Typing fast is an underrated skill for developers. A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs is easily replicated by typing variable and function names at 100+ wpm.
Not a fan, however, of the desire to disparage the "right" way of doing things that's done in this blog. I type the "proper" way, home row and all, and can reach 150+wpm with high accuracy. So, based on this evidence, you're wrong and would be better off having learned the proper technique...
is an argument which I could make, and the evidence would be true, but it doesn't sound extremely convincing, does it?
I used to type >140 WPM at high accuracy when I was younger without home row. These days I think I likely sit closer to 90 WPM or so, since I really just don't really need to type super fast very often and am pretty out of practice. I reckon home row is probably not terrible or anything, but like a lot of weird old ergonomics advice, I just don't trust the idea that you must or possibly even should use home row. For example, the best advice regarding ergonomics I've ever had is not to have proper posture at all times, but rather to get up more frequently and not sit in the same position for too long. Likewise, it feels a lot more natural to let my hands move around a bit, and as it would turn out my mouse arm is the one that wound up having more discomfort from long term computer usage. So clearly, YMMV. But a lot of us who didn't do home row are confused; some people will go as far as to say it's literally wrong not to, and I say, burden of proof is on you all.
Staying at home row is not really about ergonomics. The best thing you can do (without breaking the bank, i.e., no bespoke split keyboard setups) for your hand ergonomics at the computer is to get a vertical mouse and tilt your keyboard downwards and away from you (the opposite of what most keyboard feet do, which is tilt your keyboard up and towards you). Both of these keep your wrist neutral/in slight flexion, whereas the typical setup keep your wrists in constant extension which contributes to carpal tunnel.
I don't even come close to groking how one types without home row hand placement. How does that even work? Where are your hands if not starting at home row?
I lowkey judge any developer who is noticable slow at typing as I can't imagine they're using a computer effectively at such a pace given how much keyboard hitting needs to occur during regular use alone.
Not that it's a high bar but I'm surprised more companies don't test wpm when hiring over rote crap like LC.
When I was in the 8th grade (back in the 1900s), I took a typing elective class, because I figured if I was going to be in front of a keyboard typing for a living as a programmer, I should learn to do it right.
That was a rare very good decision for kid me back then, and it's paid off ever since.
Opposite experience: I hated the school class and I remember some frustrating tools which, if you made an error, counted any reflexive backspace and corrected letter as two additional errors...
What really turned me into a touch-typist was all the arguing I did over dial-up internet the next summer.
Likewise in high school in the 1900s I took typing, which did markedly improve my typing though I am sure I didn't keep up with the technique I learned. We also learned all the standard letter formats and so on which I promptly forgot.
I measured myself the other day and I can do about 110-115 WPM, which I think is pretty impressive for a 50 year old who last took typing classes at 15.
Was mandatory at my high school; the only way to avoid it was a once-a-year typing test that was not advertised - you had to ask or hear about it. If you could do 35 wpm without errors, you didn’t have to take the class.
I probably had enough cachet with the teachers that I could have weaseled my way into taking it until I passed, but I did pass it, so problem solved.
9th grade for me. The teacher actually just graded us on speed and accuracy, that was my only C in high school. It served me well, however, I got up to 40 WPM and have kept to around 30 during my career (always fast enough it seems). Also, model M PC Jr. keyboards, so I can’t really complain too much.
I spent basically all my life not typing correctly at all, since I learned from online gaming without a teacher.
I ended up with a technique that had my whole hand shifted to be over WASD like when gaming with pinky only used for modifiers. It was even worse for my right hand as only recently I actually monitored how I typed, and I highly underuse my ring and pinky fingers on that hand. Worst part is I never use my thumbs for spacebar, I found out I literally shift my entire right hand to use my index finger every time I hit spacebar.
Despite all of this I regularly typed ~120wpm. I think when it comes to speed almost everybody adopts at least some peculiar techniques.
I only say typed past tense because I recently got into split ergonomic keyboards with keywells and columnar layouts and my old typing technique literally just does not work. I had to learn how to "correctly" type from scratch, but relatively quickly got to the similar speeds. Now I can easily swap between the two techniques depending on whether I'm using my laptop keyboard or not and type almost the same speed, I'm still a tad bit slower using "correct" technique. But I will say it is a hell of a lot less movement and tension in my hands typing correctly.
