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Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

typelit.io

21–30 of 394 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#21

Nice, this is very enjoyable. Will definitely pick this up again, after I get a new ergonomic keyboard. Would be nice to also type code from famous open-source projects, to practice hitting all the parens etc.

Though, I would add that just copying code verbatim doesn't really follow how people write code. It's not usually, or ever have I seen it, written in a linear fashion. Cursors jump up and down, you open a brace/bracket/parenthesis and almost always immediately close it, then proceed to insert code. Many languages are written from the inside out (like swizzling some lisp code together). Most people don't think "Ok, this is the code I am going to write" and proceed to type it in "page order" (I can't think of another phrase, it's early). Type hints, docs, access modifiers, can be added after the fact. Then constant refactoring occurs as things are broken out into their atomic parts. Then what you are left with is the result. It's akin to tracing a sculpture, there was a lot of work that went on before that sculpture became something beautiful.

That's all.

This is still a neat product. I typed a page from 1984. Makes me sad that I can't seem finish my own book or screenplays.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#22
This might have an unintended use as a copywriting tool.

There’s an exercise called copyworking where you rewrite copy written by someone else to internalize the rhythm, flow, punctuation, and word choice. I use it for shorter ad copy and have found it to be very valuable.

I do it with pen/paper as I find that it “sticks” better, but lots of people are resistant to that so a tool like yours might be useful.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#23
post #19

This is very cool. I did find that I sometimes got confused about where the insertion point was supposed to be, especially when backing up and correcting mistakes. Having the letter ahead of the point highlighted in was inducing a lot of off-by-one errors in my head. I'd prefer a normal insertion-point cursor between characters, with the correctly typed letters bolded and only the errors highlighted. Besides that, it…

Hello -- thanks for the suggestion! I'll certainly add options to toggle the cursor style (or make it invisible, even) in later updates. Thanks again!

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#25

Why is it that I find on certain websites (this one included) that some keystrokes aren't recognised when I use Safari? The letter 'e' not being recognised is common. Chrome works fine. This is on a Mac with Catalina and a British keyboard.

Yeah, having a similar issue. Catalina, American keyboard, Firefox. Halfway through the second sentence it started flagging everything as incorrect no matter what I typed.

Re: Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

#28
post #15

Amazing idea, really I'm impressed. This intrigued me at first glance as a fun typing exercise, as I've always struggled with typing - I started using computers way before they started teaching typing around here, so my typing is far from the optimal 10 finger method, but I've always found typing exercises mind numbingly boring. However, as I started typing The call of Cthulhu, I'm now much more intrigued by this as…

I've always thought of typing lessons as being a thing from long before computers. Back then it was treated as a serious skill which could lead directly to employment. Now it's just something you're expected to know.

I had plenty of basic IT education at school, but was never taught how to type at all.

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