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

typelit.io

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

#251

Post by nostoc »

technoplato wrote: post #103
rozab wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s an interesting idea that we still “need” typing practice. We do it every day why would we need to practice extra? To provide an additional use case, my wife just got me an awesome and completely configurable ergonomic keyboard for my birthday and I’m considering switching to Dvorak or Coleman layouts after typing QWERY my entire life. I NEED a long form practice like this instead of just typing nonsense short bl…

If you don't learn proper technique but type often, you will organically develop some method of typing that may work for you.

But it's easy when learning a skill without guidance to end up into a local maximum. It's easy to end up in a situation where you're typing reasonably well, but could do way better with training.

I'd argue that typing occupies a big enough place in our life that we should be very efficient at it.

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

#255

Post by mantap »

yesenadam wrote: post #207
bravura wrote: post #2

"[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…

> Amazingly it's like music. Maybe he means like jazz musicians? (I'm one.) Every musician I know has transcribed solos. You pick some solo you like but have no idea what they're doing, transcribe it, and learn to play it along with them. Bits and pieces perhaps will rub off in your own playing. You don't want to sound like them, but it's good to be able to if you want – and for that you need to absorb their style, s…

In language learning there's something called the "Input hypothesis" which states that we learn languages primarily by reading and listening (consuming input), rather than production of language.

The reasoning is that when you produce output you are by definition producing something at your own level, so little improvement occurs. When you consume input (and transcription is a great way to do it), you are consuming input of a native speaker - or in the case of Jazz, a master player - which is at a much higher quality level than what you could produce yourself. So input drives the learning process.

The exception is for motor e.g. pronunciation or playing technique, which do benefit from practice.

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

#257

Post by tsumnia »

m463 wrote: post #114
bravura wrote: post #2

"[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…

Reminds me ... in a computer nerd way ... of "python the hard way" (which used to be very open/free, now it has changed) You would not read or download the lessons. You typed all the python in word by word. I think it really helped the learning process to type it out. It was slow and deliberate, even to mistyping and making mistakes (and fix them).

Yup! To learn music, cooking, martial arts, etc., you start by following someone else to build the muscle memory on doing the skill. As a follow-up, my own research [1] on retyping code showed students earned higher grades and submitted less erroneous code. Replicating technical skills is a common practice technique that seems to have been "lost" in current CS education.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3373165.3373177

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

#258

Post by ineptwriter »

Octouroboros wrote: post #48
ineptwriter wrote: post #43

Neat project! Would be an interesting way to read a book. Not sure if this is a built-in feature for typing practice. But one small obstacle I encountered was that if I missed a space or I put in an extra character, but kept typing, then everything that came after was in red (wrong). May be hard to implement, but maybe letting a single mistake show in these instances without marking everything that follows as a mista…

Hello! That's definitely not supposed to be happening. If you don't mind me asking, what browser are you using? In the meantime, Chrome should work ok

Thanks - I was using Firefox on a mac. But you're right, Chrome doesn't have this issue.

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

#259

Post by tsumnia »

codeisawesome wrote: post #97
bravura wrote: post #2

"[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…

Would be super interesting if this holds true for 'copying out' code as well... it's all the edge case handling that can get boring to re-type out without context / comments...

It does hold out! Here is a link to my research on retyping code [1]. To summarize my findings, students that regularly completed typing exercises earned higher course grades and submitted less erroneous code.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3373165.3373177

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

#260

Post by chrisfrantz »

Octouroboros wrote: post #33
voxl wrote: post #24

This feels like a home run, talk to some publishers about allowing their books on their for a fee and charge a subscription to type those books and maybe you've got a viable product.

Hey that sounds like a solid idea -- I might just give that a try!

Start with the startupy books and it might be easier to get ahold of the publishers. Plus you might get a bit of an influencer impact when they share on social.

Think about how masterclass does it, then niche down into startups and follow the playbook.

Feel free to ping me (email in profile) if you end up going down this path and need suggestions for initial folks to reach out to.

Oh actually, while you’re on the front page of HN, drop a contact form on the page with something like “interested in having your book hosted?”

Might “fill the funnel” with even less work. Good luck!

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