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There have been a lot of studies on handwriting and memory. The Wall Street Journal article How Handwriting Trains the Brain talks about one such study that shows that children learn to recognize letter shapes faster and more accurately if they write them out rather than typing them. Writing by hand also helps adults who are learning a graphically ...

Type with ten fingers if you don't already do so, avoid hunting-and-pecking... Dvorak will decrease the finger distance, the switch can take from some weeks to some months. Keyboard training will help you practice to type common English words without making you wonder what to type. This allows you to practice at a higher wpm than when you would type things ...

I have been faced with the same problem. I don't deliberately train a lot outside work. Sometimes at night and in the weekend but always with some aim besides the training. If I am replying to some emails or chating leisurely I take the extra time to touch-type them, but that's it. I don't spend a great deal of time working through exercises. What I started ...

At 60 wpm it's easy to assume you have already memorized the keyboard and don't need to look at it. You're looking for a software that can be used to train your fingers to hit only the closest keys. Each color corresponds to a finger. The circles shows the standard position for left and right hands. It might look a bit complicated to get used to this but ...

I simply wouldn't worry about being able to touch type the symbols for programming. I can type around 100wpm when I'm writing an essay, but would never hit that programming. You just don't write code in the same way you write an essay. Especially using C# in visual studio where you have intellisense writing a lot of the code for you. If you want to look ...

I bought "Typequick" and set aside a practice time everyday for about a month. Pianists and other musicians do specific drills every day, even when they practice whole pieces or perform every day. I randomly fetch it out again, but its model no longer helps me improve my speed, or more importantly accuracy. [I've yet to find a tool for 'advanced' learners.] ...

Without switching to a different keyboard layout, I've found it useful simply just to get in practice with visual feedback. This may or may not seem a bit corny, but the game-styled interface provided by Typeracer has been useful for me to check where my speed is, and to perform typing exercises through typing passages.

You can use Keyboarding tutorial and typing test and add your own text. It would be interesting for example, to see how typing speeds differ between languages as different, or unusual syntax starts to take effect. In general I think that touch typing is a vital skill for anybody using a computer at all and well worth the time. My personal way forward (I ...

I just did a little experiment and typed the following without looking at the keyboard: a=a++ - used my middle finger for the = and + a[0] - used my third finger for the [ and 0. used my fourth finger for the ] a?a:b - used my fourth finger for the ? and my pinky for the : There's no right or wrong to this. It's just what I do. And I do touch type ...

On most windows machines these days there's a key that produces the same effect as a right-click of the mouse. That's a hardware thing, so it should work in pretty much all programs. It is usually between the Alt and Ctrl keys to the right of the space bar, often has an icon that looks kind of like a dropdown menu. Non-QWERTY keyboards, YMMV. To do the ...

Whenever I typed with QWERTY, I used to type 40-65 WPM. 70 MAX. Now, I switched to DVORAK, I type anywhere between 70-120 WPM - depending on the complexity of what I'm typing. Someone said that the "social repercussions of typing in DVORAK far outweigh blah blah blah"...I just gotta call HogWash on that. Whenever you switch to DVORAK, your QWERTY ...

I think partially the answer depends on what you type. If you just type general texts, any keyboard training program will probably do ok. On the other hand if you do specialized typing, such as software programming, your needs are quite different and rotate a lot more around brackets, braces, numbers and weird punctuation signs. I don't think too many ...

The argument for a mechanical keyboard is that you don't have to press as hard and get more tactical feedback. Tactical feedback matters (my typing speed is lower on the iPad). I haven't tried a mechanical keyboard, but it stands to reason having to press slightly less distance can speed things up. Especially since you already have a fast typing speed. ...

I am learning touch typing. I want practice step by step. Don't. It will just take you more time to learn it. Do not learn, do not practice, do not spend time on simply learning to touch type. Just start obeying the rules of touch typing and go on with your life. Put your hands on home row. Then, while watching at the keyboard for every letter you ...

Just do a lot of programming and you'll pick it up over time. I never learned how to touch type traditionally, it was just lots of time in front of my computer programming and gaming, because of the latter my left hand sits on WASD when idling :D A lot of people are shocked at how fast I can type and I never did any formal keyboard training, just lots of ...

