If I'm on a model M or the Steelseries keyboard built into my laptop, then I'm generally not even looking at the screen, much less my hands. The tactile feedback in both mean I generally know when I'm typing correctly and when I'm not. There's also just a certain spacing and feel that lets you always know exactly what letters you are hitting that some keyboards just lack.
That's ONE thing in this MSI laptop I'm on right now (that's been a pain in the ass in most every other way -- see the THREE RMA's and it bricking itself for a month right after the warranty ran out) that impressed me; generally I find laptop keyboards weak, mushy, and providing no feedback, but with this I can feel an actual mechanical 'break' where the keypress is registering before the key even bottoms out -- a proper feedback us old buckling spring users long for that garbage like cherry switches fail to provide -- literally on cherry's when you 'feel' that feedback it's often before the keypress has actually registerd? WHAT THE BLAZES GOOD IS THAT?!?
Don't even get me STARTED about the pathetic excuse for keyswitches that are rubber-dome.
But if I'm on a crappy keyboard half the time I end up having to triple check the screen since they drop keypresses left and right, often the lack of pronounced nibs on F and J means my hands end up 'drifting', and on the whole end up being borderline useless for actual typing.
Like with this laptop, I've probably looked at the screen twice out of habit, but I'm watching "Justice League Action" while caring for a friends kids so they can get a couple's night out. They are up WAY past bedtime but hey, Uncle Jason is cool about that crap. ...and not like with my non-24 sleep wake disorder I'm going to bed any time soon!
It's also part of how I write such "long" replies in the bat of an eyelash; laughably pathetic when today's TLDR generation halt-tweets consider something like this lengthy; oh but for the days when users complained about the 32k post size limits on a forum being too small.
Though as much as I like this laptop, it's still not IBM Model M, which I still use on my workstation and media center -- and horde a stockpile of parts for. The model M, when you have to type every damned letter in the ASCII set, accept no substitutes. That clean, clear "ker-click" when the spring lets go? Classic and a guarantee that YES, what you wanted to type has in fact been entered.
It's why when people ask my advice on buying hardware for development, I always say focus on the keyboard and display(s). Those are going to be the things more than anything else that you will RELY on and need 100% efficiency out of. Damned near everything else is negotiable.
I can type blindly, but I would spend more time on backspace.
Well ...
Btw, how do you guys practice blind typing ? Just form it naturally or practice intentionally ? (i.e. follow some technology or practice website?)
If someone who is a developer is NOT blind typing most of the time you need to invest in some keyboard training. Having seen the difference in productivity myself from both sides (developer and manager) it IS a required skill for this field and will boost your productivity greatly.
I prefer to type blindly. It's a good gauge for me to know when I need a break – and give my brain a rest – when I start making lots of mistakes typing blindly.
I would not say totally blind but most of the time I look on the screen. :) That way it's also more efficient because I see when intelliSense is giving me some completion and I can take advantage from that. I see so many of my colleges typing looking at their boards and typing stuff that intelliSense is already "screaming" at their screens. :D
Those never worked for me (but may for others). I simply used it forcefully; while learning Dvorak, I looked at the keyboard a lot, and I forced myself to press keys with the correct finger.
Gergely Polonkai
You have to believe in things that are not true. How else would they become?
I do, since I started using Dvorak.
Dvorak and Colemak are designed for touch typists. The keys are organised based on triplets (three consecutive letters) in real (English) words, so it's obviously faster. I was planning to find a Hungarian-specific layout, but I gave up as I realised about 80% of my typed text is English. I learned using it back around 2012, and use it ever since. However, unlike the QUERTY/QUERTZ layout, I learned Dvorak with the intention of also learning touch typing. For QUERTY I use only 6 fingers (sometimes 7), so I can switch between the two with a relative ease. (You can't simply erase 20 years of muscle memory.)
Right now I'm seriously thinking about ordering a blank key cap set for my keyboard. That would be real fun…