I’ve owned a blank WASD board for years. Im no expert typist but i’ve had a similar experience to the author.
Anecdotally it serves as a layer of computer security i didn’t expect. Friends of mine (IT pros, graduate students, programmers, etc) who make their livelihoods on computers throw tantrums completing simple tasks with it, such as typing “youtube” into an address bar. Entering their passwords is particularly impossible exercise in my experience.
At a company I worked for, there was a security policy that if you left your machine unlocked, someone could send an email on your behalf offering to buy the entire company donuts. You were expected to make good on the offer.
The only person immune to this was a Dvorak user (who I believe also had the additional security layer of using Emacs as a mail client).
A colleague of mine was the "victim" of this a couple of times. After that he had some sort of script that would lock the laptop if you type "croissant".
I've been several places where this was the unofficial policy and saw it happen a few times. Once while the CISO was abusing someone else's computer, he forgot to lock his own.
Credit due to him - he kept his word - and since he was CISO, he paid for donuts TWO weeks running.
Reminds me of a police case from my hometown where a car thief stole some kind of sports car, can't remember whether it was a Corvette or similar, but then got promptly caught because he couldn't drive a stick shift and kept stalling.
I've heard a war story about someone being able to consistently enter their password when standing up but never while sitting down. In the end, it turned out to be a QWERTY vs. QWERTZ thing: standing up, they'd look at the keycaps, but sitting down they'd touch type.
I used a Das Keyboard Ultimate when I was younger. The best thing about it was that when people were over. They would always end up giving me control over the selection of music. Because very few people can actually type without seeing the letters.
Similar experience. In the dorms (single room assignment, bathroom shared with a suitemate), I was one in maybe a handful who threw down for private broadband service with legit throughput and was willing to share. Friends would bother me all the time to hop on for stupid shit. When the OG Das Keyboard launched, I picked one up (still have it today and still works, although caps lock light won't illuminate unless pressure is applied to the top-right corner where the light is positioned). The random visits stopped shortly thereafter, except for one girl who grew up on the same island as I did and was determined enough to bring her own keyboard for the privilege...and other fringe benefits.
I'm the same. When I was in high school, I couldn't afford a Das Keyboard. So I spray painted my keyboard so that I could get the same effect. I'm still using that keyword 16 years later and all my subsequent keyboards were all with blank caps.
I've noticed that when I type QWERTY-layout, my fingers don't necessarily maintain that suggested discipline with the columns.
With words like 'really', my left hand will move over so that my index finger can type the 'y'.
If you've got the time to spare, though, I'd suggest learning the Dvorak layout for a more comfortable typing experience.
Learning colemak took me maybe a month for proficiency. I'd recommend it as more ergonomic and easier to learn compared to Dvorak; minimizing changes from qwerty was an explicit part of its design process.
I learned Dvorak when I was at university years ago. I can't quite remember how long it took me to get comfortable with the keyboard again after starting to learn it.
The keyboard I was using for Dvorak broke, so I reverted to using QWERTY.
When I tried using Dvorak again recently, it took me a couple of days to get used to it again. I'm comfortable enough switching between a keyboard with Dvorak and a keyboard with QWERTY now, though.
Don't learn new layouts unless you realize all the consequences – you'll become unable to use anything but your very own customized setup effectively. I'm dead serious. I once had to do a password reset to a user who could not type the password on a QWERTY layout login screen after they set it on a Dvorak layout before rebooting.
I deal with qwerty enough to not lose it. I still do about 70wpm on a qwerty layout with occasional glances down. Most Dvorak users I know have very little issue with qwerty.
That user seems to have the password only in muscle memory, which seems like a bad idea regardless of layout.
My keycaps are mostly blank (varies with frequency of key use) due to the shear amount of typing I've done on my KB, which has lasted me a surprisingly long time (10-15 yrs).
I would say I reached "expert" status long before that happened though. I attribute this to doing so much typing for the past few decades.
I think the reason so many people have trouble with keyboards is that they have no formal training (e.g. a typing class in school), and do not regularly use them because their phone/tablet is the primary computing device.
> and do not regularly use them because their phone/tablet is the primary computing device.
… maybe someday, but I think it's a bit premature? Phone keyboards were terrible, involving hacks like T9 to make them tolerable for the longest time. Smart phones haven't been around that long; the iPhone wasn't introduced until mid-2007. That's only a little more than a decade, so unless you're close to 20, you're going to remember / have learned on something else.
And it takes very little practice on even a basic keyboard to outpace a mobile "keyboard"'s input rate.
A good T9 typist is probably faster than a regular phone keyboard even now (gesture typing is, I'd guess, a little faster though) and is tactile so you don't have to be able to see the screen / keyboard.
> And it takes very little practice on even a basic keyboard to outpace a mobile "keyboard"'s input rate.
Yeah, but you have to care enough to do that. (And also have a physical keyboard available.)
I can type at maybe 70 wpm. It's useful for chatting more than for developing. I learned keyboarding technique in grade school (PAWS) and mostly ignored proper technique, but took a keyboarding class in high school for fun, and was on IRC at the time, so lots of typing. At the beginning of class, my speed was faster with whatever I was doing, but at the end, proper technique won out, although I was faster and more accurate with both methods than at the beginning.
I went through a Dvorak phase in college, it was fun, but switching layouts is weird, and qwerty is everywhere, so I stuck with the standard.
I think most people could train up to about 60 wpm if they wanted to, but like 30-40 wpm is enough that you wouldn't normally be hindered by slow typing. You won't do great in Typer Shark or Typing of the Dead, but you should do alright.
Edit to add: no labels is fine on letters, pretty brutal for all the keys.
How about the reverse? I've been annoyed by VMs that are assuming a US keyboard layout. The letters are (mostly) in the usual places, but the punctuation (especially |) winds up no matter where.
I think this is a problem for everyone who tries a keyboard from another locale. I've tried a British one before while traveling and it was extremely unpleasant to not have the keys where I expect.
It seems by not having an international standard early on in computing we missed out on something here. Like how we drive on different sides of the road, use different plugs put interchange commas and periods for decimals. However, the most egregious violation of international missed opportunities has got to be sign language. I find it both incredibly hilarious and sad that two deaf people from different cultures can't communicate even though both do so in hand codes. We're truly a stupid species sometimes.
I think it's more about mind melding with the problem you are solving. Having absolutely nothing else cognitively distracting you from what you are doing gives you that additional working memory space to tackle complex problems. It's not sufficient, there are a bunch of other factors, but to my mind, if you have to think at all about typing, you can't achieve that top echelon of concentration.
Here’s a video of geohot thinking and coding at the same time and you’ll see how fast typing helps him resolve ideas quickly: https://youtu.be/RFaFmkCEGEs
As someone who isn't a traditional touch typer but whose self taught method gets me ~90wpm. That's highly unlikely. My limitations are never finger bound. If I'm thinking of what to write I never find myself frustrated that I just can't get these ideas out of my head fast enough.
Most of my time (like the person you're replying to) is solving the problems in my head and even refining my solution mentally as well. Very little typing is needed on most days in an ide. I wouldn't be surprised if I typed more into DDG than an ide on some days.
As a developer, I think my process is more like ~50% thinking and debugging and ~50% actual typing. That latter 50% is divided into 20% typing code but about 30% typing mails/slack/tasks or whatever I need to do to update other people (without calling, because that is scary :-))
if you count typing emails or IMs as thinking or work mostly solo then you're right. in a large team being able to type an email quickly is quite useful.
> I never understood the fascination with typing optimization
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.
As others have said, it's not just a question of going faster. It's a question of comfort and not having to fight things. Having an uncomfortable chair or dim / washed out / fuzzy screen is not going to change if your code is right or wrong, but it's something less that's bugging you.
For the question at hand, I'm inclined to think that what matters most is not so much typing speed as typing accuracy. If I have to constantly go back and fix a typo it's a just a PITA. I'm by no means a fast typist, but I think I make fairly few errors. So whenever I have to use an unfamiliar keyboard, the biggest issue I have is mistyping things and having to constantly go back and fix them. Also, modifier keys not being where I expect them aggravates me to no end.
Some people have fun optimizing their workspace and habits. We spend a lot of time at our computers and tweaking things adds a more interesting veneer. So they try things like different monitor setups or learning to touch type. The benefit probably doesn't outweigh the effort, but not everything needs to pay off like that.
The more time spent typing, the less you have for thinking and debugging.
Hypothetically, someone with a hunt and peck technique might be 40/60. Someone with a self taught but undisciplined technique could be 60/40. Someone with standard touch typing might be 70/30. Someone who does regular typing drills could be 80/20.
Given the thinking and debugging is where are value comes from, the typing is just how we make it tangible, by improving your typing you are improving your value.
I see this comment on almost every HN and r/programming thread about typing. It always puts an idea in my head of a programmer who has to stop and ponder between every keystroke.
I'm surprised that people who use the computer every day can't touch type, is this a post-iphone/touch generational thing? Back in my day one lucky classmate was rewarded with a session of Mavis Beacon teaches typing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon_Teaches_Typing) if we behaved extra well in class.
I didn't get much of a typing education despite being slightly pre-iphone. And my father, who learned to code with punch cards, and wrote code for decades, typed with only two fingers...
It was only after relearning to type, but with a new keyboard layout (colemak), did I find myself able to touch type.
I remember an old manager, who was probably born in the mid 1960s giving our team's intern (around 2008) a hard time because it was taking her time to get used to QWERTY again because she spent the previous 6 months in France on an AZERTY keyboard. I can't be the only one who noticed that he looked at his hands noticeably more than anyone else on the team while typing, even the intern he was giving a hard time. I think it just takes a lot of motivation to learn to touch-type if you didn't grow up with ubiquitous computers. My manager was so used to looking down at his hands that he didn't even notice he did it.
There's a golden window for touch-typing where most people in the U.S. grew up typing on computers constantly (especially IMing in multiple windows concurrently) and before smartphones arrived. It's nearly impossible to keep up with multiple IM windows without lots of typing and spelling errors unless you're at least close to touch-typing.
