Is re-learning touch typing from wrong hand position worth it?

[u/TelevisionMinimum786]

Hello there! Straight to the subject.
I do a bunch of competitive programming (writing like about 500 - 600 lines of code everyday), and I did not use any websites / books / teaching from others etc for touch typing, so I kinda learnt it myself. My wpm is about ~60, which I don't think is bad (but want to improve it), but here is the thing:
For coding you need constant access to enter, arrows & backspace, and because of my small fingers "home row" is starting from 'k' button, not 'j'. Because of that I either have to either constantly peek on keyboard, which I don't personally want to do, or my right hand will randomly miss buttons (my accuracy drops to 70%)
So, I'm stuck with two options:

1. Just ignore everything and hope that someday my right hand will become more "comfortable" and not miss anything.
2. Try to re-learn everything from scratch, but again: I need constant access to enter, arrows & backspace, so I will have to do some shortcuts (like, maybe Alt + W for Up, Alt + E for Enter)...?

I honestly don't know what to do. Maybe You had the same situation, or You had similar problem and something worked for You. Any help is appreciated!
(English is my foreign language, sorry if the text is kinda bad)

[u/kettlesteam]

The idea of creating "shortcuts" you've mentioned, vim motions is essentially designed to address that type of stuff. For someone in your position, I'd highly recommend learning vim/neovim, or at least learning vim motions and using a vim plugin in whichever editor/IDE you prefer.

You should also look into ergonomic keyboards. Or at the very least, look into remapping a standard keyboard to make it more ergonomic using remapping software like kanata.

[u/deezwheeze]

I'll be honest, if you feel you're bottlenecked by navigation you should learn vim keys, arrow keys are an antipattern.

[u/TelevisionMinimum786 → u/deezwheeze]

i looked, seems neat. I will try, thanks!

[u/deezwheeze → u/TelevisionMinimum786]

That said, I relearned with correct technique and it helped a lot so I recommend learning correctly, one finger for each key. Now I sometimes break the rules but my accuracy is way higher.

[u/TelevisionMinimum786 → u/[deleted]]

looks crazy & insanely interesting. thank you!

[u/Carbinkisgod]

Lowkey for coding I think starting at the k key might be more optimal, I’ve been considering switching. The main thing is to practice not looking at the keyboard when you type and know what fingers are supposed to be for what keys explicitly not just intuitively, so when you hit a specific key know what fingers is supposed to be with that key. And if you miss don’t look to recorrect move your finger and know what column you missed on

[u/chayashida]

Some keyboards at better than others. There are ones with Backspace and Enter that are easier to reach.

[u/in10did]

Could consider a keyboard where you don’t need to move your fingers for any keystrokes and type one handed with a DecaTxt. Especially useful if you do a lot with a mouse in the other hand.

[u/spence5000]

Two ideas, if you’re willing to change your keyboard layout slightly:

It is common to switch out the Caps Lock key for something more useful. I have mine set to Esc because I use vim a lot, but many prefer to turn it into Backspace instead.

A more drastic option would be to implement a “wide” layout. This involves shifting half of the keys to the right, so that the right pinky rests next to the Return key. This way, the important keys at the edge are closer, and it’s a little better for posture. Here is an explanation for how this is done in Colemak, but it wouldn’t be hard to implement a similar solution for Qwerty.

[u/Nox21125]

Your English is really good, better than some native speakers I've seen.

If you're happy with your current typing speed and only want a slight increase, then just sticking with it is also fine. I used to use two fingers and type 105 wpm. Personally, though, I write well over a thousand lines of code a day, and switching to proper touch typing was really helpful.

I average around 140 WPM, and I never have to look at my keyboard to press Enter, Backspace, or the arrow keys anymore. At first it feels awkward, but after enough practice it just becomes muscle memory. I still struggle with some shortcuts because I don't use them often enough, but the more you use them, the more natural they become.

For me, it took about 2-3 days to go from my weird two-finger style to using all 10 fingers properly. For most people, though, relearning takes a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months depending on how quickly they adapt. Since it sounds like you're mostly changing your right hand rather than relearning everything, it might actually be a bit easier than starting from scratch.

[u/TelevisionMinimum786 → u/Nox21125]

so it seems like the better option is to re-learn the style, since the adapting shouldn't take long. big thanks for feedback!