also, no phone calls came in for many months. 56k modem days without a second line  )

[calvinhousecat]

Back in my gamer days where I was required to type really fast to my allies while paying attention to the map, eventually I just memorized where all the keys are

[thatsmrdoctortoyou]

Also learned how to touch type in junior high in a typing class. We used the computer program which had daily assignments/passages for us to type out. The program recognized the keystrokes you made while completing each assignment. At the time I thought the professor was a b**** as she made us retake each assignment until we could type out the entire passage without using a backspace AND with a greater typing speed than 60wpm. Some of the passages were >1 page in length!!! However, I see the point now and am glad she was strict enough to enforce that. Buuuuut is still use backspace all the damn time

[grav3serker]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

[chipotle]

I was self-taught, mostly, on the computer I had in high school and colllege -- a TRS-80 Model 4. Also, I'm old, although the TRS-80 was already obsolete by the time I graduated high school. Of course, I also blame the TRS-80 for making me like good keyboards; it turns out they used Alps keyswitches (probably "integrated dome" switches, although they sure didn't feel like later rubber dome switches). I can still get 100+ words a minute most of the time, depending on the keyboard...

[captaineleven]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Haha that's awesome. I find finger pecking is truly only acceptable with typewriters and even then I should still make sure my fingers are stationed on the home row. Do you do anything specific for your daily practice? I go to keyhero and 10fastfingers for warm ups and then I go about writing stuff for work and for fun.

[SamirD]

I was self-taught, mostly, on the computer I had in high school and colllege -- a TRS-80 Model 4. Also, I'm old, although the TRS-80 was already obsolete by the time I graduated high school. Of course, I also blame the TRS-80 for making me like good keyboards; it turns out they used Alps keyswitches (probably "integrated dome" switches, although they sure didn't feel like later rubber dome switches). I can still get 100+ words a minute most of the time, depending on the keyboard...

I remember the TRS-80.  We had one at the back of our classroom in 6th grade and one day a month, two kids were allowed to play on it.  I remember it always went to a DOS-like prompt after a program ended and most kids got stuck at that point while I somehow knew what to do because of our c64 at home.  And that keyboard was quite nice.  It was like the TI-994a that I still have somewhere.

[thatsmrdoctortoyou]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

[SamirD]

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

We should have a list of all the typing sites somewhere.  There's so many of them!

[grav3serker]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

Yeah! I've been using 10fastfingers.com mainly, but now that I'm feeling a little more confident, I'll have to try typeracer!

[grav3serker]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Haha that's awesome. I find finger pecking is truly only acceptable with typewriters and even then I should still make sure my fingers are stationed on the home row. Do you do anything specific for your daily practice? I go to keyhero and 10fastfingers for warm ups and then I go about writing stuff for work and for fun.

Mostly just 10fastfingers.com and I keep trying to beat my high score. I know it's not practical by typing random words all lowercase, but it's definitely helping me get the muscle memory down. It's become my favorite game lately haha. Do you have any suggestions for more practical scenarios besides just typing on forums?

[KaminKevCrew]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Haha that's awesome. I find finger pecking is truly only acceptable with typewriters and even then I should still make sure my fingers are stationed on the home row. Do you do anything specific for your daily practice? I go to keyhero and 10fastfingers for warm ups and then I go about writing stuff for work and for fun.

Mostly just 10fastfingers.com and I keep trying to beat my high score. I know it's not practical by typing random words all lowercase, but it's definitely helping me get the muscle memory down. It's become my favorite game lately haha. Do you have any suggestions for more practical scenarios besides just typing on forums?

There are a few sites that let you select from famous writings. (Aesops fables comes to mind)

You can also use typeracer, or their practice mode if you don't want to compete. They have quotes from tons of books and movies, etc. As far as I know, most of them are user submitted.

[grav3serker]

I just started learning a couple of weeks ago. After turning 28 and realizing I need to stop that finger pecking nonsense, I decided it was time to learn. I also figured if I'm going to be obsessed with mechs, I should probably learn how to use them properly haha. I'm only averaging a measly 50-55 WPM, but I'm getting faster daily! Practice makes perfect!

Haha that's awesome. I find finger pecking is truly only acceptable with typewriters and even then I should still make sure my fingers are stationed on the home row. Do you do anything specific for your daily practice? I go to keyhero and 10fastfingers for warm ups and then I go about writing stuff for work and for fun.

Mostly just 10fastfingers.com and I keep trying to beat my high score. I know it's not practical by typing random words all lowercase, but it's definitely helping me get the muscle memory down. It's become my favorite game lately haha. Do you have any suggestions for more practical scenarios besides just typing on forums?

There are a few sites that let you select from famous writings. (Aesops fables comes to mind)

You can also use typeracer, or their practice mode if you don't want to compete. They have quotes from tons of books and movies, etc. As far as I know, most of them are user submitted.

Thank you! I'll check this out for sure! Cheers!

