# How can you tell a sales person from a programmer/engineer by their way of typing? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 3, 2023, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107 "2023-04-03T23:26:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/21 "2023-04-04T15:00:15Z")
@Digital_is_the_new_Analog’s user name was **Digital is the new Analog** under vBulletin. Under vBulletin usernames could and often did have embedded spaces or other special characters. Most of the underscores in usernames were created by the vBulletin → Discourse migration, where all the embedded unacceptable characters were converted to underscores by a script. @engineer_comp_geek is similar. As is @Dr_Paprika. Etc. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/22 "2023-04-04T16:07:35Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > @engineer_comp_geek is similar I had the underscores long before the move to Discourse. Back in the day, my unix .sig (for those old and geeky enough to remember what a .sig was) was “Electrical engineer, computer geek, and no-talent bum musician”. When yahoo email started, I signed up for a yahoo account just so that I could have a constant email name, instead of changing my email every time I changed internet providers or changed jobs. **engineer\_comp\_geek** was the closest that I could get to my .sig and still have it fit within the bounds of a yahoo email address, and email can’t have spaces in the name, hence the underscores. So my underscores date back to about 1997 or so and have nothing to do with the move to Discourse. > [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Bingo, that’s what I was going for. All the people working in such jobs I know and watched typing use the num pad for entering numbers, while techies almost always use the top row number keys. FWIW, I mostly use the num pad. Back in the 8-bit days, the Commodore 64 did not have a numeric keypad. I wanted a numeric keypad for mine, so I found a keypad that I could make work and hacked it into the C-64’s circuitry. This also required a new case (since there was no way to make a keypad fit into the existing C-64 case) so I built a crude case out of plywood. I wouldn’t say it was pretty, but it worked quite well. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/23 "2023-04-04T16:12:34Z")
My apologies for misremembering (mishistory-ing 😉 ) your username. I really like this Flintstones-like claim of yours: > I go so far back in computing that my first keyboards were made of wood! I’m a computer geezer too, but even I can’t make that claim. Worked on plugboards for tab machines? Yes. Wooden keyboards? No. You da Man! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kwintenstraler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kwintenstraler/32/10698_2.png) [@kwintenstraler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kwintenstraler)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/24 "2023-04-04T16:39:41Z")
I’m an engineer and I’m using only the top row numbers for entering numbers. The numbers on the keypad had special meaning in the editors I used, so you could get funny results when mixing them. I still pause and think which number to press each time ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/25 "2023-04-04T16:49:10Z")
NM. Already covered ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/26 "2023-04-04T17:01:17Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I really like this Flintstones-like claim of yours: > > > I go so far back in computing that my first keyboards were made of wood! > > I’m a computer geezer too, but even I can’t make that claim. Worked on plugboards for tab machines? Yes. Wooden keyboards? No. You da Man! 🙂 I did plugboards also. I used a keyboard in an ugly wood case but not sure what a wooden keyboard would be. Worked on a number of machines in homebrew wood cases. I preferred to run my hardware al fresco. It just looked cooler that way. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/27 "2023-04-04T17:31:58Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Back in the 8-bit days, the Commodore 64 did not have a numeric keypad. That’s the reason why I never use the num pad. My first computer was a C 64 and I (self-)learned typing (hunt and peck) on it, so I never got used to the num pad. At the same time, I was working on Apple IIe machines at school, but I don’t remember if their keyboards had num pads. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/28 "2023-04-04T18:07:54Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > I was working on Apple IIe machines at school, but I don’t remember if their keyboards had num pads. The Apple II and the Apple IIe did not have num pads. The Commodore Pet (with its annoying chiclet keyboard) had a num pad. The “trashy” TRS-80 also had one. The Timex Sinclair and TI 99/4 did not. The Atari 400 and 800 did not have one but the later Atari ST did. That’s all I remember off the top of my head. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/29 "2023-04-04T18:12:04Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The Commodore Pet (with its annoying chiclet keyboard) had a num pad. The “trashy” TRS-80 also had one. Also, the Commodore 128 had a number pad. C-64, VIC-20, Plus-4, C-16 did not. And then the Amigas did. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2023, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/30 "2023-04-04T23:52:09Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > My apologies for misremembering (mishistory-ing 😉 ) your username The important part is that you remembered mine correctly 😂 ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2023, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/31 "2023-04-05T00:07:58Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Funny. I was a techie back when mice were first invented. I was doing a lot of 1-2-3 development then. I’m (very) right handed but when I got my first mouse I used it left-handed precisely to keep my right hand free for the numeric pad & cursor arrow buttons on the old 84-key original PC keyboard. To this day I still mouse left-handed. When I did books for my Dad in his store, back in the days of the big adding machines, I moved the adding machine to the left of the ledger so that I could have a scratch pad on the right of the ledger. I used the adding machine with my left hand, and did notes with my right. Just made perfect sense to me, but amazed my Dad; said he couldn’t understand how I could run the adding machine with my left hand, and scratch notes with my right. First indication that I was cross-dominant. My mouse has always been on my left, for the same reason - to keep scratch notes on the right of the keyboard. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2023, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107/32 "2023-04-05T00:10:20Z")
I’m at least engineer-adjacent (a lot closer to an engineer than I am to an accountant, at least), and I’ll use the top row for an isolated number in the midst of text, but any large quantity of numbers will be on the number pad, if possible. Alas, it often isn’t, because my primary work computer is a laptop. And my first two computers (an Atari something that I can’t find anywhere on line, and an Apple ][e) both lacked the numpad, but I may have been too young for them for that to have made a lasting impression on me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-you-tell-a-sales-person-from-a-programmer-engineer-by-their-way-of-typing/982107.md?page=1)