I stumbled on this article the other day. It's about learning to touch type, and the author compares the process to musical practice. While the "Fast, Slow, Medium" routine he describes is debatable¹, the basic idea makes a lot of sense. After all, both activities involve building up mechanical skills and developing muscle memory, so it makes sense to find some overlap between the two methodologies.

I've been trying to finally get decent at typing myself for the last few weeks, and I'm noticing more similarities with working on instrumental technique, as well as a tendency to fall into the same kind of traps.

I don't really expect any of this to be useful to anyone, and just felt like pointing out those observations. I don't know why, but I've alway enjoyed finding parallels between seemingly completely unrelated things. So here goes.

Where I'm coming from

I somehow got comfortable using a keyboard casually as a teenager without ever giving it a thought. I did use more than two fingers, but beyond that I had no idea what I was doing. Somehow that felt good enough for a while.

Only when I got into programming did it start to bother me. In part because I was too slow to feel like a proper hacker, but mostly because I was making three typos per line.

Typos aren't too bad when you're just writing casual stuff or chatting with friends, but code is not as forgiving. Fixing stupid goofs one after the other gets infuriating pretty fast, especially when you're trying to understand what in the hell your program is even doing. I knew I should do something about it, but somehow I just kept going and endured the frustration.

At some point I quit my job and didn't get to use a keyboard for anything serious for a while. I would get the coding itch back now and then, and couldn't stand the constant mess ups. I felt downright impotent.

I started doing drills on Typing Club about a year ago, but didn't keep at it for long. Starting this blog got me to type quite a bit, though, both code and prose, so it seemed like a good opportunity to finally get serious about it.

It's slowly getting better. I'm about as fast as a stoned turtle, but I'm making less mistakes and can mostly keep my eyes on the screen. Numbers are still giving me cold sweats, though.

Building technique

When chatting about music, I often run into that guy whose main contribution is to lecture people about how technique doesn't matter, because it's all about, like, the feel, man.

This is like saying you don't have to learn how to drive your car as long as you know where you're going. I can agree with the idea that it's better to focus on your destination than to fuss over technicalities, but I'm not sure how far you'll get if you don't know how to start your engine.

Technique is nothing more than knowing how to use your tools. Good technique is not about being a virtuoso, it's about internalizing the mechanics deeply enough that you don't have to think about them anymore. You know the saying that your instrument should become an extension of your body, so that the music is free to flow directly from your mind to the ears of the listener ? This is what good technique is.

If you're writing stuff on a computer, then the keyboard is your instrument, and the same logic applies.

Old habits die hard

Around 2012 I got into Bluegrass and quickly realized just how terrible my right hand was. I had been playing for more than 10 years already and had never paid that much attention to it. I knew it wasn't great, but just like my keyboard skills, I figured it was good enough for what I was doing.

It wasn't, and trying to pick out fiddle tunes on the accoustic guitar made that abundantly clear.

I set out to pretty much re-learn my technique from the ground up. It took me about 8 years to finally get it back in a state I was reasonably pleased with.

A lot of that time was spent figuring out how to even start fixing it, and I didn't have the time to truly work on it for a couple of those years². Still, it took a while. Hopefully touch typing won't take that long.

Along the way I ended up in that weird place where the old muscle memory still kicked in and interfered with the new habits I was trying to settle, which only made things worse. This is pretty much what typing feels like now. It all straightened out in the end though, and luckily I'm not typing on a stage and don't really have deadlines to worry about, so now is the best possible time to deal with the transition.

Start at the begining

When starting out, you may want to learn Mary had a little lamb before tackling Flight of the bumblebee.

Start from the basics, and then build on those fundations. Typing drills are just like scale practice. There'll come a time when your fingers will have figured out what they're supposed to do, and by that point you'll be able to just let them run on their own as you switch your attention to what you want to say in the first place.³

At my first dev job I got into vim, and while I soon reached the point where I wasn't feeling crippled anymore, I never noticed the huge boost in efficiency the evangelists were raving about.

That was simply because I was constantly hitting the wrong keys, which would often mess things up in hilariously random ways (which prompted me to memorize the undo binding quickly). Learning the commands wasn't hard, but my fat fingers were too inept to apply that knowledge properly, so most of the benefits went to waste.

This is the point where I really should have bitten the bullet and start getting comfortable with the home row.⁴ Learning vim without fixing my typing first was like trying to run before I could walk.⁵ In retrospect, It's frankly embarassing that I didn't get on it then.

Working sucks

Drills are work, and not the rewarding kind. They are a meaningless chore.

