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Comment by chuckadams | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure most devs who can't touch-type aren't hunting and pecking either. I never learned the "proper" home-row technique, and type with four fingers most of the time, but neither am I looking down unless I'm making enough typos that I need to realign my fingers. No one gives me crap about that because well, the people I hang around with just aren't that damaged.

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Did this for 30 years. Two years ago I finally took the time to acquire the whole thing.

There is no way back. Relaxed posture, no UI elements stealing my focus unnoticed, parallelism (partially): continually "big-picturing" text; speaking with people while typing. The rhythm of this motoric skill and his quite specific form of memory alone, strangely decoupled from and coupled to the other mental processes at the same time, the interplay is simply marvelous.

I grew up on all those "typing tutor" programs, and hated every moment of them, even the extra-game-ified ones. But at least they weren't high school typing classes like my gf took, those seemed like some proper sweatshop training. Would love to learn piano too, another thing I couldn't focus enough to make happen, but I guess I'm more comfortable now knowing my limits, and there's worse things to regret ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you’re not looking at your hands, you’re touch typing.

I move my hands around as I type, too. I learned piano before typing, and it’s weird to me to try and keep them in one place. I type as fast as I’d ever want or need to, though, so I couldn’t care less if it’s not “proper”. I’d still say you and I both touch type.

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