Practice typing by retyping entire novels(typelit.io)
typelit.io
Practice typing by retyping entire novels
https://www.typelit.io/
132 comments
I also immediately thought of Borges on reading the link's title.
When I was learning Spanish in adulthood, I decided for practice to re-translate this Borges story back into Spanish, having never read it in the original. Incredibly challenging (for such a beginner), but also very amusing to see the overlaps and the differences.
When I was learning Spanish in adulthood, I decided for practice to re-translate this Borges story back into Spanish, having never read it in the original. Incredibly challenging (for such a beginner), but also very amusing to see the overlaps and the differences.
I have recently started trying to learn colemak[^3], and came across the great cross-platform tool Amphetype[^1].
You can load in whatever document you want as a source, and it'll randomly select chunks of whatever size you want (i.e. about 200 words-worth). It then gives you analysis of your performance, as well as breaking down what trigrams and words cause you the most trouble.
Combine this with ngram training to get the muscle memory of the most common chunks of english and you can really quickly improve your fluency [^2].
1: https://gitlab.com/franksh/amphetype
2: https://ranelpadon.github.io/ngram-type/
3: https://gnusenpai.github.io/colemakclub/
You can load in whatever document you want as a source, and it'll randomly select chunks of whatever size you want (i.e. about 200 words-worth). It then gives you analysis of your performance, as well as breaking down what trigrams and words cause you the most trouble.
Combine this with ngram training to get the muscle memory of the most common chunks of english and you can really quickly improve your fluency [^2].
1: https://gitlab.com/franksh/amphetype
2: https://ranelpadon.github.io/ngram-type/
3: https://gnusenpai.github.io/colemakclub/
Do you use Vim or a modal editor? I’ve been considering switching to Colemak, but I can’t figure out how I’d get past the fact that hjkl would be in a different spot.
I could change the shortcuts in software, but then it starts a cascade of changed shortcuts. Plus, I could then only use software that I’ve specifically configured. How do you SSH into a server?
I could change the shortcuts in software, but then it starts a cascade of changed shortcuts. Plus, I could then only use software that I’ve specifically configured. How do you SSH into a server?
This is a pretty unavoidable downside of alt keyboard layouts. For vim you'd probably want a plugin like https://github.com/jooize/vim-colemak.
If you maintain your QWERTY muscle memory, you can use it as a fallback in foreign environments, but figuring out how to smoothly setup RC files on any target is probably the ideal: https://serverfault.com/questions/400522/how-to-use-a-custom...
Personally. I gave up on Dvorak in part due to this friction when I started introducing more and more tools like Vimperator (Firefox plugin, superseded by Tridactyl) into my workflow. The flexibility of switching on a vim mode anywhere and having it be 95% what I want is very high. The other factor was I still did a lot of same-machine peering then, which it added a lot of friction to. I do know highly capable engineers who go fully down the typing-ergonomics rabbit hole and stay there, but it does consume a fair amount of one's yak-shaving budget.
If you maintain your QWERTY muscle memory, you can use it as a fallback in foreign environments, but figuring out how to smoothly setup RC files on any target is probably the ideal: https://serverfault.com/questions/400522/how-to-use-a-custom...
Personally. I gave up on Dvorak in part due to this friction when I started introducing more and more tools like Vimperator (Firefox plugin, superseded by Tridactyl) into my workflow. The flexibility of switching on a vim mode anywhere and having it be 95% what I want is very high. The other factor was I still did a lot of same-machine peering then, which it added a lot of friction to. I do know highly capable engineers who go fully down the typing-ergonomics rabbit hole and stay there, but it does consume a fair amount of one's yak-shaving budget.
FWIW in Tridactyl we literally just yesterday merged a PR [1] that lets you use an arbitrary layout (QWERTY by default) for Tridactyl binds while keeping your real layout for everything else like text input. It will turn up in the next beta release within a few weeks.
[1]: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/pull/4439
[1]: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/pull/4439
I have colemak layout and use vim as default editor for all system configs. I don't use any plugin or anything else to remap the keys. At first, this feels very weird and unintuitive, because now the key for up is actually below the key for down. But over time you start to see Vim in a different way. You lose the muscle memory associating vim commands with key positions, and instead you form connections between the commands and the keys themselves. It starts to feel like you are talking to Vim on a higher level language. If i want to change this word to something, I don't think "press these keys in a sequence", I say "c i w" to Vim which would do it for me.
FWIW, I learned Vim as a QWERTY touch-typist, then learned Dvorak, and it works just as well with Vim. I never changed any of the keybindings (and hjkl end up in reasonable places anyhow).
Couldn’t say if Colemak would work similarly well, but if your mental mapping for Vim commands is character-based (as opposed to position-on-keyboard-based) I imagine it would.
Worst case I suppose you could always revert to QWERTY.
Couldn’t say if Colemak would work similarly well, but if your mental mapping for Vim commands is character-based (as opposed to position-on-keyboard-based) I imagine it would.
Worst case I suppose you could always revert to QWERTY.
I think I would be ok with just accepting the new positions of the movement keys, but hjkl ended up in absolutely atrocious positions.
https://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/
https://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/
I am a heavy user of vim, but recently purchased a ZSA moonlander keyboard so I have easy access to a layer with arrows. I usually search to nav or do line jump them w or f, so not having hjkl isn't an issue.
I also use the Moonlander, and I’ve thought about using home-row arrow keys for navigation. I’m glad to hear this is working for you.
