Picking corn beans on the keyboard

I'm not sure if you ever heard the expression "picking corn beans on the keyboard", actually does it make sense in another language different from Brazilian Portuguese? Probably not.

I'm a millennial (am I cringe?!??), I was born in 1993 in the city of Ji-Paraná in the countryside of the state of Rond?nia. Back at the end of the 90s and the beginning of 2000 buying a computer was very expensive, and thanks to the effort of my parents we had our first computer very soon in our family. Through the years I was just a happy kid playing games like "Sonic The Hedgehog" and doing school's homework in Microsoft Office Word.

Until a day my dad came to me and said: "You need to stop picking corn beans on the keyboard! I will subscribe you to a dactylography course", he said that because in that time to type anything on the computer I used to use only indicators fingers of both hands to type and this action resembles the act of picking the good corn beans from the not-good ones.

If the word "dactylography" seems something old to you, I understand, it's because it is! I mean, if you're thinking about typing in one of that fancy mechanical keyboards full of colored LEDs, you thought wrong, I'm talking about that old dactylography machines, like the one below:

I learned how to type in the right way using one like this above, and at that time, as a teenager, it doesn't make much sense to me. I kept wondering "why should I learn to type using this old machine?", and also in some models of this kind of machine they had more space between the keys, so if you don't hit correctly the key you want to type you could accidentally put your fingers inside it and in the long run it could start to hurt the skin of your fingers. The thing is, this kind of machine helps a lot in how to type using all the fingers and makes you stop to keep "picking corn beans in the keyboard" as my dad used to say.

Even though when I was a teenager it didn't make so much sense to me, I didn't know back in that time, but years later I would become a software engineer and nowadays it makes a lot of sense! The ability to type using all the fingers following a pattern helps me to type faster without looking at the keyboard. I even was praised in one of the companies that I worked for because I typed "in a fancy way with all the fingers".

I understand that nowadays in 2021 you probably won't find any school that still uses that kind of machine to teach how to type (also you would not want to be closed in a room full of people during the pandemic right?), but keep calm! I would like to share with you 3 websites that I think could help to learn typing well nowadays, the links are below.

1. TypingAcademy - You can use it without creating an account saving the results of your tests in your browser cache but they also offer a 7 days pro account access that becomes free after the trial period. You can set which OS you're using, which language and keyboard layout, which kind of exercises, and a lot more options.
2. TypingMe - No necessary registration, free to use. You can choose between Pro and Amateur lessons. There's a total of 15 lessons in the Pro course.
3. Learn Typing - No necessary registration, free to use but you can't save your progress, you only keep going through the lessons. There are a lot and great instructions and a "typing coach" that explains the current lesson to you. Also, there are some typing games that make the learning process more fun.

Well, this was my first post here at LinkedIn. I hope that you enjoyed it and that I could help you to find ways to learn how to type using all your fingers following some useful patterns and rules. Do you know another great website or App that could help others to learn typing well that I didn't mention here? Let me know what you think about it all in the comments! See you in the next article!