Only thing I'm concerned is touch typing. Rather annoying is to look away from the monitor just to locate correct key.
Typing Practice for Programmers
141–150 of 172 posts
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#142I find this a bit silly. It wants me to type a whole bunch of things I never actually type. I could type the python function within emacs with less than half the strokes that were required by the exercise. And anytime I'm doing any sort of programming that ends up being repetitive or with frequent structures that are difficult to type I'll build something to make it a few keystrokes to pop a template.
I think the best practice is putting your skill to use. When I play with a new keyboard style (e.g. Dvorak / Programmer's Dvorak) or editor, I give myself a period of acclimation where I _know_ I'll be slower, but the investment in time will potentially pay off dividends once I get used to it. I've gone down a few roads that didn't work out, but also a few that have. When it comes down to plain old typing speed, short burst typing like messaging or command lines have proven to me more productive than typing exercises that mean nothing to me and don't apply to the things I regularly type.
Regardless, the developers here have put together a nice interface and figured out a good way to apply it across multiple languages. If they added a few shortcuts that are commonly present in IDEs to get real completion strokes I think this kind of a tool might get pretty popular.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#143This test is a bit..silly to me. I am an enthusiast of mechanical keyboards, own a few, and have enjoyed typing for as long as I can remember. On top of that, I can type quite fast - depending on which keyboard I am using as it does affect me a bit I reach about 720cpm on my mx blues (ducky keyboard) and about 670cpm on my KBP keyboard with Matias Quiet Click switches, which is my slowest board. (on the 10 fast finge…
For me, it's not really about typing fast, it is more about typing without making mistakes. I find hitting the delete key too often is frustrating and it interrupts my flow. Unfortunately I never mastered that skill, I can type quite fast, but most of it is errorsome. (eg, I made three mistakes alone typing the word unfortunately..)
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I believe that a programming specific typing practice program such as this one does serve a purpose as even though I can type well in a normal setting, I am much slower with many of the special characters as they just aren't used as much outside of the programming environment.
Actually, this doesn't seem helpful at all. Rarely am I typing the entire program without any autocompletion and intellisense based assists.
Those generally complete identifiers, not the various symbols like "->" "*" "&" "{" etc... So I think the parent's point is still valid. If anything autocompletion increases the symbol-to-letter typing ratio.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#145Hi, is this a Open Source Project? I love it.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#146typing.io is much better in my opinion
But it's not free, I also love typing.io, it's clean and simple, but I have to pay to upload my own code pieces.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I encourage you to drink heavily. A friend of mine learned to touch-type because he came in to work hung over too many times, and felt queasy switching between looking at keyboard and screen... so it made him learn to touch-type...
Your advice is "drink heavily"? Is this a kind of joke?
If you're a native English speaker, you really have no excuse for not detecting that it's a joke.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#148For anybody learning to touch type, I highly recommend looking at alternative keyboard layouts. I use QFMLWY, which reduces typing effort by 43% in comparison to QWERTY (for some measure of "effort") [1]. It greatly reduced my wrist pain, and just feels much "lighter" to type. [1]: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
I'd be delighted to just have a querty with a Swedish layout, but with some English mappings for \[]{}, all of which require AltGr on a Swedish layout. Having those available on a better (or no) modifier would save my wrists a lot of pain.
I would recommend that you just use the US layout when coding. It's not like you need åäö when writing source code. The only time I use the Swedish layout is when writing emails or chatting, and a keyboard shortcut to change layouts quickly solves that for me.
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#149I prefer this one: http://hackertyper.net/
Re: Typing Practice for Programmers
#150Unfortunately, in the real world, typing doesn't always work like in the test.
For example I'm a heavy IDE user and I know exactly what kind of autocompletes it will present me when I write something or what kind of shortcuts I can use, which made this really weird to use.
For example I rarely write 'function', I write 'fun' and press enter because I know 'function' will be the first item in the autocomplete list. When I'm writing a variable for the second time I feel the latency at which the IDE will autocomplete me. If there are more variables with similar names I know which characters to type to make it autocomplete the right one. If I have a variable named weirdNamedLongAssVariableName I will write wNLA and press Enter.
This confused me a lot on a subconscious level when I first tried the examples on the website.