Incase it's of use, here's the layout I've ended up with after around a month's worth of tweaking (still tweaking it, but this is mostly stable in terms of the functionality I use). Some factors may not work for you depending on how small your hands are, but I can reach left-pinky 'caps lock' (escape, with arrow-y layer on hold) down to the furthest thumb key.
https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/DN9zM/latest/5
https://configure.zsa.io/moonlander/layouts/DN9zM/latest/5
I use a Moonlander (and similar) and the Workman layout, and have it so holding my right little finger home key activates a layer with arrow keys in the Vim movement key positions.
I use colemak and vim and it works just fine, but I first learned colemak and then got used to vim. I use the vim defaults, no custom keys. I tried customizing keys for a short while but quickly decided to keep to the defaults to make my muscle memory work on any box I log in to.
Dvorak is at least workable with Vim-style navigation. I use it, and so does notable-Vimmer ThePrimeagen, for example.
As a point of warning: at some point I started learning Dvorak.
I learned it well, switched to it completely, and it was great.
Except that it was absolutely horrible.
Not because of the layout, but: maybe it's just me, but I completely un-learned QWERTY.
Every time I had to touch someone else's computer, or a phone, or work with some kind of QWERTY embedded keyboard, it devolved into either immediately switching the layout, or looking like a clueless old person doing one finger typing while staring at the keyboard.
I learned it well, switched to it completely, and it was great.
Except that it was absolutely horrible.
Not because of the layout, but: maybe it's just me, but I completely un-learned QWERTY.
Every time I had to touch someone else's computer, or a phone, or work with some kind of QWERTY embedded keyboard, it devolved into either immediately switching the layout, or looking like a clueless old person doing one finger typing while staring at the keyboard.
Yeah, that's super common. Apparently you can avoid it entirely by practicing half an hour a week with QWERTY, but who has time for that? I find that it's not much of a problem these days, because of phones. I keep my mobile keyboard in QWERTY, so I always have some memory of where those keys are, even though the finger movements aren't hardwired into my motor cortex anymore.
I just checked, and going into it cold, I can squirm at about 35 WPM on QWERTY (vs 130 on Colemak). It's annoying, but serviceable if I'm using someone's computer for a few minutes. For a longer situation, if they're using a mac or linux, I can switch them to Colemak in about thirty seconds (I had to do that in some onsite interviews a few years back), and if it's Windows, having to use QWERTY is probably the thing I'm least annoyed about.
I just checked, and going into it cold, I can squirm at about 35 WPM on QWERTY (vs 130 on Colemak). It's annoying, but serviceable if I'm using someone's computer for a few minutes. For a longer situation, if they're using a mac or linux, I can switch them to Colemak in about thirty seconds (I had to do that in some onsite interviews a few years back), and if it's Windows, having to use QWERTY is probably the thing I'm least annoyed about.
Interesting. I found I was able to naturally switch keyboards between machines and even OS'es on the same machine, but if I tried it within a single window it would confuse me. Ssh would freeze me up, too. But then I've been switching between natural languages in my day to day my whole life.
I plan to put effort into maintaining qwerty. I can comfortably type qwerty with upwards of 100wpm and 99% accuracy (even right after doing a session on colemak). Right now, colemak is still in the 30-40 wpm stage, but only in last 2 or 3 days have been drilling it and got 10wpm jump.
Could it be a matter of time/effort? After 1.5 years into Dvorak, I could switch between it and QWERTY seamlessly. It was only hard for the first year or so.
Yeah, probably my mistake was just dropping QWERTY completely, and not using it at all anymore.
This reminds me of the a utility I made early in my career to type over quotes or fortune output with GNU Typist: https://github.com/micimize/type-quotes. IIRC the included json sources were munged from fortune files.
I think about it a lot in comparison to the vast swath of more ambitious or complicated projects I've done. Such a small script I threw together due to an immediate want, that still has merit and potential utility a decade later.
I think about it a lot in comparison to the vast swath of more ambitious or complicated projects I've done. Such a small script I threw together due to an immediate want, that still has merit and potential utility a decade later.
> You can load in whatever document you want as a source, and it'll randomly select chunks of whatever size you want
Can it also select chunks sequentially so I don't lose the plot?
Can it also select chunks sequentially so I don't lose the plot?
Yes, in the 'sources' tab, you can select 'in order' and it will work through sources in the order that you add them. You can also select 'difficult' or 'easy', and it will suggest lessons based on analysis of your previous performance (i.e. it will score the chunks compared to similar lessons you've completed in the past).
How do you import texts into Amphetype? Can you use a PDF or Kindle file of a book (and/or translate that) or do you have to have raw plaintext?
I've not been using it overly long, but it seems to only accept plaintext, and basically generates lessons based on line-separated paragraphs (though don't quote me on that).
When I practice typing and make an error, I thought that perhaps it should automatically go back to the beginning of the word. Because the road leading to fast typing is to type letters in groups, and having the muscle memories of common words might help with both speed and accuracy. The statistics could include frequently mistyped pairs and triplets, or basically, ngrams. And you can practice those in isolation.
It will be like scale practicing of musical instrument.
It will be like scale practicing of musical instrument.
Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make. What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time.
Your nick, by the way, is perfectly suited to this endeavor.
Your nick, by the way, is perfectly suited to this endeavor.
>Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make.
The other day someone posted a webapp they wrote that doesn't let you edit and that blurs all the text except the current line while you're typing. If you want to edit your text, you need to download the file. His aim was to separate writing from editing, which I think it's an interesting approach.
