- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Keyboard typing is a manual skill distinct from tech savvy and has to be taught as such. You’re not going to learn it by dealing with a touchscreen swipe “keyboard”. I’ve known a fair number of programmers who were two-finger typists because they were too busy taking CS courses to learn to type.
On the gripping hand, my early-Boomer mother, who learned on typewriters, can type fast and accurately but is quite technophobic.
so… people who take typing lessons and actively try to improve it have better typing skills than the ones who don’t. Shocking.
Gen X here. Honestly, I was a shit typer until I got a keyboard for my sega dreamcast and bought “Typing of the dead”.
I went from hunt and peck to well over 100wpm.
Millennial, StarCraft on 56k modem (no voip). Type like a raccoon but fast.
Typing of the dead
Still my favorite example of gamification: take a useful task and make it so fun that people will gladly devote hours and hours of their time to it.
I didn’t know I was learning a life skill at the time. I was having such a good time playing and wanted to get better and better. I guess this sorta holds true for any sport.
My girlfriend (wife now) at the time also played with me using two keyboards. She types over 120wpm.
I didn’t know I was learning a life skill at the time.
The House of the Dead 2 was a really popular arcade game at the time, so adapting the preexisting game into an at-home typing trainer was actually genius innovation.
Every single article about “gen x” this or “gen z” that is 100% bullshit. Stop reposting this garbage.
STFU, Younger Gen BADD!!
Juvenoia
Fuck off old gen, we hate you now. Fo rizz no cap etc.
Really, the media finally realized millennials don’t care if we killed Applebee’s or whatever, and they’ve moved on to the next thing to scare boomers with. “They hate us because we buy bags of paper napkins” becomes “They hate us because we can use old style keyboards.” Generations are not a monolith. You can compare them, but it’s stupid to pass judgment in that way.
Z is not savvy. They’re basically boomers when it comes to tech. It always worked so it should work. None of our z staff can fix a printer and in fact none are allowed to
Gen X graphic designer here. I did not properly learn how to type on a QWERTY keyboard, but have been exposed to it for many years so I know how to type on it. Hasn’t ever been a problem not typing fast.
I mean, as a millennial, I mostly taught myself to type. I’m fast enough, but have bad technique and could be faster. I was only ever actually trained to type in grade school, and barely. Once in a while in computer class we would play an educational typing game.
My mom is much better at typing than I am, because she was trained to type in college. That’s not really a thing anymore.
I learned by playing StarCraft on 56k modem. VoIP was not possible so you had to type fast. Style is wildly non-standard but i was typing fast enough not to see a benefit from standard style.
I only learned to touch type properly because I was bored one summer and went cold turkey and learned Colemak. Before that, I had this weird pseudo touch typing technique with some keys being touch typed and others not, and because of the muscle memory, it was difficult to change.
I had typing tutor software on the family PC. It made the mistake of trying to teach typing by starting with only home row keys, then expanding outward from there. So for a very long time, you would type things like adj daf jal ls; dal fka and so forth. It was a very long time until you really started to get it.
And then MSN chat rooms and messenger happened to me, and suddenly touch typing was the main way I had to hit on chicks. I knew what the home row was, so I knew what touch typing looked like, so I started actually doing it, but typing things I wanted to type. I’m now the third fastest typist I know. On a good keyboard with a passage I’m familiar with I can key 106WPM, right now typing conversationally out of my brain I’m probably hitting about 65 or 70.
typing isn’t as useful a skill as it use to be. Not many jobs need it.
We’re not even teaching them cursive anymore and they still can’t type? What are they doing in schools?
As a Gen Z - cursive is very much still taught in first grade, and not like you can forget it either because most school assignments are required in paper form, same for lecture notes. You’re not writing this much and this fast without cursive.
Gen alpha is learning cursive. Gen z is all highschool and college now.
-worked in a k-8 tutoring program for 2 years.
Good to know because the gen zer at work said she never learned it. So it may be up to each school district.
I’m also gen z and I learned it. I’m also 24.
I thought Gen Alpha was very explicitly NOT learning cursive.
Idk what to tell you. This is also a public school, and not a private school.
My gen alpha kids got it in 3rd grade. Or rather one did and one is about to.
I built my Gen Z nephew a PC with a GTX 950 a few years back. When I went by to gift him a new video card I found out that he hooked up his video output from the motherboard the whole time. Don’t know how that reflects on all kids from his generation but it was kinda funny.
DRI_PRIME=1 goes brrrr
Pretty sure someone who doesn’t know to plug their GPU in is probably not running Linux
Idk, i specifically plug it into motherboard since i use cheap used gpus that can break easily, example is Nvidia p106, it doesn’t even have video output, and it’s easier to flip DRI_PRIME from 1 to 0 than redo the cables
That’s a conscious decision though I said someone who doesn’t know
That’s funny but is a mistake that much more tech savvy people make. Although, they would figure out they made a mistake much sooner.
