[morenoh149]

This. I believe very strongly in the importance of touch-typing. I went to an inner city school for elementary and high school. And when I arrived at university computer science I felt like I was light years behind my peers. A lot of that stemmed from not being able to type as fast as them. Hunting and pecking typing while trying to wrap your head around making abstractions and recursion is enough to make anyone frustrated.

Teach touch-typing!

[Retra]

You learn touch typing by having something to type, not by having it drilled into at school. There are better things to teach.

[drakenot]

I completely disagree with this. Despite being a fast typist when I first started high school from years of computer use, I still consider my typing class to be one of the best bang-for-the-buck classes I took in terms of what I have gotten out of it since graduating.

My form was not perfect before taking the class. I would often do something slightly weird with my right hand where my it would "walk" to slightly incorrect positions to reach keys that my other hand should be hitting.

My typing teacher put covers over the keyboard so we couldn't see our hands and then had us do typing drills. She would strictly enforce that we maintain our hands on the correct home-row position, wrist positioning, etc.

After a semester of this class, despite an initial drop in my speed, I can now touch type correctly and my speed is now faster than ever.

I work with professional programmers who hunt and peck and it drives me crazy. For something that you interact with daily and is the instrument of your profession, taking an hour a day for a few months is a no brainer to perfect your form.

[mstechfreak2]

I would like to suggest touch typing tool TypingStudy for everyone who think he wants to improve his or her efficiency. Strongly suggested - http://www.typingstudy.com

[afarrell]

My elementary school (circa 1998) struggled to teach me touch-typing with both in-person instruction and Mavis Beacon. I also tried learning at home. It was fruitless.

How did I actually learn to touch-type? AOL Instant Messenger.

[tracker1]

agreed, for me it was a few years earlier with BBSes in the early/mid 90's after High School... When you have to not only type for you conversations, but add in commands to send direct and channel messages, you get fast, or you don't chat.

[pakled_engineer]

I could already touch type sloppily in the 90s when I took a keyboarding class in Gr 9. The class taught me proper hand/wrist positioning to avoid strain which I attribute to helping me avoid wrist problems over the years. Of course I also taught myself how to program the 90s typewriters so I could create macros and slack my way through the rest of the semester.

I don't think it mattered in programming classes that I could touch type, just meant I could multi task distractions easier like being on IRC during lectures and appearing to be paying attention.