The other day someone posted a webapp they wrote that doesn't let you edit and that blurs all the text except the current line while you're typing. If you want to edit your text, you need to download the file. His aim was to separate writing from editing, which I think it's an interesting approach.
Anyone have a link for this?
> What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time.
I've never been entirely convinced by this argument. I will always make mistakes, so I could argue that I need to be able to quickly fix those mistakes, so I should practice doing so to some degree. The implication that fixing your mistakes somehow trains you to make mistakes seems tenuous.
I will admit that for me, my "end goal" allows me to see what I'm typing and requires me to correct my mistakes. If, for instance, your end goal has you not even seeing the text you're typing then there's probably no reason to go back and fix your mistakes.
This is where the musical instrument comparison breaks for me. If your goal with an instrument is a performance, then with a musical instrument you can't fix your mistakes during the performance. You will still make mistakes, of course, you just won't be able to fix them.
That said, if you're making a lot of mistakes then perhaps you're getting enough practice fixing them and should stop. It's just that I don't necessarily accept a hard rule that you should carry on regardless and the outcome will be better. I've never seen any research on this subject.
I've never been entirely convinced by this argument. I will always make mistakes, so I could argue that I need to be able to quickly fix those mistakes, so I should practice doing so to some degree. The implication that fixing your mistakes somehow trains you to make mistakes seems tenuous.
I will admit that for me, my "end goal" allows me to see what I'm typing and requires me to correct my mistakes. If, for instance, your end goal has you not even seeing the text you're typing then there's probably no reason to go back and fix your mistakes.
This is where the musical instrument comparison breaks for me. If your goal with an instrument is a performance, then with a musical instrument you can't fix your mistakes during the performance. You will still make mistakes, of course, you just won't be able to fix them.
That said, if you're making a lot of mistakes then perhaps you're getting enough practice fixing them and should stop. It's just that I don't necessarily accept a hard rule that you should carry on regardless and the outcome will be better. I've never seen any research on this subject.
No, the implication is that if you slow down to the point that you become once again more conscious of what you are doing that you will re-train your muscle memory to the point that mistakes will become less likely. If you 'practice your mistakes' you will make mistakes!
This is a problem many people have when practicing to play an instrument, they end up practicing but making so many mistakes that their muscle memory sees exposure to too many mistakes to get the right pattern down. By avoiding that through slowing down and practicing the right moves instead of a mixture of the right moves and the mistakes you will lay down patterns that are much more dependable.
When performing that pays off because then there is no way to fix your mistakes. So the best way to practice is to not make mistakes. And any practice method that helps you to do that is a good one. This is pretty much the philosophy being pianojacq.com, a sightreading / practicing application that I've been building over the last couple of years and the effect on my own ability to learn and practice without mistakes has been huge. That does not imply that this is for everybody but from my own experience to slow down, even if that means being agonizingly slow for a number of passes without mistakes has a pay-off that is much higher than practicing the same piece with mistakes at a higher speed. Once you do the right thing, speed is easy. As long as you don't do the right thing speed is irrelevant.
This is a problem many people have when practicing to play an instrument, they end up practicing but making so many mistakes that their muscle memory sees exposure to too many mistakes to get the right pattern down. By avoiding that through slowing down and practicing the right moves instead of a mixture of the right moves and the mistakes you will lay down patterns that are much more dependable.
When performing that pays off because then there is no way to fix your mistakes. So the best way to practice is to not make mistakes. And any practice method that helps you to do that is a good one. This is pretty much the philosophy being pianojacq.com, a sightreading / practicing application that I've been building over the last couple of years and the effect on my own ability to learn and practice without mistakes has been huge. That does not imply that this is for everybody but from my own experience to slow down, even if that means being agonizingly slow for a number of passes without mistakes has a pay-off that is much higher than practicing the same piece with mistakes at a higher speed. Once you do the right thing, speed is easy. As long as you don't do the right thing speed is irrelevant.
Ah, that does make sense but it wasn't what I was originally replying to. You didn't say why we were losing 10% speed after refusing to fix our mistakes, and I actually thought that this was supposed to be due to the software penalizing us for the mistakes when we could have got a higher speed overall if we'd corrected them ourselves.
Slowing down during your deliberate practice to the point where you don't make many mistakes could well be optimal, and something I should probably do more of. Albeit it still isn't clear to me what we should do with the occasional mistake we make even while going slow, but I accept that you think we should ignore them.
Slowing down during your deliberate practice to the point where you don't make many mistakes could well be optimal, and something I should probably do more of. Albeit it still isn't clear to me what we should do with the occasional mistake we make even while going slow, but I accept that you think we should ignore them.
The basic idea is to lay down repetitions of the 'perfect' pattern to the point that you are no longer thinking about it and any mistake will mar that process, so it is better to slow down to the point where you are no longer making mistakes (or at least, very few, initially, and hopefully after practice so few that they no longer happen at all).
For me, depending on the complexity of a given piece that can be anywhere from 5% to 20% or so of indicated tempo for the first times that I practice a piece. One of the hardest things to take into account when practicing slow is that you should still use the exact same fingerings as you would when playing fast because otherwise all of your practice is for nothing!
For me, depending on the complexity of a given piece that can be anywhere from 5% to 20% or so of indicated tempo for the first times that I practice a piece. One of the hardest things to take into account when practicing slow is that you should still use the exact same fingerings as you would when playing fast because otherwise all of your practice is for nothing!