> A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs
Saving typing was never a value add for intelligent tab completion, it is mostly used for discovery and recall (what members does the type of this expression have?), not to accelerate your WPM. After around 20-30 wpm, typing speed is not a bottleneck in programming, but size of the API and how much you can fit into your head most definitely is.
While I was learning a new keyboard layout (Colemak) I went from > 100 WPM to starting from ~20 WPM. I think I got pretty productive when I reached 60/70 WPM and was surprised how much tab completion and computing assistance I relied on anyway. After that experience I think fast typing speed is overrated. (Now I’ve a somewhat useless skill of being able to type > 100 WPM on two different keyboard layouts.)
Edit: note if you are a typist and transcribe a lot of text for long periods of time without break, typing speed is important. But that’s mostly not any of us. But hey maybe I don’t write enough documentation and comments..
If you're working with a language you're not-so experienced in, then the completion for `// read data from file f into x` is going to be significantly quicker than looking up the documentation for this.
Learning to touch-type effortlessly is IMHO one of the most useful thing to learn, for anyone typing regularly, but especially for programmers. It doesn't have to be fast, but just fast (and automated) enough not to cause a bottleneck.
Unpopular opinion nowadays: This bottleneck is what makes needlessly verbose programming languages annoying. Having to wait for your fingers (or eyes) to catch up with your toughts tends to kill the flow.
I also never learned the proper way of typing with home rows and all. And like the article author I also type at 100wpm. It's sufficient for me. I now need to try the author's suggestion of just typing as a therapeutic session. I suspect ~100wpm is enough for this therapeutic purpose whereas 60wpm isn't.
I sorta disagree, however fast you can type, the computer can manipulate text faster. Our brains are huge slow things. We should employ them at what they are good at, coming up with better abstractions and better frameworks.
The desire to type faster is a strong signal indicating that you need better macros.
My goal has always been to type as fast as I can think, and if I need to move a lot of text around in a dumb way to use tools to help. Vim commands, text macros, refactor tools, formatters, etc. I type at about 90wpm, but when actively developing rarely go above 65.
Even just knowing how to move the cursor quickly (ctrl+arrow keys, using shift as necessary) is a good reflex to have. I always see people pressing arrows / backspace etc repeatedly rather than moving a word/block at a time.
Typing is not an underrated skill at all though. It's probably one of the most gatekeepy "you can't call yourself a programmer if you're bad at it" thing I've ever seen.
I use "dynamic finger allocation", close to the standard fingering but not exactly. It's hard to describe as anything other than "closest finger that isn't currently in use". My burst speed is over 200 (peaked roughly 240) but I usually stay around 160-170 in 1-minute tests.
Try typing words like "number", "bus", "zany", "excretion", etc. and you'll soon learn why sticking with the "proper" fingering is absolutely idiotic if you want speed and comfort. You can waste time and effort moving the "right" finger all the way from the bottom to the top of the keyboard, or just hit the key with the perfectly usable one sitting there idle.
To elaborate, when typing "number" I use the index and middle finger to chord "nu", then "mb" is the next chord with the left index and right middle, which naturally pulls down my left hand enough that "er" is easily done as a final chord with the left ring and middle fingers.
Not a home row typer but I believe that's generally the idea; it's supposed to minimize the amount of travel. I learned to type home row for a brief period though and it just felt very uncomfortable, I never got used to it. It feels a lot more natural to me to let my hands linger around the keyboard, even when using a split ergo keyboard.
atrophy? if you're not using your pinkies, how are you hitting shift/enter or other keys like [,],=,/,\? (that's an actual question, not trying to escape the punctuation)
>A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs is easily replicated by typing variable and function names at 100+ wpm.
The contrapositive of this is that, if you don't type at 100+ wpm, intelligent tab completion and LLMs add a lot of value you wouldn't otherwise get. Most of us don't, so this ends up being a vote in favor of the AI.
The only time typing speed has helped me is when people try to gish gallop me when I’m messaging them and I’m able to gish right back faster than they can respond. That’s…not exactly healthy though.
> Plot twist: I don't type "correctly" at all. My fingers just go wherever they want. It's like anarchist typing. My left pinky probably hasn't touched the 'A' key in months, but somehow I'm still in the 99.5 percentile. Turns out the "proper way" is just a suggestion. Like following PEP 8 or using semicolons in JavaScript. Sure, it's nice, but if your way works better, who cares?
This is super interesting - I have typed "wrong" since the time I first picked up a keyboard, 6 or 7 years old, back in an age where typing was not taught in school or an expected skill everyone was just automatically meant to know. As such, I developed my own "style" which looks a lot like "pecking" a lot of beginners will do, but has adapted over the decades to something that is my own.
