In the days of the floppy disk
In the Days of the Floppy Disk
The Blinking Cursor
Inthose days, when computers still hummed like small, polite generators and the screens glowed a forgiving green, a lad could reinvent himself with nothing more than a borrowed machine and a stubborn curiosity. It was not thought of as reinvention then. There was only the knowledge that a program called Typing Tutor — TT.COM to those who spoke the secret language of MS‑DOS — existed, and that somewhere between those blinking cursors and clattering keys, a doorway to the bank might open.
It was the late eighties sliding into the early nineties, that in‑between time when the world had not yet learned to hurry as it does now. Computers were still half‑mysterious things, usually belonging to better‑off cousins, big trading companies, or that one friend whose brother worked “in the US,” a phrase repeated with a mixture of envy and awe. MS‑DOS 3.1, perhaps 4.01 — no one was certain of the version numbers, but TT.COM was there on a floppy disk, version 1.1 or 1.2.
Typing Tutor did not look like much. It greeted its user without ceremony: a dark screen, a few lines of text, and rows of letters marching across like soldiers on parade. Yet there was something quietly hypnotic about it. The cursor blinked, patient and demanding, as if to say: “Whenever you’re ready.” And there they sat, fingers hovering uncertainly over the 101‑key US keyboard, trying to remember which finger belonged to which letter.
If one could type, one could be somebody. That was the unspoken equation of that small world. The bank — Standard Chartered and others like it — needed clerks and operators who could make the keys sing. There was a typing test in the hiring process, a proper one, with a serious‑faced officer watching at a typewriter, listening not just to speed, but to the rhythm of the work. A person who could type without looking at the keys seemed almost like a magician.
Looking back now, it seems less about employment and more about the wonder of mastery. How fast could fingers move before tying themselves in knots? How many words per minute would that stern program allow one to claim? The Typing Tutor screen did not smile or encourage; it simply measured. It recorded clumsy efforts in cold numbers, and in that simplicity lay its strange power.
The lads were, to be honest, a little reckless with the rules of the world back then. In the UAE of those days, copyright was a distant concern, like snowstorms or Hollywood strikes — things that happened elsewhere. Somewhere on Al Fahidi Street, among the sari shops and electronics stalls, WordPerfect 5.1 could be bought on a set of floppy disks for fifteen dirhams. The packet would be tucked into a bag with the guilty satisfaction of a schoolboy smuggling storybooks into an exam hall — and later, quite cheerfully, listed under “work expenses.”
Typing Tutor was even simpler: a single disk, one modest program, the sort of thing a street‑corner vendor would hand over with a shrug, as though selling a pack of chewing gum. “Good software,” he might say, without irony. Once that little treasure was in hand, the rest was easy. Disks could be copied on those wheezing, double‑drive machines that sounded like old ceiling fans. One original became two, then four, then a quiet stack in drawers — each one destined for some nervous hopeful who wanted a job at the bank.
It became an unspoken ritual. A cousin would drop by in the evening, trying to sound casual.
“I heard you have that typing program… what is it called? TT something?”
A friend would linger after tea.
“Do you think practice is needed? They’re saying the typing test is not easy.”
The first lad would nod, with a gravity that hid his excitement, and produce a floppy disk like a magician revealing the final card in a trick.
“Here. TT.COM. Just copy it to your computer and run it. Practice every day. The bank will test you, you know — they’ll sit you down with a typewriter and watch.”
The word “test” sounded dramatic, but that is how it was imagined: a bright room, a ticking wall clock, and a formidable man in a tie saying, “Begin.” The IBM typewriter on the desk would be heavy and slightly intimidating, its carriage return lever like the handle of some old railway signal. For those who had grown attached to the soft hum of computers, the metallic chatter of those machines seemed both archaic and majestic.
Most of the boys — lads, as they were called with an affection that has not entirely faded — did not care about ergonomics or “touch‑typing methodology.” They were curious and a little competitive. How fast could they punch that US keyboard? Could they beat a friend’s score? The room where they practiced was often borrowed along with the machine: a spare bedroom, a shop after closing hours, a neighbour’s office where the night guard looked on with amused tolerance.
On the screen, the letters flowed: asdf jkl; asdf jkl;, endlessly, like a small river that never learned another path. At first there was stumbling. Fingers went to the wrong keys. The program scolded with beeps that sounded like tiny sighs. But slowly, as the evenings accumulated, something changed. Fingers began to find their own memory. The keyboard turned from a battlefield into a kind of musical instrument. There came a moment — one that everyone remembers — when the eyes stayed on the screen and an entire line was typed without a glance downward.
It felt a little like cycling without holding the handlebars for the first time.
Such things were not spoken of in those terms. Speeds were simply reported with increasing pride.
“Forty words per minute now.”
“Fifty, with very few errors.”
Someone would always claim sixty, and the rest would pretend not to believe it, even as they tried a little harder the next day.
Behind these small boasts lay a quiet faith in numbers — the belief that if a certain speed could be reached, a door would swing open. Somewhere in an unseen office, a manager would look at a test sheet and nod approvingly. The path into the bank — into employment, into adulthood, into something more solid than the drifting days of youth — seemed to run straight through those lines of text on a monochrome screen.
It is faintly amusing, now, to think that long before anyone whispered the words “artificial intelligence” in that part of the world, before names like ChatGPT or Claude meant anything, these lads had their own quiet revolution. Not in machine learning or cloud computing, but in borrowed PCs and copied disks, in the glow of CRT monitors and the stubborn clatter of old keyboards. What seemed like preparation for a typing test was, in truth, a first step toward befriending a future that had not yet introduced itself.
Years later, when the world discovered the internet, when emails replaced memos and touchscreens replaced function keys, there remained a peculiar fondness for that first blinking cursor. It was there, in those late evenings with TT.COM, that repetition — done willingly — became a kind of prayer. Sit, try again, correct, improve. No applause. Only the soft tapping of keys in a quiet room.
Some of the lads did make it into the bank. They remember the day of the test the way one remembers a school prize‑giving or a first train journey alone. A typewriter under fluorescent light, placed in the centre of the office. A supervisor handing out a passage: a dry paragraph about export documents or interest calculations. The room filled with the sound of metal hammers striking ribbon and paper. Those who had practiced found their fingers moving calmly, as if they had been waiting for that very moment.
Others did not pass. Life carried them elsewhere — to shipping companies, travel agencies, small family businesses. Yet even then, there is a familiar remark when they meet years later: “All that practice was not wasted. At least now the letters can be typed without help.” There is a quiet dignity in that. Not every skill must lead to grand success. Sometimes it simply makes life a little easier, work a little smoother.
These days do not return as a grand narrative, but as small, vivid scenes: Al Fahidi Street in the late afternoon, warm air and the smell of spices; a shopkeeper sliding a stack of floppy disks into a blue plastic bag; a dimly lit room where a single computer glows like a charcoal ember; a young man leaning forward, brow furrowed, as letters scroll across the screen.
And somewhere in that room, perhaps closer to the window, the lad that once was — listening to the soft tapping of fingers and sensing, without yet having the words for it, that this strange partnership between human and machine might carry him further than he had ever imagined.
Ask how the typing tutor was mastered, and the answer would be simple: it was not. It mastered everyone instead. It taught patience, rhythm, and the quiet truth that skill is often persistence in disguise. Everything that came later — the offices, the emails, the changing technologies — rested on that simple, stubborn act of sitting down, loading TT.COM, and watching the cursor blink its quiet challenge on the screen.
“Whenever you’re ready,” it seemed to say.
All these years later, the answer remains the same.
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