>Except that instruments don't come with a backspace
In practice it does. The common advice is to go back to the start of the phrase when you make a mistake practicing instrument.
In practice it does. The common advice is to go back to the start of the phrase when you make a mistake practicing instrument.
Yes, but in performance it doesn't. And reason why you want to go back to the beginning of the phrase is to make sure that the pattern remains whole, if you just do the little bit where your mistake was chances are you'll end up with alternate fingerings or other artifacts that will make the fix at best useless and at worst a net negative.
You can do that with Ctrl+Backspace. Or Ctrl+Left if you just want to move.
This is a very desirable action. Once you get some speed up
touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words. Infuriated by an
emacs not having an ergonomic offering I bound M-w to
backward-kill-word and found it so useful it's still in my .emacs
file.
This might be something you would actually overcome as you build up even more speed by focusing on learning to correct the individual letters.
I've been typing 120+ wpm for 20 years and it's actually surprising to me that this is a problem people have. It's that foreign to my experience.
I could be totally wrong. It could just be that typing happens in different ways in different people's brains and bodies and that's why I can't relate to this, but I'd challenge you to try correcting the letters rather than the words and see if that doesn't have a compounding effect on improving your speed.
I've been typing 120+ wpm for 20 years and it's actually surprising to me that this is a problem people have. It's that foreign to my experience.
I could be totally wrong. It could just be that typing happens in different ways in different people's brains and bodies and that's why I can't relate to this, but I'd challenge you to try correcting the letters rather than the words and see if that doesn't have a compounding effect on improving your speed.
> Once you get some speed up touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words.
Same. For some reason we always mix up "you" and "the", even though they are completely different words
Same. For some reason we always mix up "you" and "the", even though they are completely different words
The site seems to have been hugged to death, so in the mean time this article may be of interest to you:
https://www.openculture.com/2017/06/hunter-s-thompson-typed-...
Hunter S. Thompson Typed Out The Great Gatsby & A Farewell to Arms Word for Word: A Method for Learning How to Write Like the Masters
https://www.openculture.com/2017/06/hunter-s-thompson-typed-...
Hunter S. Thompson Typed Out The Great Gatsby & A Farewell to Arms Word for Word: A Method for Learning How to Write Like the Masters
as well as heart of darkness. he did it more than once. the quote/paraphrase attributed to Hunter on this that I love is, "I wanted to know what it felt like to write something good."
edit: I was oddly talking about this today to my partner. I've honestly never heard of anyone doing it outside of Hunter.. but that might just be because Hunter mentioned it in such a cool way.
edit: I was oddly talking about this today to my partner. I've honestly never heard of anyone doing it outside of Hunter.. but that might just be because Hunter mentioned it in such a cool way.
I can type at a decent pace as long as it's text ; I learnt to type on gtypist . (I haven't completed all of them just the basics and some drills) .
Typing for programming is a whole lot different , and I find myself fumbling around numbers and special characters often
You may be interested in typing.io, which is specifically for code. I don't think it'll help much with numbers though. Personally, I've never gotten the hang of touch typing the number row, so I use the numpad instead.
I switched from typing.io to https://github.com/jankrepl/mltype. Highly customisable.
I run it from a bash script in multiple steps with custom length. First special characters only, then numbers, letters, go and finally rust.
I do this on a daily basis just for a few minutes and I could greatly improve my typing speed.
Similarly, unless you're copying code from a magazine like the good old days.
Writing code is limited by the pace of you being able to think up sound effective code.
I can't recall where I saw it but believe I heard a rule of thumb of only 40wpm pretty much mazing out most people's ability to write code.
Writing code is limited by the pace of you being able to think up sound effective code.
I can't recall where I saw it but believe I heard a rule of thumb of only 40wpm pretty much mazing out most people's ability to write code.
You'll get to your ten or twelve lines of code per day real fast then. What you gonna do with the rest of your time?
Reference: The Internet
(For example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/966800)
---
Sure, code written (and rewritten) (and deleted) versus net output. But maybe be more thoughtful, do less than 40wpm, and write a better solution overall.
Reference: The Internet
(For example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/966800)
---
Sure, code written (and rewritten) (and deleted) versus net output. But maybe be more thoughtful, do less than 40wpm, and write a better solution overall.
That's a good point!
I think the point is 40wpm allows you to code. If you wrote at 10 lines per day, 80 char per line works out to 0.0333wpm.
You'll forget what you're doing by the time get a word out.
As in once you hit 40wpm you won't be slowed by your typing as you try to code.
(WPM is characters per minute over 5, i.e. assumes average word is 5 chars long).
I think the point is 40wpm allows you to code. If you wrote at 10 lines per day, 80 char per line works out to 0.0333wpm.
You'll forget what you're doing by the time get a word out.
As in once you hit 40wpm you won't be slowed by your typing as you try to code.
(WPM is characters per minute over 5, i.e. assumes average word is 5 chars long).
I haven’t worried much about my typing speed in years (100WPM is faster than I can think when coding or writing most of the time), but I am learning German and wonder if typing massive amounts of text in a language you’re trying to learn could have some benefits?
> I haven’t worried much about my typing speed in years (100WPM is faster than I can think when coding or writing most of the time),
I hear this argument all the time and I don't buy it. Yes, my thinking is slower than 100 wpm on average, but it is extremely bursty. It goes at 0 wpm most of the time then 10000 wpm for short intervals.
