1 You can tell the age of a computer keyboard by whether the key says "Return" or 'Enter" on it.

But yes, a touch-typing class in high school was one of the most valuable classes I had there.  Although spending countless hours on BBS's and later on a text-based MUCK really refined my skills and speed.

(I still need to break the habit of backspacing multiple words out of existence to fix a typo rather than using the mouse).

2

Even in the earliest ASCII iteration, though, a carriage return was kept separate from a line feed, and with the various text editors using CR, LF, CR/LF, and LF/CR to represent different things almost at random, I guess questions about it were inevitable.

Just be glad you can provide that knowledge to the next generation. Otherwise we might get ubiquitous word processors that use VT to mark paragraphs.

3 I too, consider the touch-typing course I took in high school to be the single most useful class I ever took in public school.

...but I learned on an IBM Selectric ("the electric typewriter with the little type ball" for those born after 1990) rather than a full-manual.  But I had used full-manual typewriters before that, so I knew what "return" was doing.

4

Back in my school days, I had to take typing on electric typewriters.  Before that, I had a manual typewriter and later an electric typewriter, and had to replace typewriter ribbon.  The latter was drafted for several years to do my reports, even after I got a PC, because the serial port on the hand-me-down PC did not work (Thus no printers - and back in those days, we used serial ports and not USB for connecting the printer to the computer.).

Last month, after I posted about the Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun Returns CRPGs on the Fandom Post, I had someone ask what a CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game) was.  Sob...

C.T.

 

5 Typing was the only course I failed in high school.
It was also the only course I took that would have been of any significant use to me in life after high school (computer programmer, then writer).
Figures.
I still hunt and peck (at about 40wpm, though).

6 I failed it too. Although in my case it was because I got roughhoused at school and my finger was broken in the altercation.  Even though it was only a couple of weeks after the beginning of the school year, they wouldn't let me change to another course.  I still managed to get enough out of it to be a ten-fingered typist, but not a good one.

That was my last year at that school; my parents pulled me out and sent me to private school (at great expense) afterwards.

7 I took the typing class in seventh grade.  I'm fairly sure it was on electric typewriters; while the school was in a poor neighborhood, that the gifted and creative arts programs were contained therein made sure that it was well-funded.

I don't remember what grade I got in it, though I'm fairly sure it wasn't a good one.  To this day, I type in a unique, Wonderduck-centric style that typing teachers would loathe.  Still effective, though: 80wpm last time I was tested. 

8 We actually had an old typewriter. Didn't work very well, which was actually great, since that meant it was "a thing the kids can play with" rather than "an expensive thing kids don't get to play with".

Got replaced by an actual word processor. Remember those? Then that got replaced by a 286...

By the time I got to typing class in middle school, I was proficient enough to test out of it. Just as well, I would have been rather bored...

9

When I was in grade school, my mom liked to visit places like St. Vincent de Paul, which collected junk and sold it cheap. I guess they were in the same business as Goodwill back then.

She didn't mind if we bought junk and brought it home. My brother and I did a lot of that, buying old radios and tearing them apart to take out all the resistors and capacitors, for instance.

One time I bought a manual typewriter which wasn't working properly, and took it apart (somewhat!) and put it back together.

And it worked afterwards, but I had a couple of pieces left. I never noticed anything that didn't work, so I still wonder just what those pieces were for?

10

And it worked afterwards, but I had a couple of pieces left. I never noticed anything that didn't work, so I still wonder just what those pieces were for?

I can think of many, many situations where 'a couple of pieces left' after reassembling a machine would cause an immediate scramble for the exit.

Strangely enough, I do not remember using word processors.  I probably did in my typing class, since I remember sessions where I typed the lesson and only after I was finished did everything come spitting out in one long chatter of type.  Which reminded me of the tractor feed printer I had once upon the time for my Commodore 128.

C.T.

 

11 Oooh, there's a common experience.  I once found an old manual Underwood with a cracked upper frame, and I fixed it up and used that to type school reports.  I'm not sure what happened to that giant hunk of cast iron, but I think my folks ended up with it and eventually threw it out.  I also used to desolder all the components from failed electronics, including a tube-based color TV.  I think I still have a box full of that junk somewhere.

The one place where typing class has done me a disservice is that I end sentences with a double-space, and whoever the douche is who specified it in HTML decreed that all whitespace collapses together, thus you type two spaces, it displays as one, and whether it's stored as one or two is up to the gods.  DeviantArt tries to help, replacing double spaces with two   (non-breaking space) strings, which inflates the hell out of my file sizes and plays hob with the line breaking.

(ooh, and typing that escape string for nbsp and hitting preview shows it as unescaped text in the preview, but converts it in the edit box below the preview.)

12 I hate the double-space. Hideous.

13

Typing class in high school was on selectrics, but I started earlier than that with an old cast-iron fully manual monster (Mom's from her college days.)

I'll break with tradition and say it was not the most useful class I took...  Because I became an EE and had taken 3 years of vocational electronics in HS.

And I'm cursed to forever be a double-spacer.  The concept has hung around in strange places... on the iPhone, space-space converts to period-space, so you don't have to switch to the "numbers and punctuation" screen when texting.

14 I heard that the engineering term for when you take something apart, put it back together, there are parts left over and yet it still works is "adding lightness."

15 In software development, we call it "refactoring".

-j