I typically just use the index/middle finger on my left hand that covers most of the left hand side of the keyboard, depending on word (index might reach for the 'y' key sometimes) and the pinky for shift key. Right hand uses mostly the index, ring (for hitting backspace and enter) and thumb (for spacebar). I've often wondered if I was ever able to retrain myself to do it "properly" whether I'd type even faster than I do. now I am not sure.
I have "peaked" at 125+ wpm in 1 minute tests, and in casual conversation with familiar words, probably can maintain easily around 110-120. I think for most things I typically cruise around 100 without trying too much. It is a nice skill but I've never been able to figure out why I type so much faster than most people I meet, especially given being self-taught and the unorthodox way in which I type. Often when I am showing something on a terminal, for instance, which includes a lot of auto complete and muscle memory, I need to slow down by about 10-20x for people to follow what I am doing.
Looks like we overlapped in writing our comments. I'll leave mine, but I wanted to voice support for yours. I started at 8 y/o and have a similar "story". In particular, it sounds like your hands and mine do a lot of the same thing.
Anecdotally, I don't know anybody who types w/ a personalized style who has wrist RSI.
I absolutely adore doing "improvisational piano" terminal sessions w/ people watching, particularly when I'm operating a GUI or CLI that I know really well. I slow myself down by narrating and, if it's an in-person gig, gesturing. Doing stuff in front of people in realtime feels a lot like jamming on a musical instrument for me.
I also type unorthodoxly and quickly. Hands held diagonal (wrists straight), no particular finger-letter assignments. Closer to playing a piano. 33 years typing like this, going strong.
I can't think of any benefit of home row typing other than it's easy to teach in a prescriptive manner.
Same here with diagonal hands and straight wrists. I sometimes wonder "why" I haven't got RSI but I assume it is because typing the "wrong way" allows you to keep your hands in a natural comfortable position, rather than the awkward positioning for wrists elbows shoulders and fingers required to do it the "right way".
That and chiclet keyboards being so much more comfortable to use than big chunky keys
I grew up playing multiplayer games on PC, and my natural resting spots sound similar to yours: straight wrists, left hand defaults closer to a-w-d than a-s-d-f.
I avoid most pinky use outside of modifier keys, and there aren't strict finger-letter assignments. Middle of the keyboard gets hit by whatever hand makes it more likely to alternate nicely while typing a word.
Main benefit I see is that I know a lot of folks my age now complaining of RSI when typing, and I don't seem to have any of that (mouse related - yes, keyboard - no).
Funny since I didn't really make much association, but I also was learning to play piano at the same time I was learning to type.
Gaming was a lot more of an incentive to learn how to type quickly back in the days where you could only communicate with text chat.
If you want to minimize the time it takes to travel to a particular key, it makes sense to keep your fingers at the "center of mass" of the keyboard... which is the home row.
My Mom got me Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and other tools to help me to learn to type "correctly", but I didn't have any motivation to learn how to type until I started playing the original Starcraft online. I needed to be able to communicate with teammates (and trash talk opponents) in a timely manner, so I was forced to learn to type fast. But as a result, I also developed my own unorthodox style that looks a lot like hunt and peck.
On a typing test where they provide me with what to type I can consistently get 60+ WPM, but when I'm typing something from my head I'm pretty sure I get 100 to 120.
Yea, this is how it started for me - typing something like "please stop killing me" and struggling to play the game while looking at my keyboard was a very early moment I remember that spurred me on.
It is my guess that everyone in the thread with "Hey, I don't type normally either and my speed is just fine" comments are likely staring at the keyboard when they type. All two-finger typists I've personally witnessed, even the extremely prolific Roger Ebert, couldn't effectively transcribe a printed document with their learned typing style.
If you never have to type something you're reading, I'm sure unique typing styles are just fine.
I mean, in my case, you could not possibly be more wrong. I haven't looked down at the keyboard since I was 8 or so and would assume most here don't program staring directly at their keyboard. Do you think it impossible for muscle memory to work outside of home row or something?
> This is super interesting - I have typed "wrong" since the time I first picked up a keyboard, 6 or 7 years old, back in an age where typing was not taught in school or an expected skill everyone was just automatically meant to know. As such, I developed my own "style" which looks a lot like "pecking" a lot of beginners will do, but has adapted over the decades to something that is my own.
