News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in an hour?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by taneq on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:10AM (#21582014)
If you use a computer in any way in the course of your job or daily life, touch typing is the single biggest improvement in productivity and quality of life that you can make. It is SO much faster and easier than hunt and peck.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by caro_douglos on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:50AM (#21582202)
I had a conversation with a friend who is an attorney and they blew me away with their off the cuff typing speed. It ended up inspiring me to get better at something I did all day....for someone who’s not sure where to start I’d start with gtypist typespeed or speedpad. Don’t forget about mavis beacon!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by kalyantm on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:30AM (#21582109)
Agreed. Touch typing + learning vim changed the way I work and boosted productivity to another level
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by tarsinge on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @04:34AM (#21582409)
Second this.

Also more specific but if you are french the keyboard layout is not great for programming (because []{}';. are not straightforward). I’m more happy since I switched to QWERTY layout for programming. Since I touch type I can easily switch depending on the task.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by sgdpk on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @07:42AM (#21583375)
Just to add that this is not about QWERTY. The portuguese and spanish layouts are QWERTY, but still a pain [1]. Typically the best is to look for the US QWERTY layout or the international layout [2], the ones that have easily accessible brackets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KeyboardLayout-Portuguese...

[2] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106058/difference-...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a... by leonlag on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @05:27AM (#21582625)
This is also the case for the german(qwertz) layout because whoever designed it gave zero fucks about people that use it to program. I have been much faster since switching to qwerty. The only issue is umlaute(ä,ü,ö,ß) but I just use compose key(caps lock in my case) + a,u,o,ss to type those.
[ Parent | on HN ]