i can do something similar, but when they tried to teach me how in like 5th grade I was very determined not to do what my teachers wanted so I do it weird

I switched to an ergomech keyboard so yes I have to touch type. My typing style on a normal keyboard is kind of dogshit though.

n0

We had keyboard classes in school but AIM was where I cut my teeth. Very proficient in typing. Are you over 60, or under 30 if you don’t mind my asking?

I can touch type. A typing teacher would probably be horrified at my form because I followed absolutely no rules about finger placement whatsoever, but I hit a peak 138wpm before so I feel zero need to change to a more conventional style.

For what it’s worth, funny story but I learned both to touch type and to type so fast from playing Runescape.

Back before they added a central auction house you used to have to sit and type like “white:wave2:selling rune scimmy 25k - camel” amongst a sea of people doing the same thing when looking to buy/sell items. And your text disappeared after a few seconds so you had to keep repeating it over and over. I used to trade like that for hours every day and that repetition of just typing things over and over really quickly taught me to type like I do now.

I had typing class in school, but got better with it by video games. I now use Colemak, but can blind type in qwerty and colemak

I zan tough ty[e thos well.

Mostly, sometimes I have issues with thezxcvbnm row.

Qwerty and qwertz are pretty similar, recently even changed to qwerty full time only using qwertz (blind) for special german characters.
Before uni we had mandatory school laptops in azerty, and indeed the best method than was to jusr change it in windows and blind type.

I do touch type, but I don't use the standard finger placement. I had typing class in school, which I'm grateful for, but what really got my typing speed up were ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger.

I learned to touch-type QWERTY in late 90s chat rooms. By 2006, I was bragging about my 100 WPM speed in my online dating profile. I met one girl who challenged me to a typing contest. She won, then I won, and then we called it a draw. We've been married for 13 years and had our third child last month.

When I was learning to touch type, I found it helpful to practice in my head even when I was away from the keyboard. Like whatever I'm thinking about, I'm picturing a keyboard in my head and where each letter of each word is. It slows my thoughts down a little, but that's not always a bad thing.

Yes, Dvorak, I forgot qwerty. I was taught qwerty touch typing in grade school, and switched to Dvorak in college when my wrists hurt all the time.

I touch type on QWERTY with a few variations from the standard. For example, I use right shift seldom, to type a capital A I shift my left hand over, hold shift with my little finger and strike A with my ring finger. the Y key I type with either hand depending on what else is going on with my hands at the time, and the rules I follow I don't even understand, so most of those ergonomic split keyboards are no good for me. I don't know if I type 6 or B correctly, I use the right hand for both.

I was given typing tutor programs as a child, I took a keyboarding class in 9th grade, in fact I was in that class when the planes hit the towers. My typing proficiency really came from Yahoo! and MSN. Turns out, teens will pick up a skill on their own if it's useful for socializing with other teens.

I use DVORAK on my phone and after a day was faster than with querty.

I also use a keybeard called unexpected keyboard (via the fdroid app store) that does not have autocomplete but instead its really fast & still accurate to type non letters and numbers without holding the key down and wait and then choosing something. Also it can do shortcuts like ctrl+a, +c & +v which is quite pleasant

My parents made me take typing lessons when I was in primary school. I had to learn on an extremely heavy electric typewriter with the keycaps taped off.
It was a lot of work but I’m still enjoying the benefits of it.
Fun little difference was that we used QWERTY, but the ‘;’ was replaced with a ‘ij’

Yes, qwerty and Dvorak, although I have to guess and check with some special characters on Dvorak. I have an unlabeled Dvorak keyboard at work (this guy right here), but I only physically go in to the office once every few weeks nowadays, and I'm starting to forget where some of the symbols are.

Oh my god the AZERTY... I naively tried it out for like a week or two and quickly gave up on the idea. The numbers and symbols being the reverse of QWERTY was just way too much of a headache, especially for programming. Unfortunately workplace requires all work computers to have AZERTY so

Yes. Parents made me learn touch-typing with QWERTY when I was growing up

I actually made the effort to switch to Colemak-DH less than a year ago. Because getting a properly labelled Colemak-DH keyboard is so difficult (my laptop keys are still QWERTY layout), I... basically forced myself to learn how to touch type in like 2-3 months. Still can't do the multilingual symbols very well (I always forget where the ^/circumflex is...), but I think I have a >98% accuracy on everything else

Unfortunately I forgot how to touch type with QWERTY after learning the new setup...

Unrelated but that aspect of Autocad is a big part of why freecad sucks to me

I semi-touch type, with three fingers and one thumb, and form that looks like an arthritic hobo. But I still get the job done.

However, I can work a numpad or a ten-key calculator like a pro athlete.

Yes I can touch type after learning from keybr and then practice on monkeytype

Colemak claims to not remove QWERTY proficiency, but I think that's wrong.

I use Colemak at work and QWERTY at home. That way I keep my proficiency at both. I also game on my PC and I can't be bothered to edit the keybindings for every single game I play

Everything without LISP routines sucks to me so I'm stuck on ACAD forever

I learned how to touch type in grade school, but quickly forgot after that. It’s just not that ergonomic to keep your hands in that position. However, it did give me the necessary memory of where all the keys are. My hands can magnetically reach each key without a lot of difficulty. I could type pretty quickly if I wanted to but I’m usually limited by my speed of thought and usually make quite a few typing mistakes.

I learned “proper” typing form when I was in elementary school. But what really thought me touch typing was trying to chat in games. Not only do you need to stay looking at what’s happening, but you need to type fast so you can get back to playing.

