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    So I never learned to type

    • Started by mineral_man
    • 3 Replies:
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    • Registered: 01-Oct-2009
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    01-Oct-2009 11:52:54#1 So I never learned to type

    I never learned to type ... I mainly use (I'd guess) 4 fingers? Mainly my index fingers though.  I thought I'd  pick up my typing skills in my spare time. Maybe 30 minutes a day of practice.  While searching for programs I found out about Dvorak and from that Colemak.  I thought this would put me in a prime position to learn since I never learned QWERTY and thus would have nothing to forget / re-learn.  But everyone I seem to ask about the subject tells me to learn QWERTY first?? If it's inferior why bother? Here is an example:

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 711AAdO7mC

    I was wondering what the opinions of the people here who already started to use an alternate format were?  Keep in mind, I'm not a secretary or anything. It's not like I'm going to put "can type QWERTY" on my resume.  I do however write A LOT of article and am in college, so also write a bunch of essays etc. My major is Chemistry and I rarely need to use any typing skills for it, except to write reports which consist of mostly english and numbers / formulas without the need for programming type characters.  Though I might minor in programming.

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    • From: Belgium
    • Registered: 26-Feb-2008
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    01-Oct-2009 13:40:53#2 Re: So I never learned to type

    That advice seems to come mostly from Qwerty users, so they don't know...

    It's best to learn to touch-type properly with Colemak from the beginning, and keep typing in Qwerty (when you have to) with your current style, looking down at the keyboard.

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
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    01-Oct-2009 18:08:26#3 Re: So I never learned to type

    I just posted this to your Question on Yahoo at the link you gave,

    In a world where every keyboard you will do serious typing on is attached to a computer and
    where 99.99999 % of those computers have Dvorak as an alternate layout to choose
    and where 99.9999 % of those computers can either easily install Colemak within minutes or seconds or temporarily be the layout using PKL(portable keyboard layout) on a USB flash drive,

    the idea that you have to learn Qwerty for the reasons people are giving you is complete nonsense BS.  There is no reason to learn Qwerty voluntarily.   Investigate Dvorak and Colemak. 

    Personally, I hunt and pecked for years and then tried Dvorak, didn't really like it for many reasons, punctuation placement, the L position, Control command shortcut positions.  Then I tried Colemak almost two years ago and loved it.  I do upwards of 60-70 wpm now, and I could go faster but on a plateau because it's good enough for what I need and therefore haven't been motivated to practice more.

    Last edited by keyboard samurai (01-Oct-2009 18:09:17)

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    • Registered: 17-Mar-2008
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    03-Oct-2009 01:47:34#4 Re: So I never learned to type

    I am a professional programmer. About once a week I find that it would be useful to be fluent in qwerty (when doing something substantial on someone else's computer).

    Most of the rest of the time I am either on one of my own computers, or the interaction with the computer is so brief that it doesn't matter. So in my use case, the benefits of Colemak outweigh the drawbacks.

    Still, eventually I think it would be worthwhile to try to learn touch typing qwerty.

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