02 Keyboard Layout and Typing

In programming exams you need to be able to fully focus on the content, on the logic of your program, iterate quickly, and not spend time thinking about typing.

Two things:

• set the keyboard layout
• touch type

Setting the keyboard layout

The exam takes place on Linux with either a Swiss or US Keyboard, so I recommend setting the keyboard layout of your personal laptop to the Swiss one early in the semester, and make sure it looks similar to this one. The Swiss MacOS one and the Swiss one of some Linux distros is different.

To get the Windows (exam) layout on MacOS, do the following:

1. Download SwissGermanWindows.keylayout
2. Download SwissGermanWindows.icns
3. Move both files to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/
   1. Open Finder
   2. Click cmd+shift+g and paste ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/
   3. Move the two files from Downloads to this folder
4. In the MacOS Settings set the new Keyboard layout.

Touch typing

Don’t spend much time learning how to touch type, you’ll learn automatically by typing a lot. If you’re into computers you probably know how to type quickly already, ideally touch typing. If you’re reading this months before starting your studies and have time on your hands, take a look at

• Tipp10 to get the basics (don’t spend too much time here once you get the gist)
• monkeytype to practice.