Touch type

Learn to touch type! That means: you should actively practice so you can type without looking at the keyboard.

If you’re writing programs, you’re going to be doing a lot of typing, and you want to be able to do that as efficiently as possible.

If you “hunt and peck” for each of your keys, everything will take longer. More to the point, all the time you spend looking at the keyboard is time you are not looking at the screen to see what you are actually doing.

On a QWERTY keyboard, the “home” keys are F and J — these are the middle of the keyboard. If you rest your hands so your index fingers are there, you can and should learn where the other keys are relative to that position. Ideally, use different fingers for the different keys.

On most keyboards, the home keys have little bobbles on them so you can feel when your hands are in the right position. When you’re typing correctly, your thumbs can operate the space bar (that’s why it is a bar along the bottom of the original typewriters).