(I usually type with more than two pointers, that post was just to prove a point that you don't need more than two fingers to type quickly. You probably don't even necessarily need two, though I couldn't go nearly that fast with only one.)
> I typically just use the index/middle finger on my left hand that covers most of the left hand side of the keyboard, depending on word (index might reach for the 'y' key sometimes) and the pinky for shift key. Right hand uses mostly the index, ring (for hitting backspace and enter) and thumb (for spacebar).
fwiw, you might be avoiding the ulnar nerve usage. Perhaps that makes things easier for your brain/cerebellum and spine, which then only have to coordinate movement in one nerve pathway.
that’s a really interesting point. What is, if any, the overhead of this coordination? I imagine it must be in the order of milliseconds or much much less but is something I never considered. And to some degree once it becomes instinctive muscle “memory” is there still this overhead?
if you've never had proper typing tests, then I'd suspect your WPM scores are not what you think. you may be typing keys at 110-120 WPM, but what does the score look like if you adjust for mistakes? It makes a bigger difference than most people are willing to admit.
I'm sorry for any undue snark here, but what do you mean by "proper" typing test and what do you think I meant in the OP by 1 minute tests? There are a plethora of online tests available that measure this with good accuracy and of course I have taken several. This is with <1% errors I am speaking of. I generally have very low errors. In addition, by late highschool, I had to pass a typing test for a computer class I took, and am well aware of how fast I type by now.
I have a similar typing style, with two finger typing for nearly all keys except shift with uses my little finger. I too am at around 100wpm on average with peaks of ~130wpm depending on keyboard.
It's cool to see somebody else out there who types like I do.
Same. I’m embarrassed to explain how I type but I can do 125 (80 on iPhone, no swipe).
If I’m going to be real, just you’re naturally talented and coordinated with your hands. That’s why most people can’t relate. We should form a group where we do finger things. /s
Weird, I thought I was so unique until I read some of the comments in this thread. I too am about 80-90 wpm on iphone, no swipe, and no autocorrect (it messes me up)
Have had a recent challenge I ran out of steam on and the suggestion of focusing on correctness not speed to achieve speed really helps.
Beat Saber, I am back!
(I am actually serious. It’s my quick upper-body-emphasis cardio, and running out of motivation due to a wall impacts my health! I play it with additional constraints, which I relaxed to get through maxed out challenges. But then hit a wall anyway. Realize I need to stay strict, and take the fails upfront!
The simple things we know, but somehow need reminding of at every level.)
I started using an ortholinear split keyboard last year, and that was a huge adjustment. I went from typing 100+wpm on a simple membrane keyboard, to less than half of that. I had to basically relearn typing just to accomodate the ortholinear layout, not to mention that the split layout meant I could no longer "cheat" and use my right hand to type keys on the left side of the keyboard when I was feeling lazy.
I did learn the "right" way to type through all this, and my speedhas stabilized at around 100 wpm. This is more than enough for pretty much any activity I do on the computer.
More importantly, however, my wrists no longer hurt from typing continously for 30 minutes. The small sacrifice in speed is definitely worth it in my opinion.
Went through the same process last year due primarily to trying to find a solution to my cubital tunnel syndrome. I dropped down to like legit 20wpm from ~120wpm. I'm back to around 100 or so but a lot more comfortable and with less pain.
I recommend either the Kinesis Advantage 360 pro or the glove 80 to anybody who uses a keyboard a lot for a living. I tried both and frequently switch between them.
Another thing I recommend to people with problems is to get literally the lightest keycaps you can, and while it may slow you down a bit try to bottom out less/type a bit lighter in general.
Yeah I switched to an ErgoDox after 15+ years of normal keyboards, and it was quite an adjustment. It took me at least a year just to feel comfortable, and another year to get back up to speed. Now, I'm the complete opposite - I tried typing on a normal keyboard a few weeks ago and was just as confused as when I first switched :)
Ha it was the worst when I was still learning the ortholinear layout...I lost the muscle memory to type properly on a membrane keyboard, but still was slow/inaccurate on the ortholinear layout...
I don't know how well this holds out, but one thing I've noticed is that the very best developers I've worked with are all fast on the keyboard - not just fast at typing code or comments or emails or whatever, but they have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized, and they navigate through their IDE of choice faster than you can follow (even if you're a pretty good dev yourself).
It's key to my productivity, that's for sure. I type faster than most folks, but I'm not that fast, though I've never tested my WPM. I make up for it because I know my shorcuts, I choose tools that have good shortcuts, and I set custom shortcuts for things I do a lot.
