Skip to content

Comment on Poll: Do you touch-type?parent

Comments

I still don't understand. Typing takes a definitive amount of time. Touch typing can cut that time significantly. I do agree with that. However, claiming that typing slowly makes you lose your flow appears a bit far fetched to me.

Here's my experience typing on a keyboard (familiar) vs. an iPad (unfamiliar): I can type almost as fast on an iPad, but because of the unfamiliar spacing I have to devote some cognitive energy to the task and occasionally my brain switches from what I'm thinking about (note-taking or programming) to moving my hands to the right place. It does occasionally break my concentration and make it somewhat harder to enter flow. I imagine that I'd have a similar experience if I didn't know how to touch-type.

The problem with iPad keyboards (and all other software keyboards) isn't just that they're unfamiliar compared to physical keyboards, but that they have no tactile feedback.

A touch-typist typing on a physical keyboard will know without having to look that he's pressed the right key and that the keypress registered. On a software keyboard one always has to look.

This makes touch-typing on a software keyboard virtually impossible.

that's because you're phrasing the claim badly. the claim is not typing slowly makes you lose flow, but that hunt-and-peck typing causes you to lose flow.. It's pretty simple imagination from that to hypothesize why that is the the case.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.