August 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Don't Be Such a Pecker!
An interesting debate sprung up the other day. I was called over to a developer's desk to help with an issue and as he sat there typing different solutions, I found myself getting more and more antsy. The problem was he can't type. He pecks at the keys like a princess trying to pick diamonds out of a pile of manure. It just drives me crazy to see people who can't type.
So the debate arose, should everyone in IT take it upon themselves to learn to type? I mean, it IS the way you make your living. Working on a computer for a living and not learning to type is like becoming a surgeon and refusing to learn to sew people up, or becoming a math teacher and refusing to learn your times tables, or becoming a plumber and refusing to learn how to use a wrench, or... ok, you get the idea.
And as a programmer, pretty much the only tool you have for doing your job is the keyboard. So not learning to use it at all is like being a race car driver and refusing to touch the wheel. Or a ditch digger who can't work a shovel. OK, OK, I'll stop.
Seriously though, I type very well. I can clock myself somewhere in the 90s. And while I don't expect everyone to type as well as I do, I would fully expect someone who works at the keyboard every day to at least have a basic knowledge of where the keys are. This particular guy that started this whole thing types stored procedures several hundred lines long. He does it all the time. And he's constantly having to look at his keyboard and then at the screen... keyboard-screen-keyboard-screen-keyboard-screen, etc. It's maddening. Personally, it gives me a headache to do that.
So whatever you do in IT... don't be a pecker... be a typer.
Posted by Sean McCown on August 31, 2007 08:40 AM
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Years ago at one of my first jobs I was teamed with a more experienced programmer who was God of typing. One day he asked to help with a problem he couldn't solve for sometime and when I looked at his fast moving up the screen code I pointed to his mistake - "Stop! Stop typing!" - found out he could backspace extremely fast too.
So whatever you do in IT... don't be just a typer... be a thinker.
Posted by: not a typer at August 31, 2007 12:54 PMBack in the 50s, my mother "encouraged" me to take a typing class for summer school one year, something guys never did. Most useful thing my Mother eve made me do! I get by on 45 words a minute, though I would be lost without the delete key. (Long before the IBM Selectric was created.)
Decades later, my daughter took a "keyboarding" class in junior high. She mentioned that some of the students were complaining about all the practice. Her comment was "It's a typing class for Pete's sake, what did you expect?"
I also know how to use a slide rule. You never know what skills will turn out to be useful.
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