[kde-edu]: Touch typing while programming...

[Andreas Nicolai]

Hi again Gopala,

 from my experience, programming requires a lot more finger and hand movement than normal text typing. For instance, to program efficiently, you must use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and combinations of keys that are typically unique to the editor/IDE you use. For most mainstream editors, like Kate, you need to press the control/shift or control+shift keys while moving around with the cursor keys. For that you need to quickly move your hands from the default resting position to the cursor keys and modifier keys and back. This is something that you cannot practice in KTouch, since we do not support cursor movement by the user.

A video of someone hacking will probably not help much - if you'd see me hacking, you'll just see my hands and fingers all over the place and that would really help much :-) Efficient touch typing for programming purposes really only requires 3 skills:

1. be able to type text quickly in the default touch-typing style when the hands rest on their standard resting positions (try to get 180-200 chars/minute for a normal text, that isn't too hard with a little bit of practice)

2. be able to move your right hand from the resting position to the cursor keys or to the keypad and back quickly without looking at the keyboard (you can practice that yourself in any text editor). Also practice moving your left hand away (press left control with your left little finger and left shift at the same time with your left ring finger) and get back to the resting position quickly without looking. Practice just the position change a few hundred times for each hand and you should be on the right track.

3. master the keyboard shortcuts of your preferred editor which is usually something like ctrl+shift+<some character> or ctrl+<character> followed by another character.

And, above all, don't expect to be perfect in a week - touch typing takes time to practice!

Bye and good luck!
Andreas

-- 
Andreas Nicolai                         anicolai at syr.edu
PhD Candidate, M.A.M.E                  (315) 443-2218
Syracuse University
151 Link Hall
Syracuse, NY, 13244