I’d more or less mastered touch typing by the beginning of middle school. By high school I got to about 100wpm which is where I’ve capped out since then.

Playing WoW

See message from QT3.14 Dranei boy

Press numlock, type out 'sup bb LFR BT?'

Left and right mouse click to halt and continue killing. The good old days

A little, I guess.

especially for programming
Indeed! I grew up with azerty and still got tired quickly of pressing shift for most of the most basic symbols. Before learning to code, I don't really remember having issues with azerty.

workplace requires all work computers to have AZERTY

dang that's tough. Usually they ask me what I'm used to, not sure if I could accept a job offer if it came with azerty 😆

Yes. My kids would laugh at me when I worked from home because I would not stop typing when I looked up to answer something they were asking me. I suck on the phone keyboard but good with QUERTY big keyboard. My fingers can talk on those

Ironically, with touch typing I know when I make mistakes even if I'm looking elsewhere. It's just obvious when a finger does a wrong thing.

Same. I tried really hard to learn it but gave up in frustration. 5ish years with plenty of computer use later I suddenly found myself typing without looking.

Yes, QWERTY. My dad made my brother and I use Mavis Beacon as kids (SHOUT OUT TO MAVIS BEACON!!!) and I had keyboarding class in middle school. WPM is 70 to 80 depending on what I'm typing.

I do the same with my colleagues. Then again, I'm using the Moergo Glove80 tilted at 50° (3D printed stand), so I can't see what I'm clicking lol.

I recommend learning proper touch typing with the 'correct' finger position. Its benefit is that there's proper movement for every finger for every key, which is mostly symmetric and very regular, and it gets ingrained in muscle memory. Hence typing anything is quick even if it's not fast overall. The fingers 'know' what they must do for any letter, and it's often faster to let them do their thing than to e.g. reach for the mouse. You can actually feel when you press a wrong key.

In case of a mistake, it's faster to delete a few words and retype them than to move the cursor back and forth. And if you get an app like Alfred (for Mac) or Keypirinha (for Windows), you can invoke it with a shortcut and type a few letters faster than you open an app or click on some widget with the mouse — it's often quicker to switch apps via Alfred than via cmd-tab. Likewise, when you use a keyboard-heavy app like Emacs, calling its commands becomes a breeze.

I'd like to use Dvorak or at least Colemak, but I'm concerned that all shortcuts would be messed up. Especially since I'm a user of Vim-style movements and commands.

Also, TIPP10 app is pretty nice for learning. No fluff, no extra stuff. Initially took me about a month to learn with half an hour or so a day, and about a year to fully get used to it and develop the speed.

Yes, QWERTY. But I'm just old enough to actually have typing class as an elective in high school, not sure if that's still a thing in 2026. It was useful and being into tech I knew it was something I'd need to learn.

I'll add that the keyboard you're using is important for touch typing. Some keyboards don't have good bumps/notches on the keys which makes it harder to do any real touch typing without looking down at the keyboard.

Same problem, I have a Cherry keyboard for the same reason. The old Thinkpads used to have proper keyboards, I don't get why laptops all have keyboards you basically can't type on nowadays.

Uh yes. If you can't touch type, prioritize it. The speedup alone is worth it.

Yup, I can type about 90-100 wpm on a QWERTY keyboard if it's normal conversational English. Probably half that if it's something that contains a lot of long technical words. The thing that got me over the hump with getting good at typing was a game called QWERTY Warriors. It was a Flash-based web game that I was playing like 20 years ago, so I don't know if it's around anymore, but it was a tower defense game where you had to defeat enemies by typing the word underneath them. It was a pretty painless way to practice touch-typing.

Yes, but definitely not proper form, as my left hand rests on WASD+CTRL/Shift+Space.

I'm around 100 wpm, so maybe it doesn't matter.

While I completely understand people who can't get to 100 wpm (much like people at 110+ completely understand me), I cannot fathom young adults who cannot touch-type (barring disability, obviously).

I never managed proper training with the correct hands positioning so my hands are a bit all over the place. But years of Twitter, Reddit and online gaming (yeah, I was that type for some time) helped a lot so now I can type fairly quickly in both QWERTY and ЙЦУКЕН.

https://flashmuseum.org/qwerty-warriors/

I can touch type in both qwerty and Dvorak. For me I think it was a combo of starting piano when I was in elementary school, AIM chat rooms, and computer lab time at school.

Back when I was still playing I could type 140wpm with qwerty, but since I've stopped it's dropped to the 100 range.

QWERTY layout. I was never taught teaching in school because I was part of the "you should already know how to type" 2k schooling. I can also type due to muscle memory ( much more easily on a non-flat keyboard ) but it's not an efficient typing compared to someone my age from the past who was formally taught touch typing.

Edit:

It also doesn't help that I usually use just my thumbs, index, and middle fingers to type usually.

My laptops keyboard is completely black, with no letters on it. So even if i look down, its like staring into void lol

I type azerty

Yeah, I took a class in highschool where they just had us play a typing game until we got good enough at it. It really helps to learn the correct form and be using the right fingers for the right keys, once you get it in your muscle memory you don't have to really think about the individual letters anymore and the words just appear when you intend them to.

I can to a basic level, but I type much faster without it.

I learned with a game.

I use touch typing when I'm in the dark and the keyboard has no backlight, then I can type at 10wpm.

Canary (Angle Mod) layout. Form is quite proper with alternating shift however still learning so only hitting 60 WPM with punctuation on.

The people responsible for archiving the gold mine that is old flash games are really doing gods work out there!