[davidamcclain]

As a colleague said "Wow, you can type really fast... for someone who only uses two fingers".

Now he's exaggerating a bit, but I am a slow typer that predominately uses index, middle and thumb. Now, I get stuff done, I'm a pretty smart coder but typing speed, to me, feels like a huge bottleneck. By far the most important area I need to improve on.

Unlearning bad habits is hard, any advice?

[Simucal]

When I was in high school I took a year long typing class. It was difficult for me because being a computer nerd my whole life I had picked up a strange-but-fast form of two finger typing.

My typing teacher used these little cardboard cutouts that stood above the keyboard so you couldn't see the keys. These kept you honest. After that we just used some ancient DOS typing software that started you out typing strings of random letters composed of the homerow. As time went on it started introducing keys from the other two rows as well as numbers.

It was frustrating at first because of how slow I became at something I was normally fast at. However, in the long run my speed more than doubled once I learned how to touch type properly.

[skilldrick]

Completely OT, but when I saw your comment, I new I recognised your handle, but couldn't think why. I finally worked it out though - you answered my first ever Stack Overflow question in 2009! http://stackoverflow.com/questions/418465/is-a-preference-fo...

[bodski]

Switch layout to Dvorak maybe? It will give you a fresh start and allow you to type fast with less finger travel and less pain, not necessarily any faster though.

Also will infuriate your co-workers and family members when they come to borrow your machine!

[jerf]

If you want to forcibly learn to touch-type, learning Dvorak is a very potent solution. The reason why you don't touch-type on QWERTY is generally that, frankly, there isn't a very compelling reason to. QWERTY doesn't reward you for it. You keep your fingers on the home row, and you get, what, the J? The K? F? The semi-colon? WTF? Why would you touch type? I'm not actually sure failing to touch type with QWERTY is actually a problem. It may actually be the most rational reaction.

Or you can switch to a sensible keyboard layout, of which Dvorak is the easiest to get support for (though not the only, and, abstractly, not necessarily the best, but mostly good enough). Now you get AOEU under your left hand and HTNS under your right, and guess what, you don't have to try to keep your fingers on the home row, because they're just there anyhow. It's difficult to imagine what a "non-touch-typing Dvorak user" would even be, at least once you've really internalized it.

Given how painful learning to QWERTY touch type can be, it's probably easier just to switch to Dvorak, learn the layout, then just naturally learn touch typing in the next couple of months without "trying". The total effort might be lower, even if the switch isn't free.

(This is all assuming we just take as a given that touch typing is desirable. I'm not sure about that, but I also think we lack the data to be sure either way, especially when it comes to long term effects.)

[jarek-foksa]

Colemak is another good alternative to Qwerty layout. It's still not as popular as Dvorak (Colemak support was not present in OSX until Lion), but it seems to be beating both Qwerty and Dvorak layouts when it comes to speed and learning curve.

[skilldrick]

> any advice?

GNU Typist, and real discipline. Force yourself to do it their way.