Those few hours have paid off enormously for me. Not having to look at the keys while typing about doubles the speed. The letters painted on my keys have long since worn off anyway :-)

In my school, we had a full semester of touch-typing on mechanical keyboard in both the 7th and 8th grades. Everyone had to take it.

I had a couple of friends who, like me, were very interested in computers and programming. But instead of taking the opportunity to hone a skill that they knew they'd be using several hours a day for the next 60 years of their life, they screwed around, and left the class hunt-and-pecking as much as they ever had; and as far as I know they do that to this day. It never made any sense to me -- like, you have to be here anyway, why not just get something out of it instead of being bored?

(I meanwhile practiced with Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on my home computer until my speed drills were consistently between 90 and 100 WPM.)

It's good they offered the class, but two full semesters of it sounds like terribly inefficient teaching.

What's funny is I don't know what many of the commands are for my text editor. But my fingers know. Sometimes I'll just watch my fingers to see what the command is, but I have to be careful - when I think too much about "what is the command" my fingers forget it.

However, if your spending most of the day emailing people extreme accuracy is effectively pointless.

The latter seems a good strategy for coping with the former, does it not?

it's similar to people who spend years doing "hunt and peck" typing. if you practice enough, you can get up to a decent speed, but you would have been much better off taking a couple weeks to become a mediocre touch typist.

The search and copy suggests method they're not using their tools to their best extent.