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Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

typing.io

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Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#61

Post by ultimatedelman »

padolsey wrote: post #9

Nice UI! For programmers trying to improve their general typing speed I reckon it could help, but for me it creates an almost uncanny experience. In the JS test I found it incredibly difficult to type out `/^(?:parents|prev(?:Until|All))/`, because my mind interprets it somewhat like its AST -- i.e. I see a delimited regular expression with an uncaptured group nested within another uncaptured group. I focus on the op…

i also had this thought, but i realized the value in this is not necessarily understanding the code that you're typing but rather getting better at typing characters in context and in certain sequences. for instance, i realized that i am terrible at typing } and ], but i assume that's because i have an IDE that does autocomplete for those chars. other typing programs i've used are just transcribing sentences, but in programming there are so many other characters we use in the middle of typing things.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#62

Post by evincarofautumn »

eric_h wrote: post #26
Taurenking wrote: post #13

Nice web app! One thing though, notify the user when he has Caps Lock on ;)

What programmer has a caps lock key? It's mapped to Ctrl on my machine.

Any time I’m working in a C-like language and need to type something in SHOUTY_CASE, usually macros/enumerations/constants.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#63

Post by ps4fanboy »

thatthatis wrote: post #41

This is an example of a product I would buy, but would never buy as subscription software. $60/year to infinity is about $600 at a 10% discount rate. Sorry, but it's probably worth about $25 to me, not $600.

I was also disappointed it was subscription.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#64

Post by burntsushi »

Edmond wrote: post #51
kevinkyyro wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your disagreement is kind of out of place here; no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors. Besides, whether or not you use autocomplete is orthogonal to your framework choice.

* no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors No, but it can be inferred. I agree that code completion and framework choice can be mutually exclusive; my general point is that a developer's decision to use a tool should consider other productivity factors, not just the expected ones.

> No, but it can be inferred.

I don't think so. We ought to be able to describe our own experiences without making a claim about productivity in general. It seems clear to me that peeters was doing exactly this, and not implying that his experience ought to be indicative of others.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#65

Post by dopamean »

Edmond wrote: post #51
kevinkyyro wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your disagreement is kind of out of place here; no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors. Besides, whether or not you use autocomplete is orthogonal to your framework choice.

* no claim was made of where the productivity boost of autocomplete ranks against other development factors No, but it can be inferred. I agree that code completion and framework choice can be mutually exclusive; my general point is that a developer's decision to use a tool should consider other productivity factors, not just the expected ones.

The guy literally said that this app made him realize how much he takes his IDE for granted and then he provided examples of what he meant. I don't see what there is to disagree with there or what could be inferred .

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#66

Post by esmevane »

parm289 wrote: post #56
jbcurtin2 wrote: post #22

This tool is perfect. - I'll recommend to you that you're marketing it all wrong. - I'd make this into a tech-interview/learn a new language site. Before I crack any book for any language, I download gists of the code and start typing it out. Imagine, python/c the hard way in this? What is a namespace? What is an import? Inline explanations of what you're doing would go a long way. Dare I say it, this could be the fi…

Spot on. This would be great as a way to learn new frameworks/libraries as well.

I completely agree.

Additionally, in the process of mimicking code, the only thing I could do was think about what I was writing - and in some cases I discovered that I would have done it differently than some of the libraries I use every day.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#67

Post by jdalt »

I love this site. I went through every lesson like 6 months ago because, although I could type prose very quickly, I had not mastered the programmer typing that it takes to quickly experiment on the unix shell or hit opening braces and parens with consistency.

Although typing certainly isn't a big development bottleneck, being able to type fast lowers your overall cognitive load and lets you stay in the problem domain you're working on.

It's not like loud noises are a programming bottleneck either -- but it's certainly nice to eliminate a nuisance.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#68

Post by DennisP »

petercooper wrote: post #30

Learning to type quickly is a valuable skill. But with programming, is typing speed a common bottleneck? It seems akin to learning how to turn a steering wheel more quickly or how to hammer faster.

I've known people to make the same argument against learning a good text editor. My reply in either case is the same: maybe I spend more time thinking, but being able to quickly turn my thoughts into code helps me stay in flow, so I keep thinking, instead of getting bored and checking out what's on reddit and HN.

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#69

Post by djent »

