Touch typing

To me part of being literate today is to touch type. Indeed mobile phones have gained an incredible importance in our lives and tapping is the preferred input method nowadays but touch typing can give us the power to use our computers better. Years ago, reading and writing were the cornerstone of the education for a kid but
I believe today that lacking knowledge on computers, touch typing included, makes kids' literacy incomplete.

Touch typing brings lots of benefits. For instance, your hands roughly have the same workload and you don't get much tired. On the other hand, working with both hands together helps you use your whole brain instead of focusing on your strongest side. Lastly, touch typing works wonders for terminal environments, modal editors and CLI software as it matches with their mouseless hence more efficient workflow.

My touch typing technique was terrible at the beginning. I remember quite well making lots of mistakes coding because I didn't know my keyboard layout by heart. So, I found typingclub.com and went through its QWERTY course. I saw the improvement in the less amount of mistakes I would make but then I felt that QWERTY was not the answer to learn touch typing because coding became exhausting for my right hand especially.

I knew that the work balance between my hands was uneven because my right hand was tired of doing all the heavy lifting as I said before. So, I wondered if there was a different keyboard layout with a more balanced key distribution to release my right hand from its exhausting work. I found that the best option was Programmer Dvorak Keyboard layout and I tried it out straight away.

Aside from the inherent benefits of touch typing with a standard Dvorak layout, Programmer Dvorak redistributes symbols and push numbers to the background to be accessed with the Shift key. This carefully designed layout for programmers is a powerful antidote to all the pain and strain that long hours of coding can bring along with other layouts.

Do I type faster than before? Well, I've been doing typingclub Dvorak course and although my speed isn't much faster than typing with QWERTY on my last days with it, I feel much more comfortable and efficient. That's what counts for me.