Me. I am typing this without looking at the keyboard. Learnt at college on an old school electric typewriter as part of my computer science course in the mid 1980s.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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I type on this as my only keyboard.
@communist what ?
Here's an explanation:
I knew it was going to be a chording keyboard. I really want to play with one of those, but they tend to be a little too expensive for a thing I might lose interest in quickly lol.
I haven't even started chording on it tbh and it's the best keyboard I've ever used by far. If you give it a month you'll probably never want to use anything else ever again
learned it back in the day by trivia games on IRC
I think I hypothetically could, but I've got real thick fingers so I usually make a bunch of sloppy typos.
Redragon briefly made an upscaled keyboard, and I didn't pull the trigger when I had the chance because I like having a num pad, and now they've stopped making it. Haven't found anyone else that makes one, so I guess I'll never really know if I can touch type.
My keyboard has blank caps... Looking at it would be pointless except maybe to see what layer it's on
I can do it on my 0hone as qell
Well I xan_rm
I trued to say I can:5 cab't cqb_[ cab&,[ cab&t cqb_5 cab&t wgyttt cqn'√ cqn'π cqb'y cqn'y xqb&y I think my poiny is cleqt enoigh.
I'm lucky to be a millennial - we had typing classes in school. I can touch type.
Also a millennial. RuneScape had me breezing through my typing classes. I was typing 80 WPM by second grade.
Same! This was before the Grand Exchange, too, so you had to type the same thing over and over just to be seen enough to buy or sell something in the Varrock square. I remember using @ran@ quite frequently lol
Yup, spamming “flash1:wave2:Selling lobs 200ea” in Varrock’s bank is still engrained in my muscle memory, over 20 years later.
Also a millennial. Are younger people not learning to type in school?
Generations that came after us are assumed to be "digital natives" and aren't taught typing, file systems, how to assess if sources are trustworthy... They're just assumed to (somehow) know all of this naturally.
I knew that young people don't seem to know how to use computers but it didn't occur to me that even touch typing would be done away with. They all have had Chromebooks forced into their classrooms, they can't put Mavis Beacon on there? Not being taught to type really explains why many seem to struggle with computers generally, though. Everything is so much more difficult when it's so slow.
Been touch typing Dvorak nearly thirty years.
Only twenty for me, but yeah, can only touch-type in Dvorak.
Another Dvorak user here, wouldn't be surprised if there are quite a few of us on Lemmy.
That means I can type without looking at the keyboard since my keyboard isn't labelled in Dvorak.
I've considered learning Dvorak and switching my keyboard over, but the two people I know that did that have recommended not doing it. Mostly it's because nobody else uses it, so switching back and forth can be a pain.
I've been using it for 20+ years so it's unlikely I'll ever change now. Can't say switching back and forth is too much of a pain, it's supported by virtually all desktop environments and switching back and forth is usually just a keyboard shortcut once set up (in GNOME, which I use, it's super+space, though you can potentially annoy other people by leaving it in Dvorak).
I'd say some valid reasons not to switch are: common shortcuts are sometimes not so convenient (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V both require two hands), can be worked around with customised hotkeys; relearning takes time, if you're already fluent in QWERTY it might not be worth the cost and personally I think speed benefits are overrated; also one-thumb typing on touchscreens tends to not be that efficient on Dvorak (I use Thumb-Key on my phone, though my phone is very much secondary for me). That said, I don't regret switching, and if you didn't learn to touch-type properly on QWERTY you may as well start fresh on Dvorak.
I think the switching is mostly when using someone else's computer. Moreso in an office setting when helping each other out. It's not super frequent, but it does happen. My bottleneck also isn't typing speed, so it's not really worth it to spend the effort to switch.
@anothermember @_deleted_ looked up dvorak keyboard. It's easier to learn and use than the qwerty keyboard we're used to.
I wouldn't necessarily say easier, but more ergonomic.
I tried Colemak, but it was too confusing switching back and forth for work. I could probably manage it now, but QWERTY really is fine for my purposes. What I would like to learn--but only if I could use it everywhere--is VIM.
For my phone, I use Thumbkey--9 letter buttons that each have 1 value if you push on it and 8 others if you want to slide, so that's 81 keys quickly available with minimal futzing about finger placement and no depending on a computer to guess what you mean.
If an editor has plugins then there is more than likely a vim extension for it. I know VS Code has one, and it has worked consistently for me. I think someone also made a Firefox extension for vim like navigation if you want to really go hard.
Thanks, but I think unless I can use it everywhere, it will be more annoying having these shortcuts burned into my brain that I can't use... But maybe I'll put it onto my list of "new ways to write text" after I learn Gregg shorthand.
Yep, fully touch type here. Still make plenty of mistakes but rarely actually have to look at the keyboard
My job is a lot of writing code so I have that ability whether I want to have it or not. I have also gotten half decent at swiping phone without looking. Usually one or two words are wrong though
Not me. I know where the buttons are, I just have really bad aim.
No problem! We were taught this in primary school
Despite making them my main hobby the lat couple of years, not me, at least not with any level of speed or confidence. I don't hunt and peck, but it's definitely a weird dance of muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, and I top out at about 60-70 wpm when composing from my mind. It's quite a bit less if I'm transcribing something, but that's not the use case it once was.
I can touch type pretty well. Dyslexia not withstanding. I learned during the MSN messenger years.
I can also blind swipe text on my phone with not totally atrocious accuracy. Still need to proof read them before sending though.
I can touch type with relative accuracy and speed, until I sit down in front of one of these ultra-cheap keyboards where the key spacing and travel is all wrong, then I can adjust to it over the course of 30 minutes or so.
I touch type, have had and regularly used two different keyboards with blank keycaps without issue
I can, I have been touch typing in Colemak for almost a decade. I could type without looking at the keyboard on qwerty before, but it wasn't touch typing.
Another touch typer here. I cut my teeth on online MUDs in the 90s - literally a type-fast-or-your-character-dies situation.
I learned how to type recently because my wife can do it really fast. So I practiced late nights for months just so I could beat her.