I'm lazy, and I don't like doing chores. Like many, I'm terrible at just pushing through and tend to skip to the fun parts.

I also resent being told what to do. I don't ignore all advice, but I usually decide to try things my way anyway and see if I get burned. This wastes time in the long run, but the few lessons I end up learning tend to stick better.

The key for me is to understand why I should bother in the first place. Become aware of the actual problems I need to solve. "Yeah, I guess I'd get better if I did this" or "That's what the greats do" is not enough. I have to feel the pain before I try to soothe it.

Once I decide to get started, the next hurdle is to commit to it. I'll struggle to get a routine started, but once it's going, it helps a lot. I also need to find ways to make it enjoyable. I'm not a huge fan of gamification, but it seems like a good fit here.

The whole process is frustrating, especially when progress is slow. I might get fed up and bounce off at some point, but I know there's no way around it. The way to git gud is to struggle.

Slow the hell down

This one should be obvious, even more so in my case. The reason I decided to start working on this in the first place was the astronomic amount of typos I was making, so aiming for accuracy rather than speed is my real goal to begin with.

And still, I found myself hammering away at my regular speed (if not faster) and wondering why things weren't improving. That blunder was easy to spot, but as I forced myself to take it slower, I noticed something I already experienced on the guitar: I was making even more mistakes.

My guess is that this is due to the existing muscle memory getting confused. When going at a speed I'm used to, the fingers happily jump in the general direction they're supposed to, but slowing down reveals how imprecise they really are.

My solution is to double down. I stop before each and every character and describe to myself the movement I have to execute before typing it.

Reach for the right shift key while pressing the left hand's fourth finger down.
Click.
Move the right hand's third finger up one row.
Click.
Get the third finger back to its home position while moving the first one down, extending it to the left by one key.
Click.
Bring the first finger back, while moving the left hand's first up and to the right.
Click.

Congratulations. You just spent thirty seconds typing "Font".

Going that slow feels like torture. It brings back memories from dusting off the metronome after ignoring it for so long. And I remember that when I got on that, I was amazed at how quickly it stopped feeling painful. After a while it even became kind of pleasant.

I don't expect deliberately typing at 5 WPM will ever become fun, but I'm sure getting into the right mindset can make it at least tolerable.

Keep your eyes up there

I've often heard folks express amazement at how some blind people could get so good at their instruments. The reason why always felt obvious to me: being deprived of one sense forces you to develop the other ones even more to compensate.⁶ Hearing is the most obvious one, but I would argue touch is just as important, if not more.

Again, the where and how to play anything gets ingrained in your muscle memory. Once it's internalized, you don't need to look at what your fingers are doing anymore.

I made a point of deliberately not looking at my left hand when I play. I find it helps me switch my attention away from what I'm doing and towards what's going on around me. It pushes me to think with my ears instead of following scale patterns. And I start to physically feel what I'm playing, rather than watch it.

If you've been playing for a while, try it. Close your eyes, turn off the light or just stare at the wall in front of you, and play something. I'm willing to bet it won't be as hard as you think.

Blind musicians have to develop that physical relationship to their instrument because they simply can't rely on their eyes to help them figure things out.⁷

Typing is much less abstract, and the benefits of keeping your attention on the screen are much more obvious, so it makes sense that your very first goal should be to stop looking down at the keyboard. That's what the "touch" in touch typing stands for, after all.

Context is everything

One last annoying part of this process is how big of an impact context can have on your performance.

I might be doing well in some typing app, and then switch to editing some code and everything comes crashing down. As soon as I start having to actually think about what I'm writing, the fingers seem to get lost again.⁸

Again, this reminds me of how different everything feels when playing in a new setting (alone or with a group, on stage or in a casual jam...). Every situation comes with its own unique set of details to pay attention to, which can really play a number on your technique.

I also tend to be quite sensitive to slight changes in the gear I'm using. A pick or a string gauge I'm not quite used to can really trip me up. This makes me wonder how I'll handle having to type on a different keyboard.

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Allright, that's all I have.

I'll end this by quoting a comment from the article I opened with (note that it's from 2008):

Not trying to offend anyone here, but I've never encountered a person (programmer or otherwise) under 30 that can't touch type. Could this be an age thing?

I'm not even sure touch screens existed in 2008, let alone smartphones. The assumption that of course young people would pick up touch typing on the go wasn't that far fetched back then (although I'm proof that many didn't care enough), but it's a bit depressing how ridiculous it sounds 15 years later.