First, is your touch-typing getting better at all? I agree that it's not optimal to have to switch between systems, but if that's what you have to do, that's what you have to do. It's possible that despite the switches to hunt-and-peck, your weekend/evening touch-typing practice will be enough to eventually get your touch-typing speed up to 300cpm, at ...

Compared to what? If you are already 90wpm, then I doubt you are currently using a virtual/touch-screen keyboard. Are you talking about a sharper click sound on your keyboard? Most people don't like the noise, but if you work alone it could be OK. I like a curved "ergonomic" keyboard like the Microsoft Natural series. Someone asked about ergo keyboards ...

I suspect code-assist might actually be your friend here - the advantage of programming languages is tha as they are described by a grammar - the editor can help you out a lot more - we're very much in the 'write code v. generate code' area here - what editor are you using? (and I can then expand this answer - you're getting quite a stackoverflowy answer ...

It may be a tedious process, but I'm sure you could develop an AutoHotkey script to help you practice this in Windows. AutoHotkey has a function called GetKeyState which you could use to check if LShift or RShift is down. Inside the conditional block, you can define what is done if a bad key is pressed (popup dialog, send the character unshifted, do ...

I've been programming for just under 30 years, and just recently (5+ years) realized I still couldn't touch type the symbols and editing keys (Insert, Page Up, etc). I tried forcing myself to try without looking, and made many mistakes along the way. But I kept cheating and peeking at the keyboard. So I decided to buy the following keyboard: (About $130 ...

Investigate the code generation/auto-completion/navigation/auto-formatting/refactoring capabilities of your IDE. You'll spend less time typing what your IDE can do for you. A few examples from the Eclipse IDE: Generate constructors, setters/getters from instance variables. Complete the rest of a variable or method name after typing the first few letters. ...

Type Racer has typing universe for coding text. A universe is similar a separate stack exchange site, in that app is the same, but data is different. In this case this means you can compete against others typing a bunch of code.

I touch type as a programmer, but many years ago I picked up the basics from Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (on my Amiga!) which was useful in getting a benchmark / WPM speed, but since then I've just refined my 'technique' by typing. There are some keys I occasionally get wrong because I don't use them so frequently, but that's what it boils down to... how ...

Speaking as a 16 year old, typing is easy for me. However i don't use any specific type of typing (thats fun to say...), i am very free form in how i do it. My mother works as a personal assistant / secretary so typing is part of her work, and i believe she uses touch. I can out-type her by about 10 words per minute, and she has no idea how i do it. My ...

If it is absolutely necessary to type faster at work and you for sure wants to learn touch typing faster, I think the best thing to do is to ask for some days off. Let us say a week or so. Well, this may seem like you are losing money or something, but think about it, touch typing is a crucial investment in your life. So for that one week, vigorously ...

Get a keyboard with NO letters on the keys (keycaps). This will FORCE you to type by spacial memorisation. The key is absolute and total switch from ad hoc typing to touch typing. Cold turkey is the quickest way. I think you'll be surprised how quickly you can get back to speed. If you do some training or practicing by following a guided tutorial which ...

Wikipedia indicates average touch typing speed is about 60 WPM (or 300 CPM given the (un-cited) 5:1 conversion factor). You claim to already be able to type significantly faster than this using hunt-and-peck, which frankly is a little hard to believe. But assuming it's true: that you're able to type that fast with two fingers while looking at board, then I ...

While I appreciate your goal (most gain for best efficient use of time), I have found that the best tool is a combination of several tools, directed by a consciousness (metacognition) of how you're learning. You come to realize there are several aspects of typing: consistent speed, bursty typing, initial typing (vs being in the middle of a long paragraph), ...

If you are nearly at the limit of your input speed, increase the output speed or use auto-correction, i.e. there are tools like autohotkey and phraseexpress that auto-complete self-defined acronyms you are typing. e.g. for autohotkey you can put your often used phrases, idioms... into a file, ::sum::to put the whole matter into a nutshell return type ...

Have a really long password you have to type in every time you use your computer. Use a text editor like Vim, where your hands never need to leave the keyboard. Start a long-running conversation with someone you like talking to on the Internet. Use the QWERTY keyboard layout, left hand on A,S,D,F,space, right hand on J,K,L,;,space This may take a few ...