Solved Opinions wanted for learning 10 finger typing

Hey folks,

In 2018 i have written more code then in all the years before combined.
Now I want to become more efficient and decided to start learning to type with 10 fingers.

A bit of background:
I'm German, living in Norway. Both, the German and Norwegian language, have special characters like ä, ö, ü, å, æ and ø. For that reason I have always used a German keyboard, as it makes it easy typing text in both German and Norwegian.

For coding though, I think the German layout isn't optimal. If I compare it to US ASCII and English ISO layout, especially all those brackets, look more easier to reach (the Norwegian layout is even worth imo, so that's not an option either). Here's a picture of German keyboard layout just for reference:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...llgrau.svg/842px-Tastatur_DE_hellgrau.svg.png

As I have always edited keymaps to combine German and Norwegian special characters into a single keymap, I came up with, that I could put all the characters on the regular a, o, u and e on an English keyboard. Some of them are already in place when using UTF-8 anyway, so that won't be stopping me.
In addition, there seem to be a lot more (and much better) tutorials on youtube and even software in the FreeBSD ports.

I wonder what the professional coders think? Will it support my efficiency to learn 10 finger on an English layout?

I'm definitively willing to drop 20 years of typing experience, if it helps me getting better in the long run. It will be a learning process either way.

Please share your opinions, thank you!
 
10-finger-typing is always beneficial (programming and terminal). But I never used to learn new layouts (use also german one). I also have to tell you that I hardly write any code except of scripts so cant evaluate pretty good.
I used games/klavaro for learning, it supports lots of keyboard layouts and languages.
 
Now I want to become more efficient and decided to start learning to type with 10 fingers.
hmmm....

I'm German, living in Norway.
Gutentag Nachbar! ;)

Ok, that's as far as I'll take the (seriously) offtopic stuff and for the record: I am approaching this very generally ;) I'm from the Netherlands, living in the Netherlands, but obviously you're my neighbor because you're German ;)

(and I still love your new avatar, I think it's really well made! ;) )

I wonder what the professional coders think? Will it support my efficiency to learn 10 finger on an English layout?
I am not a professional coder but I do consider myself a semi-professional writer. 'semi' because I don't do it for a living (well.. sort off) and I don't even type with 10 fingers. I actually type with 2 - 5. Never had any lessons (obviously) but I did start to focus on the keyboard layout (qwerty style) and tried to kept track where my other fingers were, which really helped.

However, I do a fair bit of coding (mostly Java & ASP.NET) and I have some doubts if 10 finger typing is going to help you. See; from what I gather this style of typing (the technique in itself) mostly focuses on writing stories. Essays if you will. But coding is quite different.

First there's the issue of thinking & coding. You don't code as if you're typing an essay, there will come a time where you need to think about your approach. But even more so: coding also consists of tons of other characters, stuff which will be an afterthought if you're going to do 10 finger typing; it mostly focuses on words, and not so much all the extra characters. But a fully straightened out sentence is only noticeable in help sections, the actual code will consist of tons of other characters, and that can become a different story alltogether.

But most of all I don't believe that being able achieve a higher amount of typed characters per second (or minute?) will make you a better coder.
 
Lanakus Thanks, for the tip with klavaro, I didn't stumble over that one while searching. I just installed it, and it look good.
Would you say it's easy writing scripts on a german layout? What do you think about the e.g. curly and square brackets, do you find them easy to reach after you trained 10-finger-typing?
 
Well, I find them easy to reach but that is probably not unrelated to my rather slow speed in scripting - ShelLuser is most likely right on thinking & coding. Since I never used any other layout I may be the wrong place of contact for efficiency issues, I see it as accustoming. The most errors I produce throughout writing, e.g. SQL queries, are due to key sensitivity (upper and lower cases) :rolleyes:
 
and I still love your new avatar, I think it's really well made
Goeden dag and thanks again! We are Off-Topic, so that's ok for me.
The Netherlands are much better for fietsen then Norway is ;)

With more efficient I also mean, make less typing errors. I make by far most typing errors while typing () {} [] and <>
Those seem to be easier to reach on qwerty.
Do you think they are easier to reach on qwerty?

I am not a professional coder but I do consider myself a semi-professional writer.
Yeah, that's what I meant, Not necessarily as a profession.

Good insight. Maybe I should focus more on my typing. Sadly I often feel I either got to learn how to type brackets on a German keyboard the right way or switch to qwerty. Brackets look like easier to reach on qwerty, my fingers refuse to bend that much to type brackets...

I wouldn't be asking for help if it wasn't just for text. I have obviously never written as much as you did, but I'm ok with my typing skills in general.

Thank you.
 
The most errors I produce throughout writing, e.g. SQL queries, are due to key sensitivity (upper and lower cases)
Didn't think about that, but yeah, it seems to depend on what you typing.

Thank you!

I do mostly shell scripting, some HTML and PHP, learned a bit of pearl and for some time learning C. All those brackets are killing me :)
 
You should learn Python instead of Perl. Requires less braces. Also, the code is closer to real English (as opposed to line noise), making typing with 10 fingers easier. ;-)

But seriously … This is my background: I'm German, living in Germany. I work in the area of system engineering and devops, that includes admin work and programming in various languages. I also do technical writing (e.g. documentation) and work on scientific texts, both German and English. And of course, I also write private letters and stuff like that, mostly in German.