Another thing is efficient use of screen real estate. Then you don't need to press any buttons at all, you just move your eyes.
I've started to learn touch typing many times, but don't use it. The main problem is that as soon as I want to touch type while working (e.g. coding), I only know the letters, but not the symbols, numbers or even uppercase letters. I think I can force keybr to add those, but they are not part of real world examples, while the words are natural enough. Is there any progressive way to introduce those just like keybr introduces 1 letter at a time ?
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Not a fan, however, of the desire to disparage the "right" way of doing things that's done in this blog. I type the "proper" way, home row and all, and can reach 150+wpm with high accuracy. So, based on this evidence, you're wrong and would be better off having learned the proper technique...
is an argument which I could make, and the evidence would be true, but it doesn't sound extremely convincing, does it?
I lowkey judge any developer who is noticable slow at typing as I can't imagine they're using a computer effectively at such a pace given how much keyboard hitting needs to occur during regular use alone.
Not that it's a high bar but I'm surprised more companies don't test wpm when hiring over rote crap like LC.
That was a rare very good decision for kid me back then, and it's paid off ever since.
What really turned me into a touch-typist was all the arguing I did over dial-up internet the next summer.
I measured myself the other day and I can do about 110-115 WPM, which I think is pretty impressive for a 50 year old who last took typing classes at 15.
I probably had enough cachet with the teachers that I could have weaseled my way into taking it until I passed, but I did pass it, so problem solved.
She was right.
I ended up with a technique that had my whole hand shifted to be over WASD like when gaming with pinky only used for modifiers. It was even worse for my right hand as only recently I actually monitored how I typed, and I highly underuse my ring and pinky fingers on that hand. Worst part is I never use my thumbs for spacebar, I found out I literally shift my entire right hand to use my index finger every time I hit spacebar.
Despite all of this I regularly typed ~120wpm. I think when it comes to speed almost everybody adopts at least some peculiar techniques.
I only say typed past tense because I recently got into split ergonomic keyboards with keywells and columnar layouts and my old typing technique literally just does not work. I had to learn how to "correctly" type from scratch, but relatively quickly got to the similar speeds. Now I can easily swap between the two techniques depending on whether I'm using my laptop keyboard or not and type almost the same speed, I'm still a tad bit slower using "correct" technique. But I will say it is a hell of a lot less movement and tension in my hands typing correctly.
Saving typing was never a value add for intelligent tab completion, it is mostly used for discovery and recall (what members does the type of this expression have?), not to accelerate your WPM. After around 20-30 wpm, typing speed is not a bottleneck in programming, but size of the API and how much you can fit into your head most definitely is.
Problem is, you run out of new simple code to write pretty fast and then you have to start thinking and typing speed becomes irellevant.
Edit: note if you are a typist and transcribe a lot of text for long periods of time without break, typing speed is important. But that’s mostly not any of us. But hey maybe I don’t write enough documentation and comments..
Unpopular opinion nowadays: This bottleneck is what makes needlessly verbose programming languages annoying. Having to wait for your fingers (or eyes) to catch up with your toughts tends to kill the flow.
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The desire to type faster is a strong signal indicating that you need better macros.
Typing speed is not a limiting factor for writing good software. And I say that as someone who can type faster than most of my peers
Try typing words like "number", "bus", "zany", "excretion", etc. and you'll soon learn why sticking with the "proper" fingering is absolutely idiotic if you want speed and comfort. You can waste time and effort moving the "right" finger all the way from the bottom to the top of the keyboard, or just hit the key with the perfectly usable one sitting there idle.
To elaborate, when typing "number" I use the index and middle finger to chord "nu", then "mb" is the next chord with the left index and right middle, which naturally pulls down my left hand enough that "er" is easily done as a final chord with the left ring and middle fingers.
The contrapositive of this is that, if you don't type at 100+ wpm, intelligent tab completion and LLMs add a lot of value you wouldn't otherwise get. Most of us don't, so this ends up being a vote in favor of the AI.
I don't think I could Mimik a LLM. But I'm prompting fast so that helps
This is super interesting - I have typed "wrong" since the time I first picked up a keyboard, 6 or 7 years old, back in an age where typing was not taught in school or an expected skill everyone was just automatically meant to know. As such, I developed my own "style" which looks a lot like "pecking" a lot of beginners will do, but has adapted over the decades to something that is my own.