[Bromono]

I kinda have my own style.

It is weird. If I am in the zone, I can touch type all day. Like playing online games or typing a paper. Here on the forums or when I am typing an email though, I make so many mistakes and have to look at the keys quite frequently.

[SamirD]

I kinda have my own style.

It is weird. If I am in the zone, I can touch type all day. Like playing online games or typing a paper. Here on the forums or when I am typing an email though, I make so many mistakes and have to look at the keys quite frequently.

I feel you.  If I'm revising a contract like I just was doing, it's all easy.  Even forum posting--all easy.  But put me in one of those races or make me conscious of my speed and my mistakes go up an order of magnitude, lol.

[KaminKevCrew]

I kinda have my own style.

It is weird. If I am in the zone, I can touch type all day. Like playing online games or typing a paper. Here on the forums or when I am typing an email though, I make so many mistakes and have to look at the keys quite frequently.

I feel you.  If I'm revising a contract like I just was doing, it's all easy.  Even forum posting--all easy.  But put me in one of those races or make me conscious of my speed and my mistakes go up an order of magnitude, lol.

That's exactly how I am.

[moshimalloe]

Halloween, 2023

[davkol]

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

We should have a list of all the typing sites somewhere.  There's so many of them!

Forget about typing sites, when there's Amphetype.

[faycheung]

I think I learned how to touch type when I was around 10 and first started getting into FPS games. I didn't have a microphone back then, and communication was key, so I slowly trained myself.

The typing classes I had first year in middle school was a joke. It doesn't help when the teacher pecks as well, but then again, everyone barely spoke English.

[SamirD]

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

We should have a list of all the typing sites somewhere.  There's so many of them!

Forget about typing sites, when there's Amphetype.

Very cool!  There's a web version too called www.keyhero.com. 

[E3E]

I can type about 90-100 with a lot of focus. Casually, I type at around 70-80. Touch typing? I cheat a lot and do not have perfect form in the slightest, probably because I use a smaller laptop in bed a lot when I'm lounging around, so perfect form is kind of out the window then.

I learned how to touch type in high school though, thanks to a keyboarding class that I did horrible in. Also, being an internet kid, I'd always chat with friends online, so typing without needing to look at the keys came pretty easily, even without perfect form.

[davkol]

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

We should have a list of all the typing sites somewhere.  There's so many of them!

Forget about typing sites, when there's Amphetype.

Very cool!  There's a web version too called www.keyhero.com. 

Nope, "keyhero" has nothing to do with Amphetype, it has essentially none of the Amphetype features (such as text generation based on stats of previous typos) and it sucks: apart from being a Service as a Software Substitute, it often doesn't even calculate typing speed correctly. Seriously.

[SamirD]

Definitely all about the practice! A fun way to practice daily is by racing on play.typeracer.com. A race or two a day and your WPM will for sure improve!

We should have a list of all the typing sites somewhere.  There's so many of them!

Forget about typing sites, when there's Amphetype.

Very cool!  There's a web version too called www.keyhero.com. 

Nope, "keyhero" has nothing to do with Amphetype, it has essentially none of the Amphetype features (such as text generation based on stats of previous typos) and it sucks: apart from being a Service as a Software Substitute, it often doesn't even calculate typing speed correctly. Seriously.

Oh.  The link from the Amphetype page made it seem like it did.  I used it and it was a bit quirky but did provide a bit more stats than some of the other typing sites.

[captaineleven]

Nope, "keyhero" has nothing to do with Amphetype, it has essentially none of the Amphetype features (such as text generation based on stats of previous typos) and it sucks: apart from being a Service as a Software Substitute, it often doesn't even calculate typing speed correctly. Seriously.

Oh wow I didn't know that. I've been using it because it randomly generates text without having to put in my own text. But this Amphetype sounds interesting enough that I'll have to check it out.

[davkol]

Consider lalop's Amphetype fork. It contains some bugfixes and extra settings.

The great thing about Amphetype is that

• it runs on your own system, even offline, and it's multiplatform (Python w/ PyQt4);
• if you find a bug or miss a feature, it's entirely possible to do something about it;
• you can import texts of your choice, and read books/articles by retyping them;
• your typing stats are stored in a database on your system and you can visualize or analyze them right away;
• it can generate typing lessons based on your past typos or passages typed not so fluently.
  

I tried various websites (including 10fastfingers, keyhero, typeracer, hi-games.net's typing test etc.) to practice after switching to Colemak, but… I wish I had simply stuck with Amphetype. The 10fastfingers' dictionary is weird and others' quotes are mostly the same motivational/romantic stuff over and over again; keyhero's speed graphs are very imprecise; some of my progress has been forgotten because of website changes; most of these websites don't interpret Backspace and some key combos (e.g., with AltGr) correctly;… So yeah, Amphetype it is.

[SamirD]

Great to hear some feedback on the typing tests out there.  I think with having a high-performance keyboard, the next thing to do is learn how to use it to its full potential.