I grew up on a Mac, and it took me way too long to get used to using the delete key on a PC. (I think very few Mac users make much use of Fn-Delete to get PC-like delete functionality.) Typing habits die hard.
> There's a golden window for touch-typing where most people in the U.S. grew up typing on computers constantly (especially IMing in multiple windows concurrently) and before smartphones arrived. It's nearly impossible to keep up with multiple IM windows without lots of typing and spelling errors unless you're at least close to touch-typing.
This is what I was thinking when I read the article. I grew up on IRC, ICQ, and multiplayer games with text-only chat. That last one in particular, you learned to type fast or live with a horrible K/D ratio.
> There's a golden window for touch-typing where most people in the U.S. grew up typing on computers constantly (especially IMing in multiple windows concurrently) and before smartphones arrived. It's nearly impossible to keep up with multiple IM windows without lots of typing and spelling errors unless you're at least close to touch-typing.
Yep. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught me proper form. Fast-scrolling Internet chat rooms and FPS chat functionality taught me speed. In the former you had to be fast to get a word in, and quite fast if you wanted a complete thought. In the latter you were risking "death" every time you typed a message, so had better be fast about it. I went from proper-but-slow to proper-and-fast in no time, once I discovered those motivations.
I learned to touch-type at a young age and can comfortably type 90-110 WPM.
Personally I agree that people, especially people who are expected to use a computer for their job, probably should know how to type, and as a result it should be part of primary education.
I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.
It's a fun novelty and if it works for them more power to them, but I only see more frustration than anything. I don't need to look at the keyboard to know what I'm typing, especially on my normal keyboard, but it's nice to have the option.
(I'm the odd-man out when it comes to keyboards though. I don't have a preference for mechanical keyboards and I truly don't understand the love/passion for ~60% keyboards. I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.)
An argument for a smaller keyboard (and this is definitely a personal thing) is that I try my hardest to avoid using keys that are more than one key away from a finger in its resting position anyway (why---I really don't like having to move my hand physically, and I'm willing to pay the cost of additional latency with having more keys gated behind modifiers if it means I have to move my hand less). My day-to-day keyboard uses QMK, so it's really possible to make this work.
Yes, and this is very important. A wide keyboard can cause you to rotate your arms outward to reach a mouse. A neutral work position is to have your elbows near your sides with forearms horizontal (parallel to the floor) and pointing inward somewhat so your two hands could hold something in front of you or work together on some object, such as peeling an orange.
If you turn your palms down and rotate your forearms outward until they are pointing straight forward (parallel with each other), you are probably at the outer limit of where you should routinely work. Keep most of your work inside that limit, in front of you.
If you are mousing right handed, for example, and your keyboard is so wide that the normal position of the mouse requires you to rotate your forearm so your arm isn't pointing inward or straight ahead but is now pointing outward to the right, you may start feeling pain under your right shoulder blade, which may become quite severe.
The problem is that people with this pain don't usually feel it when they are mousing. Perversely, they tend to feel it when they are away from the keyboard, so they don't make the connection. If you know of anyone with sharp pain under the shoulder blade, see if they do a lot of work with that arm rotated outward.
I also learned to touch-type at an early age, but incorrectly. I can easily do 90+ wpm and closer to 110 when younger, but certain keys on my keyboard are bound to the wrong fingers.
For example, I always end up moving my entire left hand several centimeters to the right so my left index finger can reach the "Y" key. So every time I type a "Y" character my entire left hand shifts unnecessarily back and forth.
I share your perspective with this. It's a fun idea. I've been a touch typist my whole life. But I did recently switch my default keyboard to International so I can type in French and Spanish, as accents are common to both languages but not included in the Windows 10 American English keyboard. I mention this because it has easily halved, if not hanged, drawn and quartered my typing speed. I'm several months in and still need to "test" touch type when I need a ç or ñ. So, I know speed comes down to muscle memory.
Really, it's not the blank keycaps that improved this person's typing speed. It was the deliberate focus on training their senses to memorize the way the tension in their left ring finger, or the way their right thumb extended to the left a little.
One fun and maybe not so novel use for this though would be training yourself to touch type AZERTY and QWERTY interchangeably. The blank keycaps would make it easy to switch between layouts and not run into a focus conflict like trying to mentally envision the A key, struggling to place it then looking down to see Q and having to fight your brain to not dump your mental priming for AZERTY and return memory for QWERTY. (There's a specific term for this in cognitive science. I want to say "trigger", but that's definitely not it. It refers to when a mylenated path is triggered by your senses and overrides your present thought.)
> I'm several months in and still need to "test" touch type when I need a ç or ñ
I found that using US-international mostly removes the need to look for the dedicated accented letter.
It works by making you compose accented character instead of typing them directly.
For instance, you have to press the grave accent key [`] then [a] to make "à". The apostrophe doubles as the acute accent and cedilla key, so ['] then [e] makes "é", [`] and [c] makes "ç".
It works for most diacritics in European languages (`, ~, ^, ', "). Also, to get the original character, press space (or double press them to double type them).
It's probably a tiny bit slower than having dedicated keys, but I find the consistency nice to have.
> Also, to get the original character, press space (or double press them to double type them).
If you don't like this behavior then then I can recommend using a modified US-International layout where those keys are only dead if AltGr is held down [1].
Alternatively, you can use a version where AltGr acts as the modifier [2].
The latter is what I use since I only need it for Swedish special characters (åäö) which I get by typing AltGr+W, AltGr+Q, and AltGr+P.
I've been using British/German keyboards with Polish Programmers layout(which is just general US layout with Polish accents) and I don't recall ever looking at the actual keys, as most special characters are not where they appear on the keys. Most Polish people learnt this way(well, at least in the early days) because most keyboards you could get on the market weren't in actual US layout but that's what the Polish layout was based on.
MacOS’ English keyboard is great for typing in Spanish and French. As I’ve posted recently in other threads like this, I don’t know why other operating systems don’t copy them for their defaults.
Default English keyboards in Windows and Linux are awful for typing in English (which includes needing easy access to some accented characters, among other things). I accidentally learned to type on the International layout so I’m very familiar with it—unless you often need to make a very wide range of accented characters, wider than you’d need for French and Spanish, it’s a worse layout than the default macOS English keyboard because it gets in the way when you don’t need those. AltGr is like the macOS default, but entirely much worse. Everyone, please copy them, they’re the only OS with a keyboard layout good for typing in English, which, it’s 2020 so that’s a big WTF.
[EDIT] examples, option = alt except remember it's positioned a little differently on macOS
option+c ç
option+s ß (german too!)
option+\ «
option+shift+\ »
option+e, deadkey for ´ which you can apply kinda like in US International
option+u, same for ¨ (I'm hitting space after to type the decoration on its own)
option+`, same for `
option+shift+/ for ¿ (or option+? if you prefer to think of it that way)
And that's just the stuff directly relevant to typing in Spanish and French (and German). Most of which are also relevant to fluent typing in English because we have lots of loan words and phrases from those languages, and quoting from them is also common. Then there's punctuation, currency symbols, and so on. All are better than any alternative I know of, let alone any other default keyboard, and if you never press option while typing you'd never even know they're there (that is, they never get in the way otherwise)
What's interesting about this is that the Mac's option-character mapping has basically remained unchanged since at least the '90s, maybe earlier. They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time.
When I bought my first Mac in 2012, I was amazed to learn that the tricks I learned in 8th grade French class still worked nearly 20 years later.
> They managed to design for a relatively uncommon use case (QWERTY typists who type in Spanish and French), and basically got it right the first time.
Kinda, but you do need those to type fluently in English, too, which isn't an uncommon use case for a computer sold in an English-speaking country. We have tons of accented loan words from French and Spanish, among other European languages. We also need a lot more punctuation and "special characters" than any other default English layout I know of makes available.
It is entirely a joke that Apple's got the only OS, in the year 2020, that does a good job at the task of composing text in English, out of the box and without compromising other use cases. I don't even know of alternate layouts that are anywhere near as good on another OS. What the actual hell is up with that?
Linux (and predecessors) have supported a Compose key for decades, which is more discoverable than hidden combinations like Option+e. (Compose e ' → é. The arrow is Compose - >.)
But what's the significant advantage of Mac OS's layout vs e.g. Microsoft Windows US International layout?
>One fun and maybe not so novel use for this though would be training yourself to touch type AZERTY and QWERTY interchangeably
Speaking from experience, this is very hard, I have the feeling it affects negatively your speed in both layouts, with AZERTY I was somewhere in between 90-100WPM, I decided to switch to QWERTY for several years and I'm consistently between 76 and 85WPM, now trying AZERTY back after using exclusively QWERTY I'm scoring between 60WPM and 70WPM.
I’ve been using a 60% keyboard for a couple of years now, with a Magic Trackpad off to the right. The total size is about that of a full size keyboard (with numpad).
The thing about 60% and ten-keyless keyboards, is the smaller size means your hands travel less. Yeah, some common things are now chords as opposed to discrete keys.
But chords are easy to learn if you’re using them every day. They’re not for everyone, just like any accessibility feature.
I switched to a 60% keyboard a few months ago. I've been surprised how easy the transition has been. One of the things I wish there were more is split space bar 60% boards. I have one of the few, and it really helps when your layer switch is an easy thumb press away.
I think blank keys are the way to go if you want to improve your typing ability. It may not be worth it for you in particular since you already type at 90-110 WPM, but in general I'd argue that if blank keys are frustrating, that frustration is evidence of your need to have those blank keys.
I too learned to type at a young age. I can type without making mistakes at 120 WPM. I also used to be a stenographer, which for the uninitiated involves typing on a specially designed keyboard for the purpose of recording transcripts. In order to graduate as a stenographer you're required to type at 240 WPM with at least 98% accuracy (which is achievable thanks to the keyboards special design).
