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@samplereality okay, now get this, let's change the alphabet song we teach kids in primary school to qwerty. (?!?)

Seriously. Isn't the problem people have when learning to type is that the letter order on a keyboard is not that memorable? "C, V, B, N, M"? Why don't we just change it so we never teach people a different order? The problem is that we have two different alphabet orders. One for dictionaries and such, one for typing.

Does "C comes after B" really mean anything?

@Urban_Hermit @samplereality You're supposed to memorize based on the finger assignment. So it's E, D, C, then R, F, V, T, G, B, then Y, H, N, U, J, M and so on.

That's how I was taught to type, that's how I taught it when I was a teacher. The old finger assignment diagrams show the same.

The idea is to not memorize the letters as such but build a physical response. I used to have to stick my hand in my pockets during exercises because my fingers would move when I called out the letters.

@eyrea @samplereality it is interesting that the numeric keypad, which I can do mostly subconsciously without any training or looking, is not remotely diagonal like the keyboard, and is essentially in the order we all learned digits.

I am old enough that I had a one semester typing class in highschool, but I have autism and fine finger movement without looking has always been difficult for me. I am a slow typist, but I will try to remember YHN, UJM, ect. THX.

@Urban_Hermit @eyrea @samplereality Numeric keypad is upside down vs phone. That caught me many times on computer & phone at the same time.

@stevewfolds @Urban_Hermit @eyrea @samplereality If I recall correctly, the querty layout was designed specifically to slow down typing so manual typewriters could keep up. The Dvorak layout is more efficient/easier, but the manual keys with the type face would hit each other if the typist was good.

@flyblue @Urban_Hermit @eyrea @samplereality Learned touch typing in ‘61. Yes, locking keys & ink on fingers. Reams of paper through an Olivetti Lettera 22 ‘67-‘71. 1st laptop :)

@stevewfolds @flyblue @eyrea @samplereality when I was in highschool in 1988 my mom bought a used manual typewriter for me to use when classes started requiring typewritten papers and I needed to practice for typing class. A year later she relented and got an electric typewriter with a page and a quarter of memory on a 14 character LCD screen so I could edit out mistakes and typos. In 1990, my last year of highschool, I won my first computer in a contest and could finally write a complete paper.

@stevewfolds @flyblue @eyrea @samplereality I didn't learn how to do the literal cut, paste, and photocopy until fall 1990, when I was still using the electric typewriter, and trying to finish an original research paper in time to submit it to the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. I was adding hand drawn graphs into the text with captions and spacing already laid out. Even with the photocopy, it must have looked so primitive to the judges. No scholarships for me, but I did win a trip to the...

@stevewfolds @flyblue @eyrea @samplereality
...National Science & Humanities Symposium based on a presentation of the same paper. I also got enough confidence to write an engineering paper + demo project that won first place in applied engineering at the Oregon Institute of Technology's Technology Challenge '90. That is where I won my 8088, 5 1/4 drive, no hard drive, first computer.

Unfortunately I never got a scholarship, & despite considerable financial aid dropped out of University, twice.