I believe the fundamental concern here is not average speed, but latency. How fast can you get the current thought onto the page so that your brain can move on to think about the next thing?
I also type at 100 wpm, and I find my wetware CPU experiences stalled cycles while I'm typing, not able to continue because it needs to hold on to a buffer containing the thought I'm slowly typing out.
I hear this argument all the time and I don't buy it. Yes, my thinking is slower than 100 wpm on average, but it is extremely bursty. It goes at 0 wpm most of the time then 10000 wpm for short intervals.
I believe the fundamental concern here is not average speed, but latency. How fast can you get the current thought onto the page so that your brain can move on to think about the next thing?
I also type at 100 wpm, and I find my wetware CPU experiences stalled cycles while I'm typing, not able to continue because it needs to hold on to a buffer containing the thought I'm slowly typing out.
Mine is 0 wpm most of the time, but there are nanoseconds when it is almost infinite wpm.
We type at something like 150 wpm casually and our brain is still a bit faster... although we've been optimizing it to type out chat messages for years, so that's probably why we can come up with them with such ease
What kind of keyboard do you have that polls at such a rate that it can keep up with "almost infinite" (whatever that means) WPM? The best keyboards I have found only have 1000Hz scan rate, which in the absolute best case means only 30,000 WPM. Granted, compared to infinity, every number is equidistant, but when you say "almost infinite" I expect something a bit more impressive (in the 10**80 range, for example).
Right. Time spent typing adds latency to evaluating some solution. Ideally, everyone could type with 100% accuracy at 300WPM or whatever.
But, I expect it's diminishing returns on effort.
If you type 30WPM, you'll probably benefit yourself (and your colleagues!!) from learning to type quicker. 80 WPM seems reasonable; 100 WPM is good; 180 WPM is excellent. -- But, I think above some point, the costs of training to type quicker aren't justified by the benefits.
But, I expect it's diminishing returns on effort.
If you type 30WPM, you'll probably benefit yourself (and your colleagues!!) from learning to type quicker. 80 WPM seems reasonable; 100 WPM is good; 180 WPM is excellent. -- But, I think above some point, the costs of training to type quicker aren't justified by the benefits.
Could it have some benefits? Sure. Maybe you enjoy the movement of your fingers. Maybe it slows your brain down to the point where you linger on each individual word enough to see new things click.
Are these benefits enough to make it the best thing in terms of ROI? I would suspect only rarely.
- If you're not yet at the point where you can understand what you're typing, you are probably served better by more traditional language learning activities. - If you do understand it perfectly you're probably at an advanced enough level that just reading it at your normal reading speed, or writing your own stuff and then having a native speaker is a better form of practice. - If you can understand it with effort but not at a comfortable reading speed yet - you're probably best served by throwing the individual sentences along with machine translations into a spaced repetition system like Anki. Then you can see the same sentence multiple times over the course of a few days and deepen your understanding a little more each time.
Are these benefits enough to make it the best thing in terms of ROI? I would suspect only rarely.
- If you're not yet at the point where you can understand what you're typing, you are probably served better by more traditional language learning activities. - If you do understand it perfectly you're probably at an advanced enough level that just reading it at your normal reading speed, or writing your own stuff and then having a native speaker is a better form of practice. - If you can understand it with effort but not at a comfortable reading speed yet - you're probably best served by throwing the individual sentences along with machine translations into a spaced repetition system like Anki. Then you can see the same sentence multiple times over the course of a few days and deepen your understanding a little more each time.
Probably in getting used to the forms of the language, but for best results you will want to stay near things you can almost understand. I had two relevant experiences: (1) graduate school advisor told the lab to copy down one paper per week by hand. After a while you learned to copy mindlessly and stopped learning from it. (2) listened to the same second language content 100+ times while commuting and it really helped to build an intuition for what was being said and how to say it.
According to Krashen's language acquisition models only input matters, and typing is a very ineffective mode of reading.
How funny. When I was around 10 my mother sent my sister and me to a 10 finger typing class. We had to practice at home so I started retyping the first Harry Potter novel which was my favourite book during that time. It was after 100 or 200 pages when I left everyone I know behind in terms of speed and accuracy.
Every time I switch my keyboard I am doing a lite version of and retype only a couple of pages in order to adjust my muscles to the new layout.
I sometimes read to fall asleep. Usually I am already tired so I can get though 1-3 pages per session.
I started the count of monte cristo not knowing it was about 2000 pages, so that’s what I read for the whole of 2019 basically. At least when going to bed.
Typing it completely seems like a huge undertaking.
I started the count of monte cristo not knowing it was about 2000 pages, so that’s what I read for the whole of 2019 basically. At least when going to bed.
Typing it completely seems like a huge undertaking.
I can relate.
I am actually translating The Count of Monte Cristo. Completed 5 chapters so far. Still a loooooooong way to go.
I am actually translating The Count of Monte Cristo. Completed 5 chapters so far. Still a loooooooong way to go.
That seems like an even grander endeavour.
What are you translating it to? From which language?
What are you translating it to? From which language?
English to Tamil. It is a huge endeavour.
I am not using any automated translations except to find esoteric translations (using Google Translate). Many idioms and phrases also have to be localized, so it is an intellectual challenge.
Alexander Dumas' writing is also quite beautiful and even in the limited number of chapters I have completed translating there are some excellent narratives. I am enjoying it.
My idea is to eventually publish it as a bi-lingual ebook, perhaps it would help people who are learning English/Tamil.