I know from this experience that looking at your hands / the keyboard while typing drastically hinders your ability to become a good typer. Given that you type at 90-110 WPM already, the benefit for you would really only be for the obscure keys you rarely press. It's clearly very effective for breaking poor typing habits, though.
You really just need to force your brain to form a complete model of the keyboard in your head. Even looking at an image of your keyboard layout while typing (and thus not looking at your hands) hinders how well you learn. During the first semester of stenography classes they had an image of the keyboard layout blown up and hanging on the wall. How well people did correlated very well with whether or not they ever glanced at this image.
Blank keyboards prevent these bad habits from forming, and break the bad habits if they're already formed. Considering you already type at 90-110 WPM, the frustration you'd experience may not be worth it to you, but arguably you're not the target audience.
When I learned in school, we used normal non-electric typewriters. When starting out we got a paper to look at. This was only to learn the character for the first time since the keyboard was under a plastic hood so you could not see your hands. After that you are expected not to look at the paper. It did not take very long to learn the basics and then it was just to keep at it.
It improved the typing of game listings from magazines immensely, much less debugging needed to find that character that was wrong :-)
That's interesting that they expected you to not glance at the paper. I actually think looking at the paper (or nowadays a screen) to see the result of what you're typing is good for learning. You get immediate feedback on whether or not you're correct.
Also yeah, those plastic covers are good. I'm not sure if this is common nowadays but my elementary school had a typing class that probably met once a week. We too used a plastic cover over a keyboard. I couldn't type before that, and it set me on the path to being a good typer.
Sometimes, the immediate feedback can be a problem in itself. If you are typing as fast as somebody is speaking, the last thing you want to do is recognize a mistake and try to correct it. Doing so will just make you fall behind, which is worse than having a typo in the transcription. Since mistakes cannot be corrected until afterwards, it is better not to be distracted by them at all.
This differs quite a bit from programming, where a single character typo might not be noticeable in review, and should be watched for while typing.
Interestingly there's been a few keyboards that have come out recently that are inspired by the chording design used in stenography. 40% keyboards already rely on it to some extend but there are a few that are even bellow that.Sure it's niche but obvious it's faster and probably easier on your wrists. Don't think most people are going to want to take the time to learn it given there seems to be people arguing against touch typing in this comment section.
I'm typing this one a 65% right now, and it's simply "I want more space on my desk (for other junk)". This keyboard is completely usable. I never use half of the F row anyways, and removes a few redundant keys like the duplicate alt/ctrl on the right hand I never use.
> I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.
For the same reason many people prefer keyboard shortcuts over
moving the hand back and forth between mouse and keyboard.
My main keyboard has 42 keys; that's enough for all letters,
most common symbols and modifiers. Everything else is quickly
reachable by holding down one of two "FN" keys.
Why? Because this way I can input anything without even moving
my hands or wrists. And as both FN keys are directly below my
thumbs I don't suffer from any delay when typing any special
symbols or numbers. In fact my typing speed has stayed exactly
the same, possibly even with increased accuracy because my hands
are always guaranteed to be in the correct position for every
input(outside the period of getting used to the layout of
course).
So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a
single drawback, except maybe the fact I now find standard
keyboards really cumbersome and awkward to use.
Well the problem arises if you use more than a few shortcuts.
If you start having keybinds like ALT + CMD + (F1..F6) you _really_ dont want to have to press an additional FN Keys. I found 4 key shortcuts not viable in the long run if you have to press them multiple times a minute.
With that said:
> So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback
The objective drawback is the expandability of your shortcuts because you are artificially limited in your options of key combinations. For me that would be a no go. Though I am close to 500 shortcuts in my 3 main applications alone, excluding i3 or KDE globals. I only use a mouse to browse the web.
If you have to regularly enter 4 key shortcuts you can just
define a few macros in the firmware and be done with it.
I haven't been in a situation where I absolutely couldn't input
some combination. Some shortcuts are awkward, sure, but I rarely
need those.
If I had to regularly use 4 key shortcuts I'd go insane no
matter what keyboard.
Edit: Then again I don't (yet) have 500 shortcuts, but if
software doesn't support rebinding those that's not a problem
with the keyboard imho.
Those keybinds are mainly custom macros and scripts.
Some project specific some more general. The project specific keybinds range from do test deployment and run tests to grab the latest test results format a text variant as well as pdf, archive and send them out to everyone who needs them.
The general ones range from tell my AC/heating that I'm heading home from office to open my local weather forcast on Screen #2.
IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics. Though as often as I thought about it I am not going to use a stream deck since I know I couldn't live without one after a few weeks and don't want to be bothered to carry it with me while traveling.
> IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics.
My point is that it's not for aesthetics but comfort. For
aesthetics I wouldn't use vertical stagger or a split layout.
With a 40% keyboard you can enter everything without moving
hands or wrists at all and more important keys are moved right
below the thumbs so I can use Ctrl and Shift without twisting my
hand.
All said and done I still think that the standard keyboard
layout is actually not a bad choice either, and is sometimes underrated. I just think that
some more experimental boards manage to be just as productive
while removing some ergonomical weaknesses.
That is not an argument for more non-modifier keys; it is an argument for more modifiers. Why? Each added non-modifier key adds X more modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. C-n) and X-1 more modifier+modifier+non-modifier keybindings (e.g. M-C-n), where X is the number of modifiers. In practical terms, a keyboard with control, alt, shift and super only gets four two-key and three three-key bindings with each additional key. That is not great.
Adding a modifier, OTOH, add Y modifier+non-modifier and Y modifier+modifier+non-modifier bindings, where Y is the number of non-modifiers. So adding a hyper key means adding , say 104 additional keys (on a keyboard with 52 non-modifier keys). Adding a compose key means adding … another 104 additional keys.
My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper, compose and shift. A lot of folks add raise & lower, for even more modifiers.
For many, additional modifier keys means keyboard firmware changes with macro programming. My keyboard does not have media keys, but I have programmed the keyboard that Fn+Q sends the Volume Up key, Fn+A sends Volume down, Fn+W sends Play, etc. There is no Fn key in the HID specification (at least not that I'm aware of), the Fn key exists only on the keyboard's firmware.
Many keyboards these days are getting quite fancy. There's even an open source keyboard firmware standard.
https://qmk.fm/
I use X11 and a custom keyboard firmware: both of my hyper keys generate USB left super and both of my super keys generate USB right super (or vice versa), and X11 turns left super into hyper and right super into super.
You mean Ctrl+[. I use this sometimes too. You can also use Ctrl+j for enter (in the shell too).
Life changing for me was binding my control key (which is, rightfully, in the typical caps lock position) to register as escape when pressed briefly. When held down beyond a certain threshold, it acts as control. This makes for a very handy escape key but combinations with control still work without issue. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but I use xcape (for X on Linux).
I'm all for small keyboards, but I don't know how people do it with fewer than 61 keys. I use fn+HJKL for arrow keys (vim bindings), and fn+number row for F1-F12. Having to use multiple modifiers in common situations like that would be a pain IMO. I've also rebound caps lock to be an additional FN key, but it wouldn't be enough to drop an additional 19 keys I think.
I have a keyboard with a similar arrangement, and I've still never quite gotten used to it. I make extensive use of the Mac's built-in text editing shortcuts, and chording them all gets very confusing.
Beginning of line: right-fn+cmd+h
Select beginning of line: right-fn+cmd+right-shift+h
Previous word: left-fn+option+h
Select previous word: left-fn+option+left-shift+h
I kept telling myself it would eventually click, but I found myself still making mistakes two weeks in.
I guess the main difference here is that I am working with Vim
and its shortcuts. Thanks to its modes and two leader keys I can
use every shortcut using only one modifier.
Only being restricted to usual system-wide shortcuts I think I
also would have issues, at least without custom macros. For
example I defined macros for Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab so I
can switch browser tabs more comfortably, but I don't see that
as much more than a crutch.
I went down the novel design mechanical keyboard hole last year. I had been coding on a kinesis advantage for ages but why not try I thought. I now have a shelf of very pretty but very shitty typing experiences.
- plank/preonic ortholinear boards. Fine, the advantage is ortholinear so the adjustment wasn't too terrible, but the advantage's thumb cluster beats the living shit out of the plank/preionic's bottom row. Also all flat not comfrotable.
- Viterbi (from keeb.io).. this was me thinking, this could work maybe if I could just get over the crampedness of the preonic keyboard i would be happier (Viterbi is split in half preonic mostly) .. nope.
- 60% w/ split spacebar in a nice wooden travel case for travel etc. Working on the laptop keyboard is literal torture, and the advantage isn't very portable at all. It's ... ok, the lack of a proper arrow cluster sucks, got used to layers for Fkeys, the sixcluster and arrows on a layer under wasd and ijkl depending on what hand i wanted to use. It's ok, sometimes it still flys with me.
- Minvan 40% .. mostly bought on a whim, sucks badly, I guess if I weren't coding it would be ok, but the increased use of symbols and non-letters is problematic on all these layouts. Too much cognitive overhead (where did I put the ampersand again...)
Now I knew less keys were not going to be solving my problems.
- Ergodox. I have some minor qualms with the advantage mostly size but also the case is quite hollow and noisy. Also they sell a limited array of switches for it (blue, brown, red .. I'm a brown guy, I like a little tactile feedback). Coming from the advantage this thing just sucks, very much the same layout (with a few extra keys) but flat flat flat, making it much harder to reach characters. Those advantage wells are amazing. The thumb cluster is also just worse due to the flatness. I actually gave this keyboard away.
- Iris (keeb.io) ... slightly better than the ergodox but less keys than the advantage. Tried it for a few weeks, felt limiting for coding. Have played videogames with it, works pretty well for that. It stays on my desk for that purpose.
