Touch Typing

"Keep typing until it turns into writing - David Carr"

Touch typing is the ability to type without using the sense of sight to find and identify the keys. Muscle memory is used by the touch typist to know the location of the keys on the keyboard. It can be of both types - two-handed and one-handed. This is something that I am being made to practice at the boot camp at Go-Jek Engineering. It helps improve an individual's typing speed and accuracy which is very essential for programmers as every fraction of time saved helps improve ones own efficiency. It was invented in 1888 by Frank Edward McGurrin, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City, Utah.

It involves placing your eight fingers excluding the thumbs in a horizontal row along the middle row of the keyboard, which is known as the home row and then reaching out to the other keys accordingly when needed. On the most common type of keyboard for English i.e. the "QWERTY" layout, the keys "A S D F J K L ;" are the home keys on the home row. This row is termed as the home row as typists are trained to return to this row after any other key has been pressed which isn't on the home row.

Since I have started to train myself using this technique, I have noticed a significant improvement in my typing speed and accuracy. I don't follow the standard touch typing technique but rather a modified version of the same where I don't use such a rigid mapping of the fingers to the keys. One study examining 30 subjects, of varying different styles and expertise, has found minimal difference in typing speed between touch typists and self-taught hybrid typists. But ultimately, it boils down to the fact that "Practice makes Perfect".