What is touch-typing?
Touch-typing is the method used to operate a keyboard correctly by placing the hands into the optimal and most efficient position, and without needing to look at the keys to identify them, operate the keyboard in the most energy efficient way. As the output is monitored directly during touch-typing there is little or no need to make corrections as an additional process, these being seen at the time of input.
Why all IT professionals should have the skill.
Touch-typing is a very basic skill that is required to use the main computer input device properly and efficiently, yet horrifyingly many IT professionals do not seem to have this fundamental skill!
This is crazy. It is like never learning to change gear in a car so one always travels around in 1st gear! Yes, you get there, but a great deal slower and with the engine working harder than it needs to.
Not being able to touch-type significantly reduces productivity (I would estimate by around 400-500% in my own case). But far more serious is that the bad posture adopted when looking down at the keyboard, coupled with the impact that occurs almost exclusively on the forefinger joints, can lead to RSI in the fingers and wrists plus an unnecessarily increased chance of neck and spine problems later on.
(One wonders what problems teenagers are storing up for themselves by over-use of mobile phones).
Yes, you can get quite fast pecking at the keyboard, but a touch-typing coder will match your fastest speed without even breaking into a sweat! They’ll also be able to code significantly faster, more accurately and more efficiently than you if they do decide to break into a trot.
The ability to use the input device on a computer would seem to be such a basic requirement in our trade, yet how many IT professionals have not learnt this fundamental and essential skill?
Given that it is so easy to acquire using simple off the shelf tuition software in about two weeks of half an hour to an hour a day (or evening), should a prospective employer specify touch-typing as a requirement?
How much difference did it make to you when you started to touch-type, or are you someone who thinks it is unnecessary?