That fps ain’t right dawg!
That just means they are probably less relevant skills.
If they can make it work with a phone and table, more to them.
But most office work requires a desktop set up for be effective.
Sure you can work on a laptop with track pad but you are just wasting your own time IMHO
Do these things correlate that much tho? Not to toot my own horn, but I am fairly tech-proficient and have terrible typing skills. My technique is somewhere in between hunt-and-peck and touch-typing, despite regular typing lessons in elementary school. I imagine a lot of other people are like this, and vice-versa as well.
Do these things correlate that much tho?
Not at all. Is there any other profession than journalist where words per minute matters?
Court room stenographer
Do public schools not teach keyboarding anymore? I ask because I had a keyboarding classe two-hrs 1day per week in grade school plus a full class one year in 7th grade and then again for a full year in high school, and they were always taught by some of the oldest teachers in the school. -My high-school teacher started his career teaching typewriter typing something like three or four decades prior to teaching me in 2004. It seems strange that new young people aren’t getting that same basic education.
When I was a kid they taught penmanship too. I was awful at it but then when I was an adult I had a job where I actually had to use those skills and I was glad to have them - same with everything I learned in Home Ec, most the stuff I learned in wood/metal/auto shop, etc. I think all of those classes are extinct now, based on how people talk about school never teaching them anything useful.
deleted by creator
I don’t know if they do but if they do I doubt they’ve improved. The technique taught by many touch typing courses is a recipe for a wrist injury. It blows my mind that regulatory bodies aren’t calling for keyboard layout reform. The “normal” row stagger keyboard as well as the qwerty layout should be in museums, not on billions of “modern” computers around the world.
qwertz ftw.
*duck and run*
I used to switch back and forth between qwerty and qwertz on two different computers, and the laptop unlock passwords had a z in them. That was tough times.
I like the free stretchies I get from Ctrl+Z on the DE layout.
As someone who uses colemak only on my phone because I was curious, what kind of layouts and configurateon would you recommend as a new default?
Funny enough I use Colemak with my ergonomic (split, columnar stagger) keyboards only, and qwerty on mobile (and on my laptop since it has qwerty keyboard labels).
I recommend, in order of increasing effort:
- briefly learn touch typing but then develop your own style with a more relaxed wrist position that de-emphasizes excessive hand movement, uncomfortable movements and crazy pinky stretches
- get a columnar stagger, split keyboard
- learn colemak (I like Colemak DH)
I still want to get a split keyboard at some point and I’d love for it to be columnar stagger. I don’t do too much typing these days, but I’d love to make the typing I do just a bit more enjoyable.
It was a real game changer for me. If you combine it with layers for accessing numbers, arrows, symbols, home/end etc without moving your hand, it makes typing so much comfier and faster
I have some 60% keyboards. The layers make me slow and they’re not very comfortable. But everyone keeps saying they’re amazing, so I’m waiting for it to click.
Tbf most of my layer toggles are happening with a thumb, which isn’t possible on a normal keyboars because they give you a 10x wide key for your most flexible digit, and no other keys in reach.
I recommend a keyboard with at least 3 keys in the thumb cluster. Once you figure out what you like and get used to it, it’s like a superpower
What made you pick Colemak over Dvorak? I am not criticizing your choice, just curious. I chose Dvorak because I found the vowels on the home row cut my hand movement a lot. I fully agree with you on the pinky stretches, that’s my worst movement, which I triage by turning on KDE’s “Caps Lock is another backspace” option.
Dvorak was designed a long time ago for typewriters, i.e. it tries to alternate hand movements, which some people like but many find it makes them slower.
Colemak is meant to be closer to qwerty and was designed for computer keyboards.
Then again I’m sure Dvorak is already miles better than qwerty and the differencesneith Colemak are minor. I think the reason I chose it originally was because of some youtube video but I don’t remember what it was called.
Also I really like the Colemal DH mod.
We didn’t have specific typing class but we had IT in both primary and secondary, at least late gen z got plenty of computer time in school and most I know in my generation are decent typists at least
I blame the attempt to make devices user-friendly. Convenience kills skill.
My sister is gen x and I’m a millennial, she’s asks me the most batshit insane questions like, how do I turn off my iPhone? What? You’ve had it 4 years!
To be fair, they changed it in the last couple of years. It used to be that you held the power button to power it off. Now you have to hold the power button AND a volume button for some reason.
It has also changed on some Android phones. The default method of powering off the device is now through the notification shade and the power button has been turned into an assistant button. You need to go into the settings of the device and change it back.
X, especially older ones, are only tech savy if they were nerds. After that technology became a more everyday thing so maybe millenial has the magic spot where it was common but not dumbed down. I dunno though.
