Comment by Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world on All the other brands went along

Sounds like I’m glad “home row” style typing fell out of favour. It may be the theoretically fastest way to type eventually, but it seems to lead to pretty rigid behaviour. Adapting to new things as they come along and changing your flow to move with them instead of against them is just a much more comfortable way to live. Even if I only type 80% as fast.

I have no idea what you mean by “fell out of favour”. Does your keyboard not have pips on F and J? People still touch type. Dunno what to tell you.

You’re getting hung up on “home row”. You still have to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back. It’s the same problem, whether or not you know how to type well and stare at your hands.

Fell out of favour in that it isn’t taught as “the correct way to type” any more. Largely because most devices you type on now wouldn’t even have physical keys. So learning home row typing for the occasional time the thing you are typing on is a physical full sized keyboard just disrupts the flow of everything else.

Being perfectly optimal isn’t as productive as it feels, especially when it leads to resistance to change and adapt.

Yes, it is taught. If you take a typing course, you will be taught to use home row. What you mean is, you were never taught to type because we don’t teach that in school anymore. If you do most your typing on a touch screen, I have to imagine: you are so young. In 20 years when no one is using a touch screen to enter text anymore (but likely still use physical keyboards), you will remember this conversation, and have some greater insight.

Whether or not you know how to touch type, in any situation where there is a mouse, THERE IS A PHYSICAL KEYBOARD. Not knowing how to touch type just makes the task switching overhead greater.

My kids were taught in elementary school in like 1st grade, largely because using laptops (Chromebooks) is part of the curriculum.

Home row is absolutely still taught as the “correct” way to type. Source: kids are in elementary school

Yup. My kids learned how to type properly, and they’re in elementary school. And no, their teachers aren’t boomers, they’re a mix of millennials and gen z.

That’s great. It seems like Gen Z didn’t learn typing. Maybe I’m over generalizing, but my three niblings can’t type for shit. The only things they know about computers are what I’ve taught them and then what they learned outside of school using the computers their mom and I got them.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t taught, they probably just didn’t practice. My kids (elementary school) play Minecraft, write stories in my computer, and like searching for stuff online (Amazon and YouTube).

That said, we don’t let them use tablets or phones very often, because we don’t want them getting that much screen time. So it could come down to parenting. That said, I’m a software engineer, and I’d teach them if the school didn’t (in fact, I started teaching my first, and stopped because they taught it in school).

What I don’t understand is they teach cursive when that’s quite useless. IMO, they should spend that time on more typing practice and maybe calligraphy (much cooler than cursive).

I hope you taught them how to pirate. ;-) Seriously though, my 20-something associates have absolutely no idea how to, they think it’s some kind of dark art rather than clicking on a link.

Hmm, is that a states thing then? Typing courses around here have capitulated on it. You can choose to learn it if max typing speed is the most important factor, but alternate forms of touch typing and muscle memory are fully accepted now. Often times just due to the varying amount of personal practice, the fastest typer in class isn’t even a home row kid.

But way back when I was in school, they constantly tried to force me to switch to home row, despite already having years of practice typing outside of school. I was already a faster typer than the teacher, so they had a hard time convincing me that their way was better. I eventually saw enough data on it to believe it, but I’m still glad I was unconvinced at the time. I still type fast enough to get any typing job, but I’m not so rigid and can use various types of keyboard equally well. Home row is very good at one thing, but it makes you prioritise that one thing too much. If you really wanted to type fast, but be limited to only one set of hardware, stenography is one step more in that direction.

fascinating take on touch typing from someone who doesn’t practice, understand, or respect it

Touch typing is not only home row typing. I do touch type, I just do it in “hunt and peck” style, just without the “hunting” part, and much faster pecking. I feel it’s a much more transferable skill.

And while I don’t practice home row, I do feel that I understand it. And I respect it for it’s purpose, I just think it’s outdated, and incongruent with modern life now. It’s more likely to hold someone back rather than benefit them now.

I get it. I had been messing with computers for years by the time I had a typing class. I was very fast with the method I came up with, and I tried home row. I ended up combining bastardized home row and my homebrew method and got even faster.

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