Great idea, well implemented.
Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
361–370 of 394 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#362Great idea, well implemented.
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#363Cool idea:
Feedback: When I miss typing a character, all subsequent characters are marked wrong (red), even when they are actually correct. For example, let's say I write "paralel" instead of "parallel". The E and L would be marked wrong, even though only the L is missing.
Using a measure like edit distance could be a better way to identify incorrect characters.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#364"[Hunter S. Thompson] chose, rather than writing original copy, to re-type books like The Great Gatsby and a lot of Norman Mailer, the Naked and the Dead, a lot of Hemingway. He would sit down there on an old type-writer and type every word of those books and he said, 'I just wanna feel what it feels like to write that we'll.'" HST: "If you type out somebody's work, you learn a lot about it. Amazingly it's like music…
This is myth and it is wrong. Writing does not proceed letter by letter, word by word, paragraph by paragraph. Earlier writing is deleted, moved, revised. Passages are moved earlier or later. Key passages are rewritten. Etc. Typing character-by-character an entire novel will likely teach you little about the act of literary creation.
I'm not sure the sources in the parent comment are making the argument that you are countering. Neither suggests to me the claim that using a touch typing website, in our case, replicates the complete process of writing literature.
The second quote in the parent comment is "If you type out somebody's work, you learn a lot about it." - the focus is learning more about the finished product. And I read "I just wanna feel what it feels like to write that well." as about experiencing the quality of the finished product.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#365This is really cool. Some feedback: - I'd prefer if the words not typed were in a lighter shade of grey so there were greater contrast between them and the words I've completed. I know this would reduce contrast with the page but I found the fact that they are such a strong grey to be somewhat of a distraction. Different people will have different preferences here, so maybe a slider or knob that can be used to adjust…
You can correct all mistakes by using backspace and retyping what you're meant to type. I got a 100% accuracy in the end but that's what I expected as it's the same behavior in other typing exercises as well.
Interesting. That absolutely doesn't work on my machine (2015 Macbook Pro, Catalina, latest Chrome). Backspace simply does nothing.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you a “different” person while on Ritalin? My wife’s a teacher and these days a lot of kids are on Ritalin. She says the kids that “need” it are more manageable when taking it, but it does change their personality. They are less... “lively”.
I certainly hope you are joking. The statement sends a chill down the spine. When did people forget that children are, indeed, quite human?
Not a joke. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And you don't get this knowledge simply by copying out great works. Well, I think the point is that you may get knowledge, but nt necessarily of the type that lets you make another great work. Doing is an act of learning, whether very small amounts of learning as you do something you've done countless times before, or possibly large amounts of learning as you try something absolutely new, or learning about yourself…
I think we're mostly in agreement: copying is useful . It is not complete . And any learning process which focuses largely on output or product rather than process , shares this deficiency. To your other point, serendipitous discovery is very much a thing. I find that it is helped by haviing a conceptual structure or mental model which allows slotting new concepts from unrelated areas into a larger whole. Recent exam…
We are, I wasn't intending to rebut you, but instead to expand on a a specific aspect you touched upon and tie it back to the context of the discussion in a slightly different way.
> I find that it is helped by haviing a conceptual structure or mental model which allows slotting new concepts from unrelated areas into a larger whole.
I very much agree. In fact, I think discovering new mental models is one of the best ways to come to new understandings about things. My entire stance on topics has changed in the past when I found on revisiting it I now had a mental model that I thought applied better/more closely than the ones available previously, and looking at the topic from that new perspective yielded a different opinion.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#368Would be great to point at code repositories and be able to practice typing programs too!
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we're mostly in agreement: copying is useful . It is not complete . And any learning process which focuses largely on output or product rather than process , shares this deficiency. To your other point, serendipitous discovery is very much a thing. I find that it is helped by haviing a conceptual structure or mental model which allows slotting new concepts from unrelated areas into a larger whole. Recent exam…
We are, I wasn't intending to rebut you, but instead to expand on a a specific aspect you touched upon and tie it back to the context of the discussion in a slightly different way. > I find that it is helped by haviing a conceptual structure or mental model which allows slotting new concepts from unrelated areas into a larger whole. I very much agree. In fact, I think discovering new mental models is one of the best…
Quite.
My entire stance on topics has changed in the past...
I keep seeing this, revisiting topics, questions, books, etc., and immediately seeing some now-obvious relationship or aspect. It's an argument for returning, at least occasionally, to familiar ground. Though it generally helps to have journeyed elsewhere.
Also for both extensive and intensive reading. Domains which focus exclusively, or even only extensively, on intensive analysis and exploration, seem more prone to going off the rails or ending up at dead ends.
Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels
#370Looks cool. Out of interest, are you doing anything to mine the data gathered, eg building models of common typos or for user "fingerprinting" from key timing? (the latter may be a bit creepy if users aren't aware this could be done).
[deleted]