I have tried several times to relearn typing, but each time I've fallen back to my old ways. Has anyone actually been successful in learning how to type correctly from scratch? If so, how did you do it?
I've known people say that they found it "easier" combining learning touch typing with learning a new keyboard layout. It's harder moment by moment, but there's no bad muscle memory to fall back on.
I had that experience. I learned Dvorak and my touch-typing form got a lot better (as you would expect..) I then went back to Qwerty (it took a little while to switch back..) and retained the better form.
Are you doing that because you think it will improve your speed? A lot of fast typists don't really rigidly stick to the "correct" fingering, as doing so may actually slow you down. I speak from experience as a fast typer; memorising where the keys are and using the closest finger can get you very far, and from there it's just practice to improve speed and accuracy.
I used to type with my right hand too far to the right so it could cover the arrow keys and mouse. My home position would have my index finger somewhere around the L. I had okay speed but terrible accuracy because I had to cover so much territory with too few fingers.
Learning to navigate with hjkl in vi was the turning point for me. I quit treating the bumps on F and J as "some weird thing that touch typists use" and made a conscious effort to always start with my index fingers resting on them, even not actively typing. Accurate vi movement becomes instinctual instead of having to hunt for the keys, and because I could navigate without leaving the home row, it turned into a virtuous cycle.
vi-style browser navigation add-ons further reduce the need to leave the home row. Vimperator and Pentadactyl were complete browser makeovers for vim enthusiasts, but they went away with the move to WebExtensions. I now use vimium which behaves mostly like a normal browser but retains the critical navigation keybindings. Even when simply reading a web page, I'm sitting right on the home row, with the two most-used keys (j to scroll down, and f to click a link) sitting right under my index fingers.
Switching to a laptop with a centered tenkeyless keyboard also helped a lot. There's no longer a temptation to have my hand float right. The trackpoint helps too - it's slower and less precise than the trackpad, but I make up the time by not needing to move down and back (the trackpad is still better when doing more than a single point and click though). When using a desktop with a traditional mouse, I center the QWERTY section of the keyboard and put the mouse on the left. I learned to mouse ambidextrously within a week or two and my hands no longer have to rest at weird angles.
Remapping Caps to Ctrl is another important home-row improvement. Ctrl is used frequently, usually chorded, and the ones on the bottom require contorting your hands to make it work. Bonus: I can use Ctrl-[ with my fingers still on f and j instead of reaching up to hit Esc, which is needed frequently in vi.
After making the conscious effort to position my hands correctly, everything else fell into place. My accuracy went up, which meant I had fewer times I'd have to look down and reposition, which meant I could achieve much better typing flow. I went from 30-40 WPM with poor accuracy to 60-80 WPM with pretty good accuracy over a couple years, without putting any additional effort toward training.
I found it broke up touch typing into just the right size chunks to engage me.
At the start of Covid, I spent a week doing half an hour a day. My typing speed and accuracy improved out of sight. The whole process of acquiring muscle memory is quite magical. I highly recommend it.
This is the companion site to http://www.speedcoder.net/, which is for coding, and presumes you start with reasonable touch typing skills on normal text.
Can confirm this. I recently used keybr to unlearn QWERTY and learn Colemak from scratch, since I wasn't overly relentless it took me about 3 or 4 weeks, although I used the layout everyday even when I wasn't fast yet and that helped a ton.
Split keyboard, a key map printed out and placed under the monitor (so you Don't Look Down), and moving to colemak (without changing keycaps, that is the important bit - if you want to stick with Qwerty, just use blank caps). Plus a lot of practice with programs like GNU Typist, keybr, typeracer, ratatype, speedcoder, keyzen-colemak, typelit.io ...
This said, some things will remain hard probably forever, if you have a short pinkie like me.
Thanks. I do use a split keyboard now and it helps a bit, but I'm still pretty limited with one hand and on both hands tends to stretch my fingers to uncomfortable positions rather than use all my fingers.
I used the same technique of having the keyboard layout away from the keys and moving to a different key layout. I'm currently using monkey type to train myself.