How do you use your keyboard?

How do you use your keyboard?

  • I touch type (please indicate WPM typing speed)

    Votes: 15 40.5%
  • I do not touch type

    Votes: 22 59.5%

  • Total voters
    37
Binary typing question

I'm curious it would appear as if there is a high number of IT professionals in here. I've recently bought a mechanical keyboard and I'm enjoying using it and seem to be able to touch type about 10% faster on it than my old keyboard. My personal best is around 71 wpm with my average being around 55 wpm.

It made me wonder about forum posters. Is their a correlation between the amount of posts that people have made and the speed with which they type.

Simple yes no query - yes I touch type no I don't and please post your average type speed.

I guess that knowing how people use keyboards is useful for anyone developing programs not just Elite : Dangerous.

Sampling bias of course understood.
 
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I hunt & peck around 55 WPM (thank you Computes Gazzette for C-64 programming?) but here's a sickening fact... My 12 y.o. Touch types around 60WPM and he taught himself at 6 years old.
 

Yaffle

Volunteer Moderator
I do a mess somewhere between touch typing and one finger stuff, as in I use several fingers to type but not in any proper way.

The most used key on my keyboard is the top right one with an arrow pointing to the left.
 
Ok, done a few more now. I guess I'm averaging roughly 53-56 wpm, but my best is now 73 wpm (though that was an unusually easy piece of text).
 
Bit of a mix to be honest. I seem to unintentionally glance at the keyboard every so often while typing. Maybe my brain just wants to keep track!

Had a few practice goes on TypeRacer with results ranging from 55-60 wpm, and that's while sitting awkwardly on the edge of my settee with laptop on the coffee table.
 
Anyone wanting to can get an estimate of their speed here

Typeracer

I love that link. Finally an online game I'm good at.

I can frequently get 85wpm on that.

I think I'm probably around 75wpm when typing in forums like this. I learnt to touch type at school for some reason. Also I always buy backlit keyboards after I started having eye trouble and it makes all the difference when I do need to look at the keyboard like when playing games.
 
A little rusty here - only about 45wpm, but that's on one of these unspeakable 'chiclet' type keyboards.
 
For anyone who wants to have a refresher course in typing or alternatively learn how to type then I have found that you can be taught the basics in about 2 hours of practice on a site such as the following. Very possibly after that you may be almost as fast using all your fingers as you were before.

Learn to type

I have tried to learn a bit of Russian and while my Russian is very poor it was easier to learn how to touch type in Russian than try two fingered typing trying to look at the keyboard. It only took me a couple of hours to learn the position of the cyrillic keys under my fingers after which I was faster touch typing in Russian that looking at the keyboard.

Pity its going to take 5 years and the rest to understand what I'm typing.
Russian typing speed 30 wpm.
 
first, untrained race:
39 wpm
92.4%
just too tired (i hope)

I write code which means using special characters often and very little text made out of words. Does that save me? ;)
 
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I took a course in touch-typing in school when I was 14 or so. I've used it ever since. I have no idea about my typing speed.
 
My second go was 75 wpm. But I think the text itself and the strange word correction of it really distracted me :)
In reality the main speed bump during work is thinking about what to write though. I've heard that an average programmer writes only like 10 lines of code per day.

I use an apple keyboard and really love it. Best keyboard I've ever had.

I would love a new kind of keyboard though like a chorded keyboard. Something that would allow full typing and key combinations with one hand.
 
I use a Das Keyboard. Very nice it is too and I use one at work as well. I have heard that the Filco boards are excellent too. They do a Minila (Minimal Layout) one that might be of interest to you.
 
I came in here expecting this :

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Then again I'm faster typing with my face than my ham fisted alien hands:smilie:
 
I mash the keyboard with my palm....

My big fat sweaty palm.....



Most of the time it fails... horribly.


But like a lot of monkeys in a room with a lot type writers..... sometimes it can unlock the codes of the enigma machine.
 
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