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| Does anyone suffer occasionally from "Keyboard Drift"? Where your hands fall on the keyboard one key to the right or left of their "normal" position and then you end up typing gobbledygook? I occasionally use a ZX Spectrum +2 (TS20whose keyboard has extra keys to the far left and less keys to the far right of the QWERTY keyboard area. As it doesn't have those bits on the F and J keys either, I always suffer from Keyboard Drift on my spectrum. God is REAL unless declared int
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This only happens to me when I am copying code right out of a book, heads down, and calling it my own, mostly. Also, sometimes when I don't have enough half-empty, totally in the way, coffee cups littering the "work" (uh-huh) surface to keep me in the proper position. I think someone should develope a macro to fix this "off to the left" or "off to the right" kind of emergency! 
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ErrolErrol wrote: I think someone should develope a macro to fix this "off to the left" or "off to the right" kind of emergency!
Told a colleague recently, that I need something like that. A programm that monitors, what you are writting, and as soon as the input doesn't make any sense at all, the programm tries to "shift" your input to the right and left until it gets meaningful words again and sticks with that (at least until your hands drift again). And maybe somebody could develope a "decipher-drunk-input-mode" for certain members of the lounge (to be activated automatically Friday nights)."I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (DNA)
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Now, see, this is exactly the kind of “program” that I was talking about in that last Survey question about SW Architecture! This is one of those new, exciting, IMPORTANT and non-trivial processes, the implementation of which would have a dramatic and long-lasting impact on worker performance. Elements of AI abound, platform neutrality is inherent, it would be essentially self-documenting, it would be easily employed in a distributed environment, and we could make everyone believe that they can't live without it for another minute! Sounds like the answer to the current $5000 Survey question. Uhhh, maybe....
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hwy ison'r nwws ThR...
(TRY SHIFT LEFT HAND-1, RIGHT HAND 0)I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else...
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Personaly I find another variation on keyboard drift creeps in when typing fast.
Letters in wodrs mysteirously sawp round!
And I find myself putting spaces int he wrongp lace/
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I've got it even worse: my fingers have occasional dyslexia! For example, if I want the word "fund", it might occasionally come out as "junk" (f/j and d/k are the same finger on the opposite hand). Sometimes the results are hilarious.
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To me the bigger problem is that very often I put the spaces in the wrong place.
For example of I want to put "es que no es así" usually ends typed like "esq ue no esa sí"
And surprisingly it only happens when writing in Spanish, haha 
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Yrsh, I fo yhsy on ovvsdion yoo. Iy'd snnoyinh.
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Forward, left, back, right...I left out crouch and strafe and reload and use, but you get my meaning! Does that count as touch typing? My hands used to fall upon FDSA and JKL;, like a good little touch-typer, but now-a-days I seem to reach for WASD more frequently than anything else....must be a sign of an improving economy!
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| WASD - the holy four! God is REAL unless declared int
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Are you gaming at work? Beware of boss.
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I am deeply injured by your insinuation! As proof that this is not, harumpfh, gaming related, you will notice that I did not disclose our "propritary" keys for the process that we refer to as "crouch", or for the really secret one that we have named "strafe". Those are very special, intense processes and the secret key-strokes are not to be released to the general public.
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I still can't understand why everybody uses WASD... E S D F is way better. It has the same layout, but you have more keys to your left that can be accessed easily with the ringfinger. That gives you about 3-4 more keys for guns etc. 
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Witch! Heretic! What blaspheme is this?! Have you no respect for TRADITION my boy?!
Other than that short rant (designed to cover me within the "purist" community), I have to agree with you 100% and when noone is looking, when I'm sure that I won't be caught using unsanctioned keys, I will start practicing using the "A" to switch weapons instead of "Q". It may take me some time to get used to it though...and a lot of cussing as I'm being fed hot steel while I fumble for a new gun. Thanks for the eye opener! On the other hand, I think that this hole in my knowledge just about proves that I am working more than playing....see, Boss?
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My high school had not quite kept up with the times, the typewriters were all manual. I learned real quick how weak my pink fingers are. 'Q' and 'Z' were real pains. I still mess up with which finger should hold down the shift key and I still have to look for the number keys, but everything else is by touch. - oh and I had that typing class back in 83(ish). I am glad I had the class.
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Yes, high school (77). It served me well in college. I typed papers for 6-packs+ for my peers.
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Me too. I took a typing class in high school when I took my first programming class (1983).
Manual typewriters  didn't quite apply when using a VT100 or VT52.
At least I got to meet freshman girls.
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I started playing piano in 1st grade. The finger exercises served me well when I took typing classes in Jr. High. I can cruise all day at about 85/90 WPM. I figure if I'm sitting in front of a computer at least 8 hours a day for more years than I care to think about and I can't type, there's something wrong.
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H.S. for me too. It was 1988, but we still had crappy manual typewriters, so I have literally felt your pain. I took the class because I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up and wanted to make sure I had at least one "professional" skill to fall back on. The next year I took a comp sci class (apple IIe/BASIC whooopeee!) and was able to turn out more code than most others in my class, so the typing lessons worked out 
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For me not, 
I improved my speed by simply programming, and some years.
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...not because you can bang out the code faster, but because banging out the code is less of a distraction. I've too often seen programmers carefully consider a technique, or look up an API, and then start writing out the code... only to pause a minute later because they'd forgotten something while pecking out the syntax.
Regardless of whether you're using two fingers or ten, if the keyboard is your primary method of communication you shouldn't have to think about it (much less look at it) any more than you should need to think about pronunciation while speaking in your native language.
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I like this response. Eliminating distractions is a vital skill for programming, you can't afford to waste brain-cycles looking for keys. That being said, I don't know if it would qualify as touch typing - I've never seen the textbook way to press Ctrl-Space for example.
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Hei that's true, every time I've seen combinations of keys, they never teach you the best way to push them.
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