Since starting this blog, I've realised that my abysmal typing is holding me back. I've come to think that you need to type well to write well. I just have to hit the delete key way to much. I'm fast, but I'm not accurate.
I never really learned to type properly. As a programmer you never have to — too much auto-completion. And programmers have to type so many squigqly characters anyway it's hardly worth learning to type real text. I did try a few typing courses from books over the years. In fact, I first tried to learn typing on this thing. My grandfather gave it to me. I wrote my first C.V. on it!
The other reason that I really need to get my typing into shape is that when you start a company you have to do a lot more writing than coding. If you want to market your stuff, you've got to write about it.
I actually realised that the typing thing was a big gap in my skillset a couple of years ago. I was working for this great boss (Hi Ralph!) who really knew his stuff. One day I went into his office and he was completely killing the keyboard. Smoke was rising from his fingers. I was a bit blown anyway. “Wow,” I said. So then he says, “You mean, you can't touch-type?” Ouch. I knew I had to do something about it.
Of course, being the great procrastinator that I am, I'm still “doing something about it” several years later. Well, over the break I decided to really do something about it. Really Really. And since we live in the era of good old Web 2.0, I thought to myself, “Hey, there must be some cool JavaScript-ified online typing courses out there.” Oh Yeah. There sure are! Just try Google. Tons of 'em.
So what's my new learn-typing strategy? To work through all the free online typing courses. Something has to wear off. Right? I'm starting with Good Typing which has a clean, simple, but slightly dated interface. Adsense supported of course, but isn't everything these days.
So far I've got to lesson 5 and it's starting to get hard. No pain no gain I guess…