- Dactyl - Finally I printed a dactyl. This is a great board for a travel board for me. It's essentially an open source kinesis advantage. I already had a 3d printer, had one printed, soldered and running in a week. Put some very nice zealious zilent switches in it. It's awesome. I still an advantage at home (though I replaced it's controller with a custom one that runs QMK, filled it with foam to deaden the din and am considering contacting the manufacturer for some spare parts so I can put some other switches in it) .. My only reservation is around the 3d printing, I wish I could get a solid plastic shell or it milled out of aluminum or something a little lighter (aluminum being extra weight when I travel .. if i ever travel again). But custom work like that is very cost prohibitive.
So anyways, that was my journey down the rabbit hole of niche keyboard designs. I mostly still use the advantage, with an iris for gaming, and a dactyl for travel.
> I still an advantage at home (though I replaced it's controller with a custom one that runs QMK, filled it with foam to deaden the din and am considering contacting the manufacturer for some spare parts so I can put some other switches in it)
Did you write about this anywhere? I'm thinking of getting an Advantage but it would be really nice to be able to run it with QMK, and your soundproofing sounds neat too.
I currently have an Ergodox EZ but the thumb clusters do not work for me, I can only press one of the keys without straining my thumb.
> I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.)
One unintended benefit of my 60% keyboard is less travel with my right arm when switching from keyboard to mouse. Over the course of the workday it adds up.
However conversely, in this modern era with 2FA codes for many sites... Inputting 2FA codes is now a royal pain in the ass.
Learning to type really makes a difference in productivity. My typing skills took a huge leap when I worked in a computer lab that had bad lighting and green terminal screens. You couldn't see the markings on the keys... ancient Zenith terminals hooked up to a VAX.
This could be survivor bias. I hunted and pecked for the first ~15 years without pain. Then had problems within the first 3 years of touch typing. My guess is, like sports, some people won the genetic lottery and/or had training and time to perfect their craft more easily than others.
My parents put me in a touch-typing class when I was young. You just needed discipline to not look at the keycaps, or just tape over the letters while you're practicing.
I'm in about the same WPM range as you. It's one of the greatest skills I've ever learned. It's invaluable in todays world. I regularly just keep typing while looking at someone. This was especially useful while taking notes in college.
> I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.
Buying a novelty keycaps (or a whole keyboard with blank caps) seems overkill. Just tape over the keys and remove them when you can touch-type comfortably.
Having blank-keycaps would only annoy other people need to use my computer for something. It's just a novelty that I personaly feel like it adds anything.
"I really don't get why anyone would want less keys"
Size. I have used an HHKB2 for ~3 years now, with blank keycaps, and I've been quite happy. I find myself rarely needing to use function keys so often that it becomes an issue.
I also used a split, ortholinear Let's Splitv2 that I built myself, with blank keycaps. But not having the number row kinda sucked. I may try it again soon.
Though there are a few situations where I'd want a full, standard keyboard layout, with a numpad:
* Data entry
* Playing videogames that have a lot of commands like DotA2. Chording is simply not fast enough / too much cognitive overhead during high apm moments.
> I'm the odd-man out when it comes to keyboards though
I assume I'm in the extreme minority as my preferred keyboard is the floppy silicone style [1].
They wear out after a couple years, and usually whoever made the previous one has gone out of business by then, so getting replacements is a bit of pain.
The things I love about this style of keyboard though:
1. More or less silent to type on. No louder than just tapping your fingers on your desk.
2. The fact that they are completely flat on the desk seems to prevent any of the wrist strain that I get from a traditional keyboard.
perhaps the worst typing experience ever. Though I did have one of these I took to burningman to hook up to the camp's mp3 server circa 1999, it lived in a box with a lot of filtration, the keyboard just lived on the playa and worked like a champ. But I wouldn't want to type on it for more than 2 minutes.
People at my school used to do that. I did not care about carrying that X kg suitcase with me every Friday to school. Being already active on irc already at young age, at some point i got so annoyed of typing so slow and while typing missing what was being written on screen by others, i simply forced myself to look at the screen and type. Progress happened quite fast and that was most encouraging to keep going.
That's, basically, how I was taught to touch type. The teacher would put little blank white stickers over the letters on the typewriter (yes, I learned to type on a typewriter) so we couldn't cheat and look at the letters.
Too many years of not really typing "properly" mean I am no longer a great touch typist, but the muscle memory is still mostly there.
We had a little cardboard hood thing that went over the whole keyboard and covered our hands.
I started wanting to switch to a blank keyboard when I realised that I never look at my hands when I'm typing anyway. Finally got a Das Keyboard S as a present a few years ago and it's been awesome. These days I forget it's unusual until someone else sits down at my computer and looks bewildered. :)
An interesting new take on this is that there are a bunch of productivity apps emerging which give you awesome giant monitors and workspaces in VR - but the catch is, your keyboard now is not visible any more. So you really have to learn to touch type to use these effectively. I am a pretty good typist but being forced to type in VR and reach every single key without even having the option to look is really taking it to a new level. It's especially noticeable that even though I don't look at my fingers, what I do observe in my peripheral vision outside VR is quite important to my accuracy. So there is still a lot of learning to do.
Some VR experiences (e.g. Windows VR) allow you to have a "flashlight" which is a circular cutout in VR that actually just shows your VR headset's camera. You can control this space by pointing your controller like a flashlight, so you can keep it pointed towards your keyboard or whatever you want to keep an eye on without having to take off your headset.
I usually use it when I need to find my water bottle or to take a peek at my phone.
What VR headset are you using? I've considered switching to a VR monitor setup but I feel that the quality of existing headsets is too low to compete against an actual monitor and having a screen with text that close to the eyes for several hours will accelerate the accumulation of eye damage most developers already receive.
I'm using an Oculus Quest. I can't say I would recommend it if you have that concern yet. It's usable but I only do so in specific contexts especially where either I really want to focus, or having an unnaturally giant screen is useful. So I wouldn't really do more than an hour or two at a time myself. But with another generation of improvements in the display tech I think it'll cross an important threshold. There are people who use them all day but I personally wouldn't.
The two that I actually use are Virtual Desktop [1], and Immersed [2]. There is another one that is still pending official release called vSpatial [3].
Immersed is the most interesting I think because it allows for virtual monitors. The others mirror whatever monitors you have but you are stuck with their limitations to some extent. With immersed you can create a monitor with size and shape that you couldn't or wouldn't ever physically buy, which is amazing.
Went from 70 WPM to 150 WPM playing TypeRacer on a school keyboard. It was the only game I wouldn’t get banned for playing.
IMHO, the biggest chunk of my time spent is knowing what to write, though. I think time could be better spent becoming a better writer than a better typist.
I didn't tried too hard, but, I couldn't get faster than 110-120 with standard QWERTY finger placement. I assume you had to use a few tricks to get faster than that which I never tried.
I switched to Dvorak on a keyboard without changing the key caps. That has about the same effect. It took me 2 days of staring on a colour coded map (each finger had a different colour) taped to the top of my screen before my brain just went "ok. I got this now" and I went from about 25wpm to 80 in 20 minutes. Such a weird experience. 4 days after switching I was back to 110wpm where I left qwerty, and now I am at 120 in one-minute bursts. About 90 sustained.
I switched mainly because I was a nerd poser in high school, but also because I had some warning signs of carpal tunnel syndrome. No issues since.
Oh man, I did a similar thing in grad school, but I made the mistake of trying to keep both layouts in my head. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I couldn't seem to do it. I finally committed to Dvorak and it has scored me some nerd cred over the years.
Interestingly, numbers and symbols continued to trip me up, and they are one of the few areas of overlap between QWERTY and Dvorak. I finally switched to a blank keyboard and that did seem to help.
I have moved several symbols to an extra layer under the right alt (or "alt gr" as it is called in the Swedish layout), and that helped a lot. I can type parens without leaving the home row, which helps my scheme programming by about a billion percent.
In my opinion, the reason people don't learn to touchtype is that the QWERTY keyboard layout doesn't reward touchtyping. You have to beat yourself up to "force" yourself to keep your hands over the home keys, because the natural use for QWERTY is to wander away from the home row.
If you learn Dvorak, or, frankly, any layout designed to minimize movement, you will naturally learn to touchtype, because the layout rewards being on the home row. You don't have to try to force yourself to stay on the home row, your hands will be there anyhow. And from there, with your newfound hand stability, it's not hard to learn to touch type without looking. It'll just happen and one day you'll notice that you've been doing it for weeks.
It may literally be easier to switch to Dvorak than to whip yourself hard enough to learn to "touchtype" on QWERTY.
When I first tried to learn the Dvorak keyboard layout, I popped the key caps off an old keyboard, and rearranged them to match Dvorak, then wrote a kernel driver that allowed me to have one Dvorak and on QWERTY keyboard plugged in at the same time. It worked much better when I just switched keyboard mappings without rearranged key caps and IM'd friends for a few days. The pressure to keep up with conversations is good motivation.
Normal OEM profile keycaps are not all equally shaped. The heights are meant to be staggered. You'd want something like DSA profile, blank or not, if you're planning to change stuff around.
I did not get any touch-typing lesson as a kid (the Amiga 500 keyboard felt so massive...), so I developed a pretty fast 6-finger technique that helped me into my early 30s - I was considered a very quick typists in chats and the likes, but writing code was still error-prone. At one point I saw a colleague touch-typing properly, and I felt so envious that I decided to do something about it. I started doing lessons but somehow always ended up peeking. Eventually, 5 years ago, I moved to COLEMAK, and that forced me to learn proper form. I can now push 60 to 80 wpm on regular text with no effort.
I still struggle somewhat with special characters, because of my short pinkies. I am currently experimenting with alternatives (see http://blog.pythonaro.com/2020/06/better-access-to-special-c... ) but I've never been good at layer-switching and it makes me still pretty slow.
60-80 is slow to average, though, no? I had the same issue as you with coding sigils, and "proper" touch typing didn't help at all, so I just remapped [] {} to Tab+hjkl and the parentheses to the shift keys, which helps more because I don't have to stretch.