[Geroximo]

For the last 15 years I spent most of my time on a computer. Yet I cant really touchtype. That is emberassing and inaccetpable! I cannot live with myself like that!
So I slammed some blanks on my Poker2 lately and now my touchtyping is getting better every day! 

[olijuice]

I learned to touch type with Colemak with the Caps Lock unchanged around May/June of this year. I was always a finger poker where I used my two index fingers, middle fingers, and ring fingers primarily and most of the time I needed to look directly at the keyboard to type fast. After so many years of typing like this I got really good at it, but I wanted to relearn to touch type like they taught me in middle school all those years ago.

I started to practice around March/April of this year with Qwerty but then I learned about Dvorak.   practiced Dvorak for about a month and I got to the point where I memorized where all the keys were but I was really really slow; around 18 WPM. I didn't give up on Dvorak, but I wanted to know if there was something better. I learned about Colemak and I started to practice it. It was a seriously hard transition for me after beggining to learn Dvorak but I felt like I wanted to stick with it for some reason.

And then around June I had to go to the ER. I spent a good week there and had two surgeries to remove an infected gallbladder. I spent about 2 months recovering at home where I practiced Colmak.. a lot. I practiced about 20 minutes a day, then a few hours later I would practice again for 20 minutes to an hour and sometimes for another 20 minutes or more before I would go to bed. By the time I went back to work in September I was typing around 30-40 WPM on average.

Now I find myself typing around 60 WPM which I am really happy about. I find that I still make a lot of mistakes when I type, but every day I am getting better and better. Its really helped me at work so much whenever I join conference calls and I want to type notes on what everyone is saying.

[W_hinklebottom]

I was always a fast (I thought I was fast) look and peck. Even after I got my first Mech board I was unable to touch type.
It was always inconvenient to find out that mi**** a key. I wouldn't find out until I looked back up at the screen. Then I snagged a HHKB and it had blanks on it. You learn a hell of a lot quicker when the training wheels are striped off.

Typing of the Dead really helped too and it wasn't a super boring way to do it.

[Shapey Fiend]

I'm surprised somebody hasn't made a Mavis Beacon custom keyboard or keycap at this point.

I used have a really high WPM when I did data entry. It tends to creep back up there when I have to do a lot of typing but it's rusty at the moment.

[WolfTickets]

I have never heard of this.  I'm going to try it out.  Thanks!

Consider lalop's Amphetype fork. It contains some bugfixes and extra settings.

The great thing about Amphetype is that

• it runs on your own system, even offline, and it's multiplatform (Python w/ PyQt4);
• if you find a bug or miss a feature, it's entirely possible to do something about it;
• you can import texts of your choice, and read books/articles by retyping them;
• your typing stats are stored in a database on your system and you can visualize or analyze them right away;
• it can generate typing lessons based on your past typos or passages typed not so fluently.
  

I tried various websites (including 10fastfingers, keyhero, typeracer, hi-games.net's typing test etc.) to practice after switching to Colemak, but… I wish I had simply stuck with Amphetype. The 10fastfingers' dictionary is weird and others' quotes are mostly the same motivational/romantic stuff over and over again; keyhero's speed graphs are very imprecise; some of my progress has been forgotten because of website changes; most of these websites don't interpret Backspace and some key combos (e.g., with AltGr) correctly;… So yeah, Amphetype it is.

[weehooherod]

I learned in a 7th grade typing course. I then relearned to touch type with Colemak during finals week one sophomore semester of college. I now type correctly with the exception of never using right shift. I work with plenty of developers who still hunt and peck which blows my mind.

[ideus]

I learned in a 7th grade typing course. I then relearned to touch type with Colemak during finals week one sophomore semester of college. I now type correctly with the exception of never using right shift. I work with plenty of developers who still hunt and peck which blows my mind.

I program statistical analysis in R, and I touch type, but I do not feel that touch typing matters that much for coding, because it is more important to have the right syntax, variables and strcuture, more than type it quickly. At the end the proper editing is key, and most of the time you cannot edit that fast as to need a high WPM.

[SamirD]

I learned in a 7th grade typing course. I then relearned to touch type with Colemak during finals week one sophomore semester of college. I now type correctly with the exception of never using right shift. I work with plenty of developers who still hunt and peck which blows my mind.

I program statistical analysis in R, and I touch type, but I do not feel that touch typing matters that much for coding, because it is more important to have the right syntax, variables and strcuture, more than type it quickly. At the end the proper editing is key, and most of the time you cannot edit that fast as to need a high WPM.

This is a really good point because while touch typing can help with the flow of thought from mind to computer, high wpm only helps when you can think faster than you can currently type.

[Touch_It]

I think when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school.  But I infinitely inproved my touch-typing and spelling skills Playing Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.  GOAT.

[MeltingTeeth]

Parents forced me one summer.

Either that or summer school they said!