I’ve always been somewhat fast at typing, at least compared to your average hunt and peck person. But I’ve always had to look down.

So if I was typing something from memory, I could go something like 35 to 45wpm. But I could never test that high on typing tests, because I have to look at my hands, not the screen.

So in my downtime at work the last couple months, I’ve been practicing touch typing. This is as far as I’ve gotten, but it’s a nice foundation to build on.

  • beastlykingsOP
    4·
    11 days ago

    Thanks! I found a few reddit threads suggesting typing.com as the best for absolute beginners, and I have to say I think it worked pretty well for me. Especially in the motivation to keep moving forward without getting frustrated, by way of small goals and tracked success. Though I guess we’ll never know if something else would’ve worked better 🤷‍♂️

    Now that I’ve got some basic skills under my belt, I’m gonna start looking for alternatives. Typing.com is definitely just for beginners.

    Actually, after finding this community, and seeing the recommendations in the first post, I’ve been looking at keybr.com and monkeytype.com

    At first I really liked keybr, but when I made an account, the ads turned on and were super obnoxious. I know ad blockers exist, but eh. I’ll play with it some more and see if I want to go premium. I don’t mind paying for things that are worth it.

    Then I tried monkeytype, and it’s really slick too. And the ads are much more subdued, and only on the results page. Plus I could turn them off if I needed to.

    I’m gonna play around with both of them for awhile, and see which one sparks the most joy.

    • ghu@lemmy.ml
      2·
      10 days ago

      I was in your shoes too. I liked monkeytype but it became boring after a month, then I found https://www.typelit.io/

      If you like to read novels as I do, you will love it. You basically have to retype books as you read them.

      • beastlykingsOP
        1·
        10 days ago

        Interesting! I’ll check it out.

        So far I’m still going between keybr and monkeytype. I like the individual key analytics of keybr, but I like the style of monkeytype. 🤷‍♂️

    • Habahnow
      2·
      11 days ago

      Nice, yeah i never tried typing, i might check it out too. I like Monkey mainly for the UI as well as the stats that they keep track of. I used it mainly because i wanted to prepare for my switch to a split key board (splitkb’s kyria) and i wanted to see my tgyping speed vs that of when I’m using the keyboard. I went from about 60wpm to 10 with the new keyboard. Now I’m back to about 50 wpm. goodluck on your journey!

      • beastlykingsOP
        2·
        11 days ago

        Thanks!

        I was actually thinking about 3d printing a split keyboard, just for fun. But I was worried about messing up what I’m learning, so I decided against it.

        Have you retained your ability to type fast on a standard keyboard?

        • Habahnow
          2·
          11 days ago

          I haven’t actually tested it, but i for sure type worse in a standard keyboard now, but mainly because its so infrequent. I think if i had to work with a standard keyboard, i’d get back in the flow of things easier.

          • beastlykingsOP
            2·
            11 days ago

            Hmmm, I touch a lot of keyboards throughout my week, I need to retain my qwerty ability. So maybe I would, just through use of both types? As long as they’re all qwerty I guess 🤔

            • Habahnow
              2·
              10 days ago

              The issue I have is that, even though it’s qwerty, some buttons are different. I have a total of 48 keys so some buttons function as 2 buttons (enter and alt, as well as others) as well as a staggered layout. Mainly just slows me down slightly, but If I type either a regular keyboard for a bit, i start to get used to it again.