It's off course hard to find the average typing speed of everybody who types, but Wikipedia says this:
> An average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[4] Two-finger typists, sometimes also referred to as "hunt and peck" typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorized text and 27 wpm when copying text, but in bursts may be able to reach much higher speeds.
You and your friends are probably programmers (or similar) and have been touch typing for decades. It's always easy to forget the selection bias of self-organizing groups.
Until recently, the best Typeracer class was 55+. They now added another one at 80. Most people I know (largely “normies”, not geeks) struggle to reach speeds above 40.
I think it's pretty generous of the writer to consider 70-90 wpm an expert typist.
I've never spent any actual effort of learning any techniques and I can easily get 120 wpm on almost any basic keyboard and up to 140 wpm on my main keyboard at home (which happens to be a regular gaming keyboard by logitech).
Blank key caps seems more like a gimmick than actually helpful and personally I couldn't drop the arrows either. I know Vim bindings are all fun if you IDE supports them, but you can't really navigate around the OS comfortably if you have to hit Fn + your faux arrows every time you want to move the focus around.
With layers as supported by https://docs.qmk.fm/#/ you won't need dedicated arrow keys (put them on the home row in a different layer), nor would you need to switch to vim necessarily. That is at least my experience.
That's how I learned to touch type as well.
Or actually, I learned to touch type before I got blank key caps but I still had a bad habit of looking down at my keyboard to make sure that the letters were where I thought they were, and getting blank keycaps got rid of that bad habit in like a week.
The only issue was learning all the symbol keys which took a little while.
I fully agree that blank keycaps are the way to go! I learned touch typing only very late in my (software engineering) career (almost 20 years into it). I decidedto directly start using COLEMAK using custom keyboards (Ergodox, Iris). Blank caps just make more sense on this setup, because you do not need custom COLEMAK keycaps and also because you are not looking all the time at the keyboard to find the right key.
Last month I set out to learn proper touch-typing (after 25+ years on computers).
And though I type more accurate now, which brings a certain kind of satisfaction, I'm also slower (I seem to plateau). According to Typing Trainer I was "Fast" (self-taught, many errors) and now "Average" (proper, less errors).
However nice this is for my backspace key I still would like to improve. Maybe I need to practice more, but I don't think a keyboard like this will help because I already never look at my keyboard.
I have thought about becoming better by using a device that would attach wires to your fingers (or a glove) that correspond with keys, and the keys will only register when hit with the right finger (I find myself cheating now/falling back to old ways when I want to go fast). Something like this should exist, right?
I'm in the same boat as you! Just started working on proper touch-typing a few weeks ago, as I sometimes found myself being ashamed of my self-taught ~7-finger typing system.
Commenting primarily to see what others have to say about your idea, since I can notice that sometimes when I don't pay full attention I tend to use my "old" mental keymap and cheat a little bit.
Im in exactly the same boat. I was thinking something like this might be so radically different that it breaks my bad habits? https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/ Not cheap but I would pay a lot to be able to forget how to type and start from scratch, properly...
If you consistently push yourself towards touch-typing, there seems to be a slow increase after the first plateau. Depending on your age it'll take more or less time.
I switched keyboards to a linear one in December, which forced me to learn to touch-type properly (I need to write a post about that). I have the same experience as you, I only got slower, without any other benefits.
"Proper" touch typing (I typed without looking before too, but not the "proper" way) is overrated and has proven to me less useful than the way I was used to.
"Proper" makes sense until it doesn't. When you play the piano there are all kinds of recommended fingerings, until you realise that you don't have the same shaped hand as the person who recommended them or you started on a different finger so can't quite get into the optimal fingering.
Worse (IIRC), "proper" touch typing exists in a vacuum and has no context of the prior keypresses - rotating fingers or even switching hands at the boundary is going to lead to faster typing when you remove the artificial restrictions of "proper" typing.
BUT when you cannot touch type at all the notion of "proper" fingering provides a framework to work within and helps to form best practices that combat things like "press every key with index finger".
You'll see this in many skills and sports:
Beginner - no knowledge of the rules
Intermediate - can apply the rules
Expert - breaks the rules to achieve greater performance
Master - creates new rules
Ultimately the best fingering for touch typing is the one which leads you to type the fastest and most accurate with the least amount of energy/effort. Achieving the optimal fingering as declared by someone else isn't really the goal.
True, but linear keyboard force you to use proper touch typing because the keys are too far for anything else. I wouldn't recommend them, even though I otherwise love mine.
One of the rules I break on standard ANSI US keyboards is typing c and m with my index finger instead of my middle finger. Other keys in the bottom row are shifted out by one finger, and my pinkies are relieved of bottom row duty, besides the shift key. This makes a regular keyboard more like a linear (matrix) keyboard, with angled columns.
I do this because I keep my hands angled a little bit inward, to avoid the awkward and un-ergonomic bend in my wrist. That is, if standard position is like this:
I am a vim user and didn't remap esc. I use my ring or middle finger to hit esc which means I leave the home row (shock horror) but my wrist moves less far than if I use my pinky and I can find the home row again without looking
Hand angles and wrist position are somewhat glossed over if you only know "finger x presses key y"
If you think about violin and guitar - you learn how to play the same note from different hand positions so there is some (small) potential for this on the keyboard
I have the same problem: I can type fast but not properly — 120 wpm with 2 fingers — and any attempt I’ve made to learn to type “properly” has decreased my error rate... and my speed so much that any error-rate reduction gains aren’t worth it. I feel like, after typing a specific way for decades, it’s practically impossible to ever change effectively.
Interesting. I also typed 120 wpm with 2 fingers for years. I think this is the first time I've heard of anyone else typing that fast with 2 fingers. I made the switch late in high school since I started getting carpal tunnel symptoms and figured there was a good chance it was related.
I actually made the switch to proper touch typing by re-learning to type from scratch on a Dvorak layout, using blank keys (or Qwerty-marked keyboards, which is practically the same thing). I tried to switch and stay on Qwerty, but I'd just revert back to two fingers since it was so much faster, then my wrist pain would come back.
To give you a bit of motivation if you ever have to switch, I switched in November 2009 doing races on typeracer.com. Within a week I was at 45 wpm, by the end of November it was 70 wpm. I averaged 80 in January, and 90 in March.
So it took maybe a few weeks to get to 'usable' speeds, and a few months to get back to 'fast' (which felt right for daily use). This was doing bugger all practice too, each race is a minute or so and I did maybe 500 races this whole period? Literally 3-5 minutes a day, absolutely nothing. If you put actual effort into practicing you could probably regain your speed way quicker.
From there it slowed right down obviously. It took a few years to get back to 110, then half a decade to get to 120. That's probably to be expected, but realistically you're not going to notice the difference between 120 and 100 in daily use, so it's not a big deal.
Also, the interesting thing is, touch typing with Dvorak doesn't train you to touch type in Qwerty. Even after over a decade I still have the muscle memory to type with 2 fingers in Qwerty. Once every year or two I'll have to use somebody else's keyboard at work and I'll have to pull out the two finger technique, which must be hilarious for everyone watching. Just typing Qwerty for a few moments once a year or so I can still do around 60 wpm, which is insane when you think about it. I guess it's like riding a bike.
Did the exact same thing (except with colemak instead of Dvorak). My muscle memory only comes back for QWERTY if I am actively looking at the keyboard though.
There's an interesting discovery scientist have made about those learning a second language or a new skill.
They learn at an incredible rate when they first start (as you'd expect) and it eventually starts to slow down over time (again, as you'd expect) until it hits a plateau, at which it sometimes never overcomes (or it does but stops at the next plateau). I believe they call this the OK-Plateau, for how you feel about your new skills when you reach this point, OK.
The idea is, learning levels off when we internally (and often subconsciously) determine we're "good enough" at a certain thing. For language learner's it may be when they decide they're conversational, or when they one day stop bothering to look up new words because they think their vocabulary is good enough for their needs.
You're likely at this point and need to critically examine your weaknesses and make a plan to train them if you really want to progress.
On an interesting side note here, this is often the value that coaches provide to aspiring athletes, someone who can identify your plateaus by analyzing your movement, abilities, etc.. and plan your training to isolate and tackle them.
If you really care about entering large amounts of text into a computer quickly, dictation is the way to go. If you care more about quality rather than quantity (e.g. when coding), speed doesn't matter that much.
With regards to coding, yeah maybe speed of entering text doesn't matter that much, but IMHO speed of navigating around and changing text might still matter. Being able to "blindly" edit the text IMHO makes a difference. Also usually as a developer, in my experience writing non-code text (email, chat etc) is still taking a lot of time
When I switched to using Dvorak a decade ago, I did so using a keyboard that came with two skins; one printed, one blank.
I used the printed skin at first but then decided I wasn’t learning the layout fast enough. So I switched to the blank skin “cold turkey”.
It was impossible to type anything at first, because I didn’t really know where any of the keys were. So for absolutely every character I’d press each and every button until I found the correct one. But it only took a couple of days of this before my muscle memory began to learn where the keys were. And then as I kept using it I got better and better at touch typing Dvorak and finally it became second nature.
My original keyboard that I did this with was the TypeMatrix 2030 USB. I’ve stuck with Dvorak ever since. In 2017 I switched to a programable mechanical keyboard and made my own TypeMatrix-inspired Dvorak keyboard layout for it. I bought the one with blank key caps, naturally ;)
I feel like “proper” finger placement on the home row forces your wrist in an awkward position and aligns with everything I’ve been told gives you injuries from typing.
I've got RSA Type 2 and Trigger-finger four years ago and I was told if I continue like that I may not be able to use a keyboard for a very long time. It started with lots of pain and discomfort and then got worst with trigger-finger. What a nightmare!
I had many years without touch typing and when the pain started, I was already doing touch typing for more than 3 years. But, neither me nor the doctor couldn't blame touch typing for it. I was told any repetitive movement can cause it. Perhaps touch typing does kick in. But, the main cause was lack of any exercise with hands. I was only using my hands on my keyboard for a very long time.
