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Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

keysmash.no

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Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#41

Post by karaterobot »

chriskanan wrote: post #20

What made me very fast was playing MUDs during high school (25+ years ago, and specifically Arctic MUD, http://mud.arctic.org/ ). Have to type fast or your character is going to die. Once you get used to it, an ergonomic keyboard helps a lot to speed up typing as well.

Ha, same thing here. I distinctly remember my fingers moving of their own accord hours after I stopped playing, as I worked out what I was going to do the next day. I played on a BBS, and we only had 30 minutes a day, so I would rehearse for it.

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#43

Post by drc500free »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #36
lycos wrote: post #33

My parents forced me to take typing lessons on typewriters in the 90s and I am thankful they did, of course that had some technical limitations in regard to speed but it definitely made me a great blind typist which is the main foundation for typing fast in my opinion. Some years later in school I also had a typing class at some point and the teachers thought I cheated because of my high scores so I had to take the t…

Can you take this please http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/ It's all fun and games until it's code. I barely clear 50 wpm on that, and I know where every key is without looking. I actually dread typing those 3-10 lines on that test, which is how I know I could use more practice, but can't find the time for it.

For me, the excessive spacing makes this pretty painful. If we need a whitespace buffer inside every set of parentheses, I'd expect the IDE to do it for me.

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#45

Post by dylan604 »

lycos wrote: post #33

My parents forced me to take typing lessons on typewriters in the 90s and I am thankful they did, of course that had some technical limitations in regard to speed but it definitely made me a great blind typist which is the main foundation for typing fast in my opinion. Some years later in school I also had a typing class at some point and the teachers thought I cheated because of my high scores so I had to take the t…

>My parents forced me to take typing lessons on typewriters in the 90s

same for me as well. I was originally only going to take a single semester, but wound up taking the second semester as well. The first semester was all "A space S space D space F space" and gaining the muscle memory on how to type. Probably one of the single most useful courses in school for my everyday use. The second semester was much more focused on being an executive assistant with emphasis on how to properly format documents and that kind of thing. Easy-A GPA padding course, but I didn't complain too much since it was one of those classes where I was the only male in the class. They started us off on the older clackity-clack style arms, but if you became fast enough to out type the machine, you could progress to a speedball.

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#46

Post by dylan604 »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #36
lycos wrote: post #33

My parents forced me to take typing lessons on typewriters in the 90s and I am thankful they did, of course that had some technical limitations in regard to speed but it definitely made me a great blind typist which is the main foundation for typing fast in my opinion. Some years later in school I also had a typing class at some point and the teachers thought I cheated because of my high scores so I had to take the t…

Can you take this please http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/ It's all fun and games until it's code. I barely clear 50 wpm on that, and I know where every key is without looking. I actually dread typing those 3-10 lines on that test, which is how I know I could use more practice, but can't find the time for it.

neat idea, but horrendous font selection. the upper case "I" in deletedIds is indistinguishable from lower case "L". also, didn't like the feel of typos. typically, I know when I make a typo and immediately hit the delete key to fix it. the fact that there's no indication of the typo visually other than the highlight stops progressing is counter-intuitive. I would much rather see the incorrect chars typed as is but then maybe have the highlighting change color. also agree with a sibling comment about unnecessary white spaces, while the writing code in a minimized format is also counter intuitive. hitting enter at line endings is muscle memory just as much as cmd-s/ctrl-s after completing blocks is for me.

edit: after taking the first attempt and then writing this post, I went back to try it again. It said 6 wpm. Tried it again, and it said 5 wpm. That's clearly BS. I thought the first one was an accidental key press that started the timer while I made my comment here. But after restarting it to get an even slower ridiculously wrong time just really makes me mad I wasted my time.

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#47

Post by aragonite »

One thing I've discovered is that I subvocalize not just when I read but also when I type, and that this is a not insignificant source of my typos (as when I subvocalize "at the wrong time"). This is especially obvious when I try to transfer a passcode I received on my phone to the computer: I see the passcode, subvocalize it once, turn to my computer, subvocalize another time while my fingers asynchronously type out each letter (often the promises resolve out of order!). But the subvocalization is equally present in ordinary typing, just I have to pay attention to notice it.

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#48

Post by throw1234651234 »

lycos wrote: post #40
throw1234651234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you take this please http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/ It's all fun and games until it's code. I barely clear 50 wpm on that, and I know where every key is without looking. I actually dread typing those 3-10 lines on that test, which is how I know I could use more practice, but can't find the time for it.

Fine I'll try despite having a painful hand right now, my WPM mention was not coding specific btw but I am always happy to help a throwaway account; I got "You can type 80 words per minute", and slightly more pain now. The biggest thing that got me here is that it doesn't match my coding style and especially whitespace at line endings were annoying. Also I'm on the couch on my laptop, not behind proper desk.

Still, thanks for trying. If it helps, I have been using this "throwaway" for years!

Re: Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed

#49

Post by Unbefleckt »

fragmede wrote: post #42

It's gotta be fun, and Typing for the Dead is a good one. https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/246580/ More recently though, there's https://monkeytype.com/ and https://play.typeracer.com/ which are fun little breaks during the day.

You can get the PC por tof the Dream cast version for free on myabandonware and it even has fairly normal typing tutorials and stuff to compliment the regular zombie killing modes. It's great fun and I highly recommend it.
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