I've been using US-based keyboard layouts (“qwerty”) for 25 years, even with German keyboards (ignoring what's written on the key caps). As you noted, it makes typing certain characters much easier that are often required for programming, such as brackets, braces, backslash, pipe and hash symbols. It also makes using TeX / LaTeX for writing text documents much easier.

Additionally, I have configured my keyboard layout to provide special characters on key combinations with Alt and Alt+Shift. This includes German letters (ä, ö, ü, ß), letters from other languages that are occasionally useful so I can type names like Ångström and Krønasår, a few Greek letters that are sometimes useful (µ, π, Ω, …), typographic quote characters („German“, “English”, »French«), dashes (-, –, ―), various symbols (®, ©, ™, ♀, ♂, ≠, ≈, ±, °, ¹, ², ³, ½, ¼, ¾, ⅓, ⅔, …), arrows (←, →, ↑, ↓, ↔) and a bunch of other things.
 
You should learn Python instead of Perl. Requires less braces. Also, the code is closer to real English (as opposed to line noise), making typing with 10 fingers easier. ;-)
I actually just stumbled into it, it wasn't on purpose ;)

I've been using US-based keyboard layouts (“qwerty”) for 25 years, even with German keyboards (ignoring what's written on the key caps). As you noted, it makes typing certain characters much easier that are often required for programming, such as brackets, braces, backslash, pipe and hash symbols. It also makes using TeX / LaTeX for writing text documents much easier
Thank you. Good to hear that someone coding a lot.

Your keymap sounds great. It's what I would try to create, should I switch to qwerty. With the nordic characters you seem to have read my mind ;)
Just in case that you have created a keymap for vt, are you willing to share it?

You have good points, I'll order a US keyboard. Thanks!
 
Thanks guys for for help, I've decided to get a US keyboard and then start my typing training :)

I mark this as solved.

If someone has more to share on that topic, you are still welcome to post.
 
psearch typing
games/banihstypos Banihstypos is a simple game to teach you typing, FAST
games/gtypist Interactive typing tutor
games/klavaro Touchtyping trainer
games/tuxtype Educational typing tutor starring Tux the Linux Penguin
games/typespeed Test your typing speed and get your fingers' CPS
german/tipp10 10-finger touch typing learning program
misc/dvorak7min Ncurses-based Dvorak typing tutor
misc/dvorakng Dvorak typing tutor
misc/ktouch Touch typing tutor for KDE
misc/ktouch-kde4 Touch typing tutor for KDE 4
misc/typetrainer Typing tutor trainer
 
Just in case that you have created a keymap for vt, are you willing to share it?
I'm sorry, I only use vt(4) in emergency cases when X doesn't start for some reason, so I didn't spend much efforts on creating a vt keymap. I only took the standard US keymap and added German letters, no more.
I have created the keyboard layout described in my previous reply only for X11 (via xmodmap) and for … ahem … Windows (via MKLC).

I should also note that I did not put “ü” on Alt-u and so on, but I've put it on the keys where they would be on a German keyboard, so I put “ü” on Alt-[. It's just a matter of being used to it.

By the way, you can also ask Porgle for “typing tutor”.
 
Before being a developer, I was a "writer" (not professional) and I have the same idea (learn how to type faster).
The true solution was : "use pen and paper".

As a developer, in the study case, pen and paper is still the best.
And after that a good configuration of my text editor is a better way to increase my typing speed.
But, with a lot of practice and some little game* I type with 10 fingers, but certainly not with the perfect finger choice.

* The game that help me :
try to type a text using one finger after another, despite the letter is not near the finger. At the beginning, you have to look at the keyboard, but try to only look the screen after some practice...
(use the same text to have progress)
After a lot of practice, that was like my brain stop to type a word letter by letter (this sensation is hard to explain). And in the same time, I naturally add finger without effort.
 
Sorry for the late response.

olli@ You gave me a bunch of good ideas for the layout. Thank you, I really appreciate that. Feels good to actually have a plan.
And good job with Porgle, nice clean design. I'll keep him as a bookmark :).

Hakaba My typing speed with Text is that that bad, but when programming it's horrible. I make a lot of typing errors when I type brackets and braces and stuff. That slows me down and annoys me a bit, too. I'm pretty confident that switching from German keyboard layout to US, will help a lot and then train, train, train. Thanks, for the tip with a standard Text. Having a standard Text to type over and over again, seems like a good idea to take a short training session here and then, even on the go or at work..
 
Hakaba My typing speed with Text is that that bad, but when programming it's horrible. I make a lot of typing errors when I type brackets and braces and stuff. That slows me down and annoys me a bit, too. I'm pretty confident that switching from German keyboard layout to US, will help a lot and then train, train, train. Thanks, for the tip with a standard Text. Having a standard Text to type over and over again, seems like a good idea to take a short training session here and then, even on the go or at work..

I use a french keyboard layout and switch between Apple / standard keyboard.
When I type code, I always type the open and close char (bracket, ...) and use the left to insert code. That reduce a lot of typing error because the open/end (except for <>) use the same [ALT-CTRL-MAJ] combination.

Maybe this tip can help.
 
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