I'm still doing touch typing. I actually stopped physiotherapy exercises for my hands shortly. Instead, I started to do sports and normal exercises to keep my muscles healthy. I've also switched to a split keyboard (Kinesis Advantage 2) with some customization on the layout to tweak it for coding. Seriously one of my best purchases ever. Since then I actually invest on my work equipment and office tools. Good monitor, proper desk and ergo chair. They last forever, and it's way cheaper than breaking your body.
It definitely does on a staggered layout keyboard. There's a lot of good alternatives mentioned in the comments like the ergodox and whatnot that can help alleviate that awkward positioning. The rabbit hole of keyboard building and ergonomics is endless. The subreddit r/OLKB is a good starting point.
348 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 382 ms ] threadAnecdotally it serves as a layer of computer security i didn’t expect. Friends of mine (IT pros, graduate students, programmers, etc) who make their livelihoods on computers throw tantrums completing simple tasks with it, such as typing “youtube” into an address bar. Entering their passwords is particularly impossible exercise in my experience.
The only person immune to this was a Dvorak user (who I believe also had the additional security layer of using Emacs as a mail client).
Credit due to him - he kept his word - and since he was CISO, he paid for donuts TWO weeks running.
The policy worked most of the time though.
(if Rocky Balboa had been rated on WPM instead of KOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugcwp1g9Bao )
It wasn't QWERTY vs QWERTZ, someone had swapped out two keys as a joke. But the story might have evolved over the years.
If you've got the time to spare, though, I'd suggest learning the Dvorak layout for a more comfortable typing experience.
How long did it take you to learn dvorak?
When I tried using Dvorak again recently, it took me a couple of days to get used to it again. I'm comfortable enough switching between a keyboard with Dvorak and a keyboard with QWERTY now, though.
That user seems to have the password only in muscle memory, which seems like a bad idea regardless of layout.
I would say I reached "expert" status long before that happened though. I attribute this to doing so much typing for the past few decades.
I think the reason so many people have trouble with keyboards is that they have no formal training (e.g. a typing class in school), and do not regularly use them because their phone/tablet is the primary computing device.
… maybe someday, but I think it's a bit premature? Phone keyboards were terrible, involving hacks like T9 to make them tolerable for the longest time. Smart phones haven't been around that long; the iPhone wasn't introduced until mid-2007. That's only a little more than a decade, so unless you're close to 20, you're going to remember / have learned on something else.
And it takes very little practice on even a basic keyboard to outpace a mobile "keyboard"'s input rate.
> And it takes very little practice on even a basic keyboard to outpace a mobile "keyboard"'s input rate.
Yeah, but you have to care enough to do that. (And also have a physical keyboard available.)
I can't imagine having to look at the keyboard while typing.
I never understood the fascination with typing optimization, it is not like I'm a stenographer. But maybe I'm missing something.
For me it made a difference, and I went from feeling pain after an hour of typing, to being able to type all day without the slightest issue.
My thoughts "flow" from my mind to my computer without extra effort or mistakes. That seems to be the biggest win to me.
I went through a Dvorak phase in college, it was fun, but switching layouts is weird, and qwerty is everywhere, so I stuck with the standard.
I think most people could train up to about 60 wpm if they wanted to, but like 30-40 wpm is enough that you wouldn't normally be hindered by slow typing. You won't do great in Typer Shark or Typing of the Dead, but you should do alright.
Edit to add: no labels is fine on letters, pretty brutal for all the keys.
It seems by not having an international standard early on in computing we missed out on something here. Like how we drive on different sides of the road, use different plugs put interchange commas and periods for decimals. However, the most egregious violation of international missed opportunities has got to be sign language. I find it both incredibly hilarious and sad that two deaf people from different cultures can't communicate even though both do so in hand codes. We're truly a stupid species sometimes.
Most of my time (like the person you're replying to) is solving the problems in my head and even refining my solution mentally as well. Very little typing is needed on most days in an ide. I wouldn't be surprised if I typed more into DDG than an ide on some days.
For me when I actually am typing it is a complete thought already and now I am waiting to get it out so I can move on to the next thing.
If I could type infinitely fast I could spend 100% of my time thinking.
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.
For the question at hand, I'm inclined to think that what matters most is not so much typing speed as typing accuracy. If I have to constantly go back and fix a typo it's a just a PITA. I'm by no means a fast typist, but I think I make fairly few errors. So whenever I have to use an unfamiliar keyboard, the biggest issue I have is mistyping things and having to constantly go back and fix them. Also, modifier keys not being where I expect them aggravates me to no end.
Hypothetically, someone with a hunt and peck technique might be 40/60. Someone with a self taught but undisciplined technique could be 60/40. Someone with standard touch typing might be 70/30. Someone who does regular typing drills could be 80/20.
Given the thinking and debugging is where are value comes from, the typing is just how we make it tangible, by improving your typing you are improving your value.
I see this comment on almost every HN and r/programming thread about typing. It always puts an idea in my head of a programmer who has to stop and ponder between every keystroke.
It was only after relearning to type, but with a new keyboard layout (colemak), did I find myself able to touch type.
There's a golden window for touch-typing where most people in the U.S. grew up typing on computers constantly (especially IMing in multiple windows concurrently) and before smartphones arrived. It's nearly impossible to keep up with multiple IM windows without lots of typing and spelling errors unless you're at least close to touch-typing.
I grew up on a Mac, and it took me way too long to get used to using the delete key on a PC. (I think very few Mac users make much use of Fn-Delete to get PC-like delete functionality.) Typing habits die hard.
This is what I was thinking when I read the article. I grew up on IRC, ICQ, and multiplayer games with text-only chat. That last one in particular, you learned to type fast or live with a horrible K/D ratio.
Yep. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught me proper form. Fast-scrolling Internet chat rooms and FPS chat functionality taught me speed. In the former you had to be fast to get a word in, and quite fast if you wanted a complete thought. In the latter you were risking "death" every time you typed a message, so had better be fast about it. I went from proper-but-slow to proper-and-fast in no time, once I discovered those motivations.
Personally I agree that people, especially people who are expected to use a computer for their job, probably should know how to type, and as a result it should be part of primary education.
I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.
It's a fun novelty and if it works for them more power to them, but I only see more frustration than anything. I don't need to look at the keyboard to know what I'm typing, especially on my normal keyboard, but it's nice to have the option.
(I'm the odd-man out when it comes to keyboards though. I don't have a preference for mechanical keyboards and I truly don't understand the love/passion for ~60% keyboards. I really don't get why anyone would want less keys.)
If you turn your palms down and rotate your forearms outward until they are pointing straight forward (parallel with each other), you are probably at the outer limit of where you should routinely work. Keep most of your work inside that limit, in front of you.
If you are mousing right handed, for example, and your keyboard is so wide that the normal position of the mouse requires you to rotate your forearm so your arm isn't pointing inward or straight ahead but is now pointing outward to the right, you may start feeling pain under your right shoulder blade, which may become quite severe.
The problem is that people with this pain don't usually feel it when they are mousing. Perversely, they tend to feel it when they are away from the keyboard, so they don't make the connection. If you know of anyone with sharp pain under the shoulder blade, see if they do a lot of work with that arm rotated outward.
Personally I prefer 70% for additional cursor/jump keys.
For example, I always end up moving my entire left hand several centimeters to the right so my left index finger can reach the "Y" key. So every time I type a "Y" character my entire left hand shifts unnecessarily back and forth.
Really, it's not the blank keycaps that improved this person's typing speed. It was the deliberate focus on training their senses to memorize the way the tension in their left ring finger, or the way their right thumb extended to the left a little.
One fun and maybe not so novel use for this though would be training yourself to touch type AZERTY and QWERTY interchangeably. The blank keycaps would make it easy to switch between layouts and not run into a focus conflict like trying to mentally envision the A key, struggling to place it then looking down to see Q and having to fight your brain to not dump your mental priming for AZERTY and return memory for QWERTY. (There's a specific term for this in cognitive science. I want to say "trigger", but that's definitely not it. It refers to when a mylenated path is triggered by your senses and overrides your present thought.)
I found that using US-international mostly removes the need to look for the dedicated accented letter.
It works by making you compose accented character instead of typing them directly.
For instance, you have to press the grave accent key [`] then [a] to make "à". The apostrophe doubles as the acute accent and cedilla key, so ['] then [e] makes "é", [`] and [c] makes "ç".
It works for most diacritics in European languages (`, ~, ^, ', "). Also, to get the original character, press space (or double press them to double type them).
It's probably a tiny bit slower than having dedicated keys, but I find the consistency nice to have.
If you don't like this behavior then then I can recommend using a modified US-International layout where those keys are only dead if AltGr is held down [1]. Alternatively, you can use a version where AltGr acts as the modifier [2].
The latter is what I use since I only need it for Swedish special characters (åäö) which I get by typing AltGr+W, AltGr+Q, and AltGr+P.
[1] https://github.com/thomasfaingnaert/win-us-intl-altgr
[2] https://github.com/umanovskis/win-kbd-usint-nodead
Default English keyboards in Windows and Linux are awful for typing in English (which includes needing easy access to some accented characters, among other things). I accidentally learned to type on the International layout so I’m very familiar with it—unless you often need to make a very wide range of accented characters, wider than you’d need for French and Spanish, it’s a worse layout than the default macOS English keyboard because it gets in the way when you don’t need those. AltGr is like the macOS default, but entirely much worse. Everyone, please copy them, they’re the only OS with a keyboard layout good for typing in English, which, it’s 2020 so that’s a big WTF.
[EDIT] examples, option = alt except remember it's positioned a little differently on macOS
option+c ç
option+s ß (german too!)
option+\ «
option+shift+\ »
option+e, deadkey for ´ which you can apply kinda like in US International
option+u, same for ¨ (I'm hitting space after to type the decoration on its own)
option+`, same for `
option+shift+/ for ¿ (or option+? if you prefer to think of it that way)
And that's just the stuff directly relevant to typing in Spanish and French (and German). Most of which are also relevant to fluent typing in English because we have lots of loan words and phrases from those languages, and quoting from them is also common. Then there's punctuation, currency symbols, and so on. All are better than any alternative I know of, let alone any other default keyboard, and if you never press option while typing you'd never even know they're there (that is, they never get in the way otherwise)
When I bought my first Mac in 2012, I was amazed to learn that the tricks I learned in 8th grade French class still worked nearly 20 years later.