I typically just use the index/middle finger on my left hand that covers most of the left hand side of the keyboard, depending on word (index might reach for the 'y' key sometimes) and the pinky for shift key. Right hand uses mostly the index, ring (for hitting backspace and enter) and thumb (for spacebar). I've often wondered if I was ever able to retrain myself to do it "properly" whether I'd type even faster than I do. now I am not sure.
I have "peaked" at 125+ wpm in 1 minute tests, and in casual conversation with familiar words, probably can maintain easily around 110-120. I think for most things I typically cruise around 100 without trying too much. It is a nice skill but I've never been able to figure out why I type so much faster than most people I meet, especially given being self-taught and the unorthodox way in which I type. Often when I am showing something on a terminal, for instance, which includes a lot of auto complete and muscle memory, I need to slow down by about 10-20x for people to follow what I am doing.
Anecdotally, I don't know anybody who types w/ a personalized style who has wrist RSI.
I absolutely adore doing "improvisational piano" terminal sessions w/ people watching, particularly when I'm operating a GUI or CLI that I know really well. I slow myself down by narrating and, if it's an in-person gig, gesturing. Doing stuff in front of people in realtime feels a lot like jamming on a musical instrument for me.
I can't think of any benefit of home row typing other than it's easy to teach in a prescriptive manner.
That and chiclet keyboards being so much more comfortable to use than big chunky keys
I grew up playing multiplayer games on PC, and my natural resting spots sound similar to yours: straight wrists, left hand defaults closer to a-w-d than a-s-d-f.
I avoid most pinky use outside of modifier keys, and there aren't strict finger-letter assignments. Middle of the keyboard gets hit by whatever hand makes it more likely to alternate nicely while typing a word.
Main benefit I see is that I know a lot of folks my age now complaining of RSI when typing, and I don't seem to have any of that (mouse related - yes, keyboard - no).
Funny since I didn't really make much association, but I also was learning to play piano at the same time I was learning to type.
Gaming was a lot more of an incentive to learn how to type quickly back in the days where you could only communicate with text chat.
If you want to minimize the time it takes to travel to a particular key, it makes sense to keep your fingers at the "center of mass" of the keyboard... which is the home row.
On a typing test where they provide me with what to type I can consistently get 60+ WPM, but when I'm typing something from my head I'm pretty sure I get 100 to 120.
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If you never have to type something you're reading, I'm sure unique typing styles are just fine.
Hey, me too: https://vxtwitter.com/LoganDark/status/1919146616763617342
(I usually type with more than two pointers, that post was just to prove a point that you don't need more than two fingers to type quickly. You probably don't even necessarily need two, though I couldn't go nearly that fast with only one.)
fwiw, you might be avoiding the ulnar nerve usage. Perhaps that makes things easier for your brain/cerebellum and spine, which then only have to coordinate movement in one nerve pathway.
It's cool to see somebody else out there who types like I do.
If I’m going to be real, just you’re naturally talented and coordinated with your hands. That’s why most people can’t relate. We should form a group where we do finger things. /s
Have had a recent challenge I ran out of steam on and the suggestion of focusing on correctness not speed to achieve speed really helps.
Beat Saber, I am back!
(I am actually serious. It’s my quick upper-body-emphasis cardio, and running out of motivation due to a wall impacts my health! I play it with additional constraints, which I relaxed to get through maxed out challenges. But then hit a wall anyway. Realize I need to stay strict, and take the fails upfront!
The simple things we know, but somehow need reminding of at every level.)
I did learn the "right" way to type through all this, and my speedhas stabilized at around 100 wpm. This is more than enough for pretty much any activity I do on the computer.
More importantly, however, my wrists no longer hurt from typing continously for 30 minutes. The small sacrifice in speed is definitely worth it in my opinion.
I recommend either the Kinesis Advantage 360 pro or the glove 80 to anybody who uses a keyboard a lot for a living. I tried both and frequently switch between them.
Another thing I recommend to people with problems is to get literally the lightest keycaps you can, and while it may slow you down a bit try to bottom out less/type a bit lighter in general.
I second recommendations for the Kinesis advantage layout and low-force keys.
Aside from direct ergonomic benefit, both the layout and low-force ends up training one to much better habits.
I go ~50% faster and 2X longer on Kinesis Advantage with low force.
Don't wait for inflamed nerves to reduce the ergonomic friction in your life. It makes work much easier.
Another thing is efficient use of screen real estate. Then you don't need to press any buttons at all, you just move your eyes.
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