Have you ever stopped to think about how amazing typing is?

The act of typing is something people take for granted once they’ve learned to do it. Most people don’t have to think about where each key is when they type. The thought process isn’t “oh, there’s the T, and then the A is over there, oh wait, the B is a stretch down to the bottom.”

The very idea that our fingers can keep up with our mind without our telling the fingers specifically what to do is amazing. That I can write a blog post, a poem, a short story or a novel without ever once telling my fingers which key they need to hit next, brilliant.
For me, I only have to think a word for it to show up on the screen in front of me. Sure, sometimes I have to think slower, because I am not a fast typist yet, but it’s better than writing things out on paper, since my mind always wants to jump ahead to what’s next, and not focus on what I’m writing here and now.

It seems to me, though, that typing is being taken for granted. People just assume that everyone else knows how to do it. When our parents were in school, typing was a required course to graduate high school. My sister graduated knowing how to type with two fingers. Typing was never a required class for us, and if I hadn’t taken an exploratory elective class when I was in the seventh grade—typing was one of three subjects we learned that year—I wouldn’t have learned how to type until college, when a typing
class was required for a business degree.

In fact, I don’t think I really learned how to type until I was 19 or so, when I took the college class. It was the first time I had used a computer program to learn how to type—previous classes where typewriter and lesson books. It was hard to learn how to type without looking at my hands, a habit I had picked up when I started using the computer at 14, because I didn’t know where the keys were.

I know I frustrated my typing teacher, because at the same time I was in the typing class, I was taking a web programing class. Typing instructors teach you to let yourself make mistakes. Your WPM is much higher if you don’t go back and fix things, because accuracy doesn’t count on a computer like it did on a typewriter. You can always go back and fix things at the beginning of a document on a computer, where you couldn’t fix anything but the row you were on on a typewriter.

I can’t no fix my mistakes as I go along. I hate seeing misspelled words when I know how to spell them. But even more so, if I made a mistake while typing out code and I saw it, if I didn’t fix it write away I would never see the mistake again. I sacrificed my WPM count to ensure that I wouldn’t make stupid code mistakes based on my lack of skills at typing. I explained this to my teacher, but I’m not sure if she ever got it.

Even though I don’t do much coding now, the fix-it-as-you-go approach is the only one I have. The backspace key and I are fairly good friends, seeing as how I probably use it more than any other key on my keyboard.

I am so grateful that I know how to type. I can’t imagine going back to the days before I knew how to do it. While I still struggle with my number keys (I don’t think I ever finished those lessons), I hardly ever think about my typing at all. I just do it, and that’s the way it should be.

Just imagine how different your computer experience would be if you couldn’t type. That’s why typing is so amazing.

- “I Want to Save You,” Leaving Through the Window: Something Corporate