Kinda, but you do need those to type fluently in English, too, which isn't an uncommon use case for a computer sold in an English-speaking country. We have tons of accented loan words from French and Spanish, among other European languages. We also need a lot more punctuation and "special characters" than any other default English layout I know of makes available.
It is entirely a joke that Apple's got the only OS, in the year 2020, that does a good job at the task of composing text in English, out of the box and without compromising other use cases. I don't even know of alternate layouts that are anywhere near as good on another OS. What the actual hell is up with that?
But what's the significant advantage of Mac OS's layout vs e.g. Microsoft Windows US International layout?
Speaking from experience, this is very hard, I have the feeling it affects negatively your speed in both layouts, with AZERTY I was somewhere in between 90-100WPM, I decided to switch to QWERTY for several years and I'm consistently between 76 and 85WPM, now trying AZERTY back after using exclusively QWERTY I'm scoring between 60WPM and 70WPM.
The thing about 60% and ten-keyless keyboards, is the smaller size means your hands travel less. Yeah, some common things are now chords as opposed to discrete keys.
But chords are easy to learn if you’re using them every day. They’re not for everyone, just like any accessibility feature.
Above all, the 60% keyboard is more comfortable.
I too learned to type at a young age. I can type without making mistakes at 120 WPM. I also used to be a stenographer, which for the uninitiated involves typing on a specially designed keyboard for the purpose of recording transcripts. In order to graduate as a stenographer you're required to type at 240 WPM with at least 98% accuracy (which is achievable thanks to the keyboards special design).
I know from this experience that looking at your hands / the keyboard while typing drastically hinders your ability to become a good typer. Given that you type at 90-110 WPM already, the benefit for you would really only be for the obscure keys you rarely press. It's clearly very effective for breaking poor typing habits, though.
You really just need to force your brain to form a complete model of the keyboard in your head. Even looking at an image of your keyboard layout while typing (and thus not looking at your hands) hinders how well you learn. During the first semester of stenography classes they had an image of the keyboard layout blown up and hanging on the wall. How well people did correlated very well with whether or not they ever glanced at this image.
Blank keyboards prevent these bad habits from forming, and break the bad habits if they're already formed. Considering you already type at 90-110 WPM, the frustration you'd experience may not be worth it to you, but arguably you're not the target audience.
It improved the typing of game listings from magazines immensely, much less debugging needed to find that character that was wrong :-)
Also yeah, those plastic covers are good. I'm not sure if this is common nowadays but my elementary school had a typing class that probably met once a week. We too used a plastic cover over a keyboard. I couldn't type before that, and it set me on the path to being a good typer.
This differs quite a bit from programming, where a single character typo might not be noticeable in review, and should be watched for while typing.
For the same reason many people prefer keyboard shortcuts over moving the hand back and forth between mouse and keyboard.
My main keyboard has 42 keys; that's enough for all letters, most common symbols and modifiers. Everything else is quickly reachable by holding down one of two "FN" keys.
Why? Because this way I can input anything without even moving my hands or wrists. And as both FN keys are directly below my thumbs I don't suffer from any delay when typing any special symbols or numbers. In fact my typing speed has stayed exactly the same, possibly even with increased accuracy because my hands are always guaranteed to be in the correct position for every input(outside the period of getting used to the layout of course).
So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback, except maybe the fact I now find standard keyboards really cumbersome and awkward to use.
If you start having keybinds like ALT + CMD + (F1..F6) you _really_ dont want to have to press an additional FN Keys. I found 4 key shortcuts not viable in the long run if you have to press them multiple times a minute.
With that said:
> So for me personally it's a number of advantages without a single drawback
The objective drawback is the expandability of your shortcuts because you are artificially limited in your options of key combinations. For me that would be a no go. Though I am close to 500 shortcuts in my 3 main applications alone, excluding i3 or KDE globals. I only use a mouse to browse the web.
If I had to regularly use 4 key shortcuts I'd go insane no matter what keyboard.
Edit: Then again I don't (yet) have 500 shortcuts, but if software doesn't support rebinding those that's not a problem with the keyboard imho.
Some project specific some more general. The project specific keybinds range from do test deployment and run tests to grab the latest test results format a text variant as well as pdf, archive and send them out to everyone who needs them. The general ones range from tell my AC/heating that I'm heading home from office to open my local weather forcast on Screen #2.
IMO there's no good reason to omit possibilities for aesthetics. Though as often as I thought about it I am not going to use a stream deck since I know I couldn't live without one after a few weeks and don't want to be bothered to carry it with me while traveling.
My point is that it's not for aesthetics but comfort. For aesthetics I wouldn't use vertical stagger or a split layout.
With a 40% keyboard you can enter everything without moving hands or wrists at all and more important keys are moved right below the thumbs so I can use Ctrl and Shift without twisting my hand.
All said and done I still think that the standard keyboard layout is actually not a bad choice either, and is sometimes underrated. I just think that some more experimental boards manage to be just as productive while removing some ergonomical weaknesses.
Adding a modifier, OTOH, add Y modifier+non-modifier and Y modifier+modifier+non-modifier bindings, where Y is the number of non-modifiers. So adding a hyper key means adding , say 104 additional keys (on a keyboard with 52 non-modifier keys). Adding a compose key means adding … another 104 additional keys.
My current keyboard has control, alt, super, hyper, compose and shift. A lot of folks add raise & lower, for even more modifiers.
Assuming USB HID, how are you distinguishing extra modifiers?
Many keyboards these days are getting quite fancy. There's even an open source keyboard firmware standard. https://qmk.fm/
Life changing for me was binding my control key (which is, rightfully, in the typical caps lock position) to register as escape when pressed briefly. When held down beyond a certain threshold, it acts as control. This makes for a very handy escape key but combinations with control still work without issue. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but I use xcape (for X on Linux).
Only being restricted to usual system-wide shortcuts I think I also would have issues, at least without custom macros. For example I defined macros for Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab so I can switch browser tabs more comfortably, but I don't see that as much more than a crutch.
- plank/preonic ortholinear boards. Fine, the advantage is ortholinear so the adjustment wasn't too terrible, but the advantage's thumb cluster beats the living shit out of the plank/preionic's bottom row. Also all flat not comfrotable.
- Viterbi (from keeb.io).. this was me thinking, this could work maybe if I could just get over the crampedness of the preonic keyboard i would be happier (Viterbi is split in half preonic mostly) .. nope.
- 60% w/ split spacebar in a nice wooden travel case for travel etc. Working on the laptop keyboard is literal torture, and the advantage isn't very portable at all. It's ... ok, the lack of a proper arrow cluster sucks, got used to layers for Fkeys, the sixcluster and arrows on a layer under wasd and ijkl depending on what hand i wanted to use. It's ok, sometimes it still flys with me.
- Minvan 40% .. mostly bought on a whim, sucks badly, I guess if I weren't coding it would be ok, but the increased use of symbols and non-letters is problematic on all these layouts. Too much cognitive overhead (where did I put the ampersand again...)
Now I knew less keys were not going to be solving my problems.
- Ergodox. I have some minor qualms with the advantage mostly size but also the case is quite hollow and noisy. Also they sell a limited array of switches for it (blue, brown, red .. I'm a brown guy, I like a little tactile feedback). Coming from the advantage this thing just sucks, very much the same layout (with a few extra keys) but flat flat flat, making it much harder to reach characters. Those advantage wells are amazing. The thumb cluster is also just worse due to the flatness. I actually gave this keyboard away.
- Iris (keeb.io) ... slightly better than the ergodox but less keys than the advantage. Tried it for a few weeks, felt limiting for coding. Have played videogames with it, works pretty well for that. It stays on my desk for that purpose.
- Dactyl - Finally I printed a dactyl. This is a great board for a travel board for me. It's essentially an open source kinesis advantage. I already had a 3d printer, had one printed, soldered and running in a week. Put some very nice zealious zilent switches in it. It's awesome. I still an advantage at home (though I replaced it's controller with a custom one that runs QMK, filled it with foam to deaden the din and am considering contacting the manufacturer for some spare parts so I can put some other switches in it) .. My only reservation is around the 3d printing, I wish I could get a solid plastic shell or it milled out of aluminum or something a little lighter (aluminum being extra weight when I travel .. if i ever travel again). But custom work like that is very cost prohibitive.
So anyways, that was my journey down the rabbit hole of niche keyboard designs. I mostly still use the advantage, with an iris for gaming, and a dactyl for travel.
Did you write about this anywhere? I'm thinking of getting an Advantage but it would be really nice to be able to run it with QMK, and your soundproofing sounds neat too.
I currently have an Ergodox EZ but the thumb clusters do not work for me, I can only press one of the keys without straining my thumb.
One unintended benefit of my 60% keyboard is less travel with my right arm when switching from keyboard to mouse. Over the course of the workday it adds up.
However conversely, in this modern era with 2FA codes for many sites... Inputting 2FA codes is now a royal pain in the ass.
I'm in about the same WPM range as you. It's one of the greatest skills I've ever learned. It's invaluable in todays world. I regularly just keep typing while looking at someone. This was especially useful while taking notes in college.
> I think having blank keycaps though is kind of silly, personally. Especially given the keyboard the author has gone with. If you sat me in front of that keyboard I wouldn't know where to begin due to its size and layout.
Buying a novelty keycaps (or a whole keyboard with blank caps) seems overkill. Just tape over the keys and remove them when you can touch-type comfortably.
Having blank-keycaps would only annoy other people need to use my computer for something. It's just a novelty that I personaly feel like it adds anything.
Size. I have used an HHKB2 for ~3 years now, with blank keycaps, and I've been quite happy. I find myself rarely needing to use function keys so often that it becomes an issue.
I also used a split, ortholinear Let's Splitv2 that I built myself, with blank keycaps. But not having the number row kinda sucked. I may try it again soon.
Though there are a few situations where I'd want a full, standard keyboard layout, with a numpad:
* Data entry
* Playing videogames that have a lot of commands like DotA2. Chording is simply not fast enough / too much cognitive overhead during high apm moments.
I assume I'm in the extreme minority as my preferred keyboard is the floppy silicone style [1].
They wear out after a couple years, and usually whoever made the previous one has gone out of business by then, so getting replacements is a bit of pain.
The things I love about this style of keyboard though:
1. More or less silent to type on. No louder than just tapping your fingers on your desk.
2. The fact that they are completely flat on the desk seems to prevent any of the wrist strain that I get from a traditional keyboard.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WWM5TC6
People at my school used to do that. I did not care about carrying that X kg suitcase with me every Friday to school. Being already active on irc already at young age, at some point i got so annoyed of typing so slow and while typing missing what was being written on screen by others, i simply forced myself to look at the screen and type. Progress happened quite fast and that was most encouraging to keep going.
But 90-110 words per minute, that's blazing fast. Think i'm stuck at about 60 words per minute (https://typing-speed.net/keystrokes-per-minute)
Too many years of not really typing "properly" mean I am no longer a great touch typist, but the muscle memory is still mostly there.
I learned to type over 30 years ago.
I started wanting to switch to a blank keyboard when I realised that I never look at my hands when I'm typing anyway. Finally got a Das Keyboard S as a present a few years ago and it's been awesome. These days I forget it's unusual until someone else sits down at my computer and looks bewildered. :)
I usually use it when I need to find my water bottle or to take a peek at my phone.
Can you point out some? I looked into this last fall and was rather disappointed about what was available.
[1] https://www.vrdesktop.net/ [2] https://immersedvr.com/ [3] https://www.vspatial.com/
IMHO, the biggest chunk of my time spent is knowing what to write, though. I think time could be better spent becoming a better writer than a better typist.
I switched mainly because I was a nerd poser in high school, but also because I had some warning signs of carpal tunnel syndrome. No issues since.
Interestingly, numbers and symbols continued to trip me up, and they are one of the few areas of overlap between QWERTY and Dvorak. I finally switched to a blank keyboard and that did seem to help.
If you learn Dvorak, or, frankly, any layout designed to minimize movement, you will naturally learn to touchtype, because the layout rewards being on the home row. You don't have to try to force yourself to stay on the home row, your hands will be there anyhow. And from there, with your newfound hand stability, it's not hard to learn to touch type without looking. It'll just happen and one day you'll notice that you've been doing it for weeks.
It may literally be easier to switch to Dvorak than to whip yourself hard enough to learn to "touchtype" on QWERTY.
When I first tried to learn the Dvorak keyboard layout, I popped the key caps off an old keyboard, and rearranged them to match Dvorak, then wrote a kernel driver that allowed me to have one Dvorak and on QWERTY keyboard plugged in at the same time. It worked much better when I just switched keyboard mappings without rearranged key caps and IM'd friends for a few days. The pressure to keep up with conversations is good motivation.
To me, buying blank caps smells like consumerism under a self-improvement disguise.
It worked quite well, I never measured my speed but it is quite faster than before.
I still struggle somewhat with special characters, because of my short pinkies. I am currently experimenting with alternatives (see http://blog.pythonaro.com/2020/06/better-access-to-special-c... ) but I've never been good at layer-switching and it makes me still pretty slow.
> An average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm.[4] Two-finger typists, sometimes also referred to as "hunt and peck" typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorized text and 27 wpm when copying text, but in bursts may be able to reach much higher speeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute
I've never spent any actual effort of learning any techniques and I can easily get 120 wpm on almost any basic keyboard and up to 140 wpm on my main keyboard at home (which happens to be a regular gaming keyboard by logitech).
Blank key caps seems more like a gimmick than actually helpful and personally I couldn't drop the arrows either. I know Vim bindings are all fun if you IDE supports them, but you can't really navigate around the OS comfortably if you have to hit Fn + your faux arrows every time you want to move the focus around.
And though I type more accurate now, which brings a certain kind of satisfaction, I'm also slower (I seem to plateau). According to Typing Trainer I was "Fast" (self-taught, many errors) and now "Average" (proper, less errors).
However nice this is for my backspace key I still would like to improve. Maybe I need to practice more, but I don't think a keyboard like this will help because I already never look at my keyboard.
I have thought about becoming better by using a device that would attach wires to your fingers (or a glove) that correspond with keys, and the keys will only register when hit with the right finger (I find myself cheating now/falling back to old ways when I want to go fast). Something like this should exist, right?
Commenting primarily to see what others have to say about your idea, since I can notice that sometimes when I don't pay full attention I tend to use my "old" mental keymap and cheat a little bit.
"Proper" touch typing (I typed without looking before too, but not the "proper" way) is overrated and has proven to me less useful than the way I was used to.
Worse (IIRC), "proper" touch typing exists in a vacuum and has no context of the prior keypresses - rotating fingers or even switching hands at the boundary is going to lead to faster typing when you remove the artificial restrictions of "proper" typing.
BUT when you cannot touch type at all the notion of "proper" fingering provides a framework to work within and helps to form best practices that combat things like "press every key with index finger".
You'll see this in many skills and sports:
Beginner - no knowledge of the rules Intermediate - can apply the rules Expert - breaks the rules to achieve greater performance Master - creates new rules
Ultimately the best fingering for touch typing is the one which leads you to type the fastest and most accurate with the least amount of energy/effort. Achieving the optimal fingering as declared by someone else isn't really the goal.
Yeah, sometimes it helps to learn the rules before breaking them.
I do this because I keep my hands angled a little bit inward, to avoid the awkward and un-ergonomic bend in my wrist. That is, if standard position is like this:
My typing position is more like this:Hand angles and wrist position are somewhat glossed over if you only know "finger x presses key y"
If you think about violin and guitar - you learn how to play the same note from different hand positions so there is some (small) potential for this on the keyboard
I actually made the switch to proper touch typing by re-learning to type from scratch on a Dvorak layout, using blank keys (or Qwerty-marked keyboards, which is practically the same thing). I tried to switch and stay on Qwerty, but I'd just revert back to two fingers since it was so much faster, then my wrist pain would come back.
To give you a bit of motivation if you ever have to switch, I switched in November 2009 doing races on typeracer.com. Within a week I was at 45 wpm, by the end of November it was 70 wpm. I averaged 80 in January, and 90 in March.
So it took maybe a few weeks to get to 'usable' speeds, and a few months to get back to 'fast' (which felt right for daily use). This was doing bugger all practice too, each race is a minute or so and I did maybe 500 races this whole period? Literally 3-5 minutes a day, absolutely nothing. If you put actual effort into practicing you could probably regain your speed way quicker.
From there it slowed right down obviously. It took a few years to get back to 110, then half a decade to get to 120. That's probably to be expected, but realistically you're not going to notice the difference between 120 and 100 in daily use, so it's not a big deal.
Also, the interesting thing is, touch typing with Dvorak doesn't train you to touch type in Qwerty. Even after over a decade I still have the muscle memory to type with 2 fingers in Qwerty. Once every year or two I'll have to use somebody else's keyboard at work and I'll have to pull out the two finger technique, which must be hilarious for everyone watching. Just typing Qwerty for a few moments once a year or so I can still do around 60 wpm, which is insane when you think about it. I guess it's like riding a bike.
They learn at an incredible rate when they first start (as you'd expect) and it eventually starts to slow down over time (again, as you'd expect) until it hits a plateau, at which it sometimes never overcomes (or it does but stops at the next plateau). I believe they call this the OK-Plateau, for how you feel about your new skills when you reach this point, OK.
The idea is, learning levels off when we internally (and often subconsciously) determine we're "good enough" at a certain thing. For language learner's it may be when they decide they're conversational, or when they one day stop bothering to look up new words because they think their vocabulary is good enough for their needs.
You're likely at this point and need to critically examine your weaknesses and make a plan to train them if you really want to progress.
On an interesting side note here, this is often the value that coaches provide to aspiring athletes, someone who can identify your plateaus by analyzing your movement, abilities, etc.. and plan your training to isolate and tackle them.
I used the printed skin at first but then decided I wasn’t learning the layout fast enough. So I switched to the blank skin “cold turkey”.
It was impossible to type anything at first, because I didn’t really know where any of the keys were. So for absolutely every character I’d press each and every button until I found the correct one. But it only took a couple of days of this before my muscle memory began to learn where the keys were. And then as I kept using it I got better and better at touch typing Dvorak and finally it became second nature.
My original keyboard that I did this with was the TypeMatrix 2030 USB. I’ve stuck with Dvorak ever since. In 2017 I switched to a programable mechanical keyboard and made my own TypeMatrix-inspired Dvorak keyboard layout for it. I bought the one with blank key caps, naturally ;)
Said custom layout for my programable ErgoDox EZ Shine can be found here: https://github.com/ctsrc/ergodox-ez-shine-dvorak
I had many years without touch typing and when the pain started, I was already doing touch typing for more than 3 years. But, neither me nor the doctor couldn't blame touch typing for it. I was told any repetitive movement can cause it. Perhaps touch typing does kick in. But, the main cause was lack of any exercise with hands. I was only using my hands on my keyboard for a very long time.
I'm still doing touch typing. I actually stopped physiotherapy exercises for my hands shortly. Instead, I started to do sports and normal exercises to keep my muscles healthy. I've also switched to a split keyboard (Kinesis Advantage 2) with some customization on the layout to tweak it for coding. Seriously one of my best purchases ever. Since then I actually invest on my work equipment and office tools. Good monitor, proper desk and ergo chair. They last forever, and it's way cheaper than breaking your body.