I am not using any automated translations except to find esoteric translations (using Google Translate). Many idioms and phrases also have to be localized, so it is an intellectual challenge.
Alexander Dumas' writing is also quite beautiful and even in the limited number of chapters I have completed translating there are some excellent narratives. I am enjoying it.
My idea is to eventually publish it as a bi-lingual ebook, perhaps it would help people who are learning English/Tamil.
Interesting. Are you manually typing in Tamil or are you using a speech to text software?
I use a Surface tablet as my writing device and have a Tamil Input Method Editor (IME) for Windows installed. It does the English-to-Tamil transliteration and that helps.
Out of curiosity, why are you doing this?
Just replied in the comment above. This is more as an intellectual curiosity. I intend to publish it eventually as a bi-lingual ebook with para by para translations. Hopefully, it is useful for those who are learning one of the languages and is not a native speaker/writer of the other.
I disagree. Reading requires my full attention and dedication, while typing becomes almost an almost mechanical process very quickly.
With reading, I always find myself moving my eyes back a few sentences because I would think I missed some unimportant information, taking me a while before I actually got into it. Maybe it's just because technology hurt my attention span.
With reading, I always find myself moving my eyes back a few sentences because I would think I missed some unimportant information, taking me a while before I actually got into it. Maybe it's just because technology hurt my attention span.
On this site, I opened a book at random and was surprised to see several errors in the text. For instance, a full stop was clearly missing in the first line. So I checked the source, which seems to be gutenberg.org (the site has no reference at a book level, but mentions some sources on the front page). Yet the same book (Botchan) on Project Gutenberg does not have these errors.
So I'd suggest two enhancements to the author. Firstly, for each book, state the exact source, including the retrieval date. Then make sure that the up to date version of each book is used.
I also wonder if there could be a way to make all this typing more useful. There are so many books lacking OCR, or lacking review after a poor OCR.
So I'd suggest two enhancements to the author. Firstly, for each book, state the exact source, including the retrieval date. Then make sure that the up to date version of each book is used.
I also wonder if there could be a way to make all this typing more useful. There are so many books lacking OCR, or lacking review after a poor OCR.
This is very clever. I could see this being an 8th grade typing project where the class types out a chapter, but with the ability to remove the backspace behavior.
It would be a subversive way to get students to read literature...
It would be a subversive way to get students to read literature...
That would be great subversive way to get myself to read classics finally.
I was thinking about that myself.
Frankly you start on a chapter one and see if you like it, then read the rest. I was surprised about how much I liked the first few pages of 1984 -- which was written around 80 years ago.
Frankly you start on a chapter one and see if you like it, then read the rest. I was surprised about how much I liked the first few pages of 1984 -- which was written around 80 years ago.
I’m going to give what I know is an unpopular opinion and then I’m going to contradict myself.
Your typing speed has no affect on your ability to be a good developer. While I don’t “hunt and peck” and I can type without looking at the keyboard most of the time, I physically can’t touch type.
I type with one hand and I’ve been programming since 1986 as a hobbyist for 10 years and then a professional. Last time I checked, I typed at about 45 wpm.
Most of my professional career though I’ve used statically typed language and from 2010-2020 mostly C# with JetBrains R# - with excellent shortcuts and autocomplete.
I just started working on my first project with the assistance of ChatGPT. It’s amazing how well it does at taking regular English sentences and writing and modifying Python and JavaScript code - even less typing.
Your typing speed has no affect on your ability to be a good developer. While I don’t “hunt and peck” and I can type without looking at the keyboard most of the time, I physically can’t touch type.
I type with one hand and I’ve been programming since 1986 as a hobbyist for 10 years and then a professional. Last time I checked, I typed at about 45 wpm.
Most of my professional career though I’ve used statically typed language and from 2010-2020 mostly C# with JetBrains R# - with excellent shortcuts and autocomplete.
I just started working on my first project with the assistance of ChatGPT. It’s amazing how well it does at taking regular English sentences and writing and modifying Python and JavaScript code - even less typing.
"Your typing speed has no affect on your ability to be a good developer."
I think you mean to say that your ability to type at 45 wpm has a minimal impact on your ability to be a good developer. To me, 45 wpm is moderate but not slow. I have seen developers who type at around 10-15 wpm.
I have noticed that developers who are slower typers are more likely to fight back on simple changes and writing documentation. It just takes them more time to do the same amount of work that a faster typist will take. In my experience, slow typer are great at reasoning about the code base and coming up with designs in their head, but poor at writing code and communicating with text either through email/slack or documentation.
People who are not fast typist can be very smart but will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to using the keyboard.
> nouveaux
I think you mean to say that your ability to type at 45 wpm has a minimal impact on your ability to be a good developer. To me, 45 wpm is moderate but not slow. I have seen developers who type at around 10-15 wpm.
I have noticed that developers who are slower typers are more likely to fight back on simple changes and writing documentation. It just takes them more time to do the same amount of work that a faster typist will take. In my experience, slow typer are great at reasoning about the code base and coming up with designs in their head, but poor at writing code and communicating with text either through email/slack or documentation.
People who are not fast typist can be very smart but will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to using the keyboard.
> nouveaux
Refactoring is also where statically typed languages combined with good IDEs that have a large set of automated provable correct refactoring shortcuts come in.
Also, I type a lot faster on my phone than a keyboard. I met my manager for the first time in person a year after he became my manager (Covid travel restrictions). In our first team meeting, I mentioned that if he sees my typing on my phone a lot it’s because I am on Slack talking to my coworkers or customers (I work in the cloud consulting department at BigTech specializing in cloud application development and “DevOps”).
As far as documentation, my job requires a lot of writing.
For my current project I’m writing a lot of small one off Python scripts. You would be surprised how well ChatGPT can “explain” what a script involving AWS automation does in plain English and I can even ask it “Why would I use this” and it often gives me a good enough bottom line up front summary.
Also, I type a lot faster on my phone than a keyboard. I met my manager for the first time in person a year after he became my manager (Covid travel restrictions). In our first team meeting, I mentioned that if he sees my typing on my phone a lot it’s because I am on Slack talking to my coworkers or customers (I work in the cloud consulting department at BigTech specializing in cloud application development and “DevOps”).
As far as documentation, my job requires a lot of writing.
For my current project I’m writing a lot of small one off Python scripts. You would be surprised how well ChatGPT can “explain” what a script involving AWS automation does in plain English and I can even ask it “Why would I use this” and it often gives me a good enough bottom line up front summary.
I've been a professional developer for more than 10 years and I have similar observation. Most of developers don't use touch typing. And it doesn't seem to affect their efficiency at all. Developers usually don't need to produce large amount of code (unless you are Go developer ;) ). They use auto-completion, copy-paste and usually need to do a short edits and not 20 lines of non-stop typing.
So even though I use touch typing myself, I've never seen this as a big advantage making me somehow better than others. I see benefits only when I am in a long chat discussions.
Similar but for the emacs users https://github.com/dakra/speed-type
Be aware that RSI is a real risk and once you have it, it never goes away. That is serious, even critical, if your job is at the keyboard. So be moderate.
Never is a strong word- mine went away. I had debilitating carpal tunnel RSI, and with the right ergonomics (*) it went away completely in a few months, and no sign of it for the couple of decades since, still using a keyboard for most of my waking hours.
I’d say time spent typing is much less of a factor than how that typing is done.
(*) The first big fix for me was switching from a desk to laptop on a couch where I could change positions every few minutes. The short travel and light weight of laptop keys also helped. I switched back to a desk more recently, but I kept the low-profile light keys, and the general awareness of postural stress.
I’d say time spent typing is much less of a factor than how that typing is done.
(*) The first big fix for me was switching from a desk to laptop on a couch where I could change positions every few minutes. The short travel and light weight of laptop keys also helped. I switched back to a desk more recently, but I kept the low-profile light keys, and the general awareness of postural stress.
"mine went away" - That's not my experience but yours is a good counterpoint. I'm glad you're free of it.
It’s also manageable. I recommend gyroscopic exercise balls.
They help me now my RSI is much better, but nothing is as good as Don't Get RSI In The First Place. It's a nasty bitch.
It is, but given the repetitive nature of almost any job avoiding RSI in the longer term is pretty much impossible nowadays, unless you intend to avoid having jobs for longer than a few months.
Would it be useful to use typing practice as a way to crowdsource scanned print publications better than OCR? (Do the OCR, and see whether a few human samples "vote" better text? Then maybe also use that to improve the OCR?)
This is what the old CAPTCHA system from Google did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA#ReCAPTCHA_v1_(human-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA#ReCAPTCHA_v1_(human-...
OCR is probably a solved problem at this point and anything unscannable is going to have errors with human typists too.
I've been seeing imperfect OCR. And you can "vote" (like a voting configuration of redundant devices, on the assumption the majority is correct) among multiple typists.
I switched to dvorak from querty. At the time, the only typing I did of any length was in chat on Diablo 1. I have never felt so impotent as when I was frantically trying to convey information in game during that early period. Trying to keep up with conversations in the channels was very frustrating.
I improved my wpm not by switching to dvorak, but by learning the new layout without looking at the keyboard while I type.
I improved my wpm not by switching to dvorak, but by learning the new layout without looking at the keyboard while I type.
Typelit introduced me to Maurice Leblanc's Lupin books, which are an absolute treat to read (and quite fun to type out as well). It's nice to have something interesting to type out when learning/practising proper home-row 10-finger typing (which is why I wound up learning Dvorak typing, as KTouch has a really good course for it).
This is how I would practice writing shorthand. It's good too because you can practice reading what you wrote a few weeks later (this is as important as writing tbh), and if you really fucked up you can go back and see what the word was supposed to be.
I like this approach; for programming you want something like typing.io to type existing software. I find most of the accuracy in coding is being able to type operators and brackets and such, which don’t feature in normal text.
Practicing on code sounds dumb because you could just write code, but I find drilling this way to be really helpful as you can just focus all your attention on training accuracy. (Added benefit - you perhaps subconsciously memorize your frameworks code if you use, say, Django to practice your Python.)
Practicing on code sounds dumb because you could just write code, but I find drilling this way to be really helpful as you can just focus all your attention on training accuracy. (Added benefit - you perhaps subconsciously memorize your frameworks code if you use, say, Django to practice your Python.)
Reminds me of the 1980s where people would type in BASIC programs out of magazines.
Neat. I coded a similar idea for fun, back when Java Applets still roamed the earth. The backend would harvest Project Gutenberg files and the frontend would present those to the user.
Someone should hook this up to train an ML like which “types out a sequence of words for a human”
It’s a really small, dumb improvement but it’s something ML would be useful for and you probably won’t need much data to produce something reasonable. Current “simulated typing” looks clearly simulated, as every letter has an even delay and humans don’t type evenly (e.g. I’m sure repeat letters are typed faster)
It’s a really small, dumb improvement but it’s something ML would be useful for and you probably won’t need much data to produce something reasonable. Current “simulated typing” looks clearly simulated, as every letter has an even delay and humans don’t type evenly (e.g. I’m sure repeat letters are typed faster)
https://github.com/jankrepl/mltype is something like this. It is tuned for programmers though. And the quality of generated text might vary a lot. But it gives reasonable char sequences.
Long time ago I really liked https://play.typeracer.com/
On thay site you can race against other players (or bots?).
There were also those programs that could teach you how to type with 10 fingers, but they were very boring. The one I remember would start by teaching you 2 character combinations (like gh zo wm er jk) what was very dull.
On thay site you can race against other players (or bots?).
There were also those programs that could teach you how to type with 10 fingers, but they were very boring. The one I remember would start by teaching you 2 character combinations (like gh zo wm er jk) what was very dull.
This is a really cool site. I’ve been using it extensively when learning to touch type. It’s maybe less efficient, but much more enjoyable than plain typing exercises.
Shameless plug: I’ve also made a somewhat similar site: https://typingtool.app/ because I didn’t really like the look of it.
Shameless plug: I’ve also made a somewhat similar site: https://typingtool.app/ because I didn’t really like the look of it.
A shirt-tail relative started to type out the Bible, though last I heard she had bogged down somewhere around Ecclesiastes. If memory serves, she did this with some of the Game of Thrones books also.
I don't know what she learned about religion or the techniques of the fantasy novel, or whether this made her a better typist.
I don't know what she learned about religion or the techniques of the fantasy novel, or whether this made her a better typist.
I love this, but I wish there were some of these books in other languages. I think it could help language learning a lot!
There is an awesome app called type-fu (type-fu dot com) which uses words, proverbs, quotes, facts, and code as typing material just as some users in the comments requested. It has many layouts, including dvorak, workman, norman, etc., and online version seems to be free.
Even better, type a public domain novel into Wikisource! https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Help:Beginner%27s_guide_to_pr...
I learned touch typing this way in my childhood. I digitised 7-8 novels (Heidi, Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, etc), and it was great fun :)
PS: I didn't measure my speed back then, but it definitely worked. I go at 90+ wpm these days without a sweat!
PS: I didn't measure my speed back then, but it definitely worked. I go at 90+ wpm these days without a sweat!
I bet this works wonders for retention. It might be a great way to study many subjects.
3 weeks ago, I had just bought a mechanical keyboard for the first time in my life. I didn't have a chance to use it properly until I found out about this site. Thank you.
Typing whole novels is a bit too much for me, as I lose interest in 20 mins or a day or two at best, so short content like articles and blogs would be much better.
That’s how I learned to type on a computer keyboard when I was 4yo, some 26 years ago - just rewrite some printed books on a text editor. Highly recommended.
I think I read once that Joan Didion practiced typing the opening of A Farewell to Arms just to get Hemingway's voice into her head.
I’ve always wanted to pay $5/mo to type things.
Why would anybody want to become an expert typist in 2023? Modern speech to text is just so good.
I thought this must be ridiculous. But it's actually pretty cool! Had some fun with it.
This sounds like a great way to practice, but my RSI probably wouldn’t like it much. :-(
I heard of a man who tried to rewrite the Quixote once, re-creating it, line for line
[deleted]
But does this really also help one to improve one's literary skills?
[deleted]
Is this a joke? Why would anyone want to use this?
There are people out there who don't know how to type properly, though I'm not sure if they'd be reading much HN. Most Americans under 40 would have learned touch typing in grade school.
Yeah, I learnt touch typing as a teenager with no instruction and as far as I'm aware most of my friends also did. My mum used to type with one finger at that time but I think by now even she would struggle to find a use for this tool
>Most Americans under 40 would have learned touch typing in grade school
That's interesting. Do they really use it though? What I can see from other part of the world that even developers don't use it.
That's interesting. Do they really use it though? What I can see from other part of the world that even developers don't use it.
i feel like many typing tutors allow you to import lessons as text files?
They do, but this simplifies the process significantly.
Think of it as a purpose built variant of typing apps. You can also do many things on Excel or Word, but sometimes it's more convenient to perform some tasks with a purpose-built app that is built for your problem domain.
I'll give this a try for sure when I'm on my computer.
Think of it as a purpose built variant of typing apps. You can also do many things on Excel or Word, but sometimes it's more convenient to perform some tasks with a purpose-built app that is built for your problem domain.
I'll give this a try for sure when I'm on my computer.
the dark theme color contrasts hurt my eyes
or write a blog
...
Initially, Menard's method was to be relatively simple: Learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918-be Miguel de Cervantes. Pierre Menard weighed that course (I know he pretty thoroughly mastered seventeenth-century Castilian) but he discarded it as too easy. Too impossible, rather!, the reader will say. Quite so, but the undertaking was impossible from the outset, and of all the impossible ways of bringing it about, this was the least interesting. To be a popular novelist of the seventeenth century in the twentieth seemed to Menard to be a diminution. Being, somehow, Cervantes, and arriving thereby at the Quixote-that looked to Menard less challenging (and there- fore less interesting) than continuing to be Pierre Menard and coming to the Quixote through the experiences of Pierre Menard." ~ Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (Borges)
https://www.jenliu.info/DIAP/Borges-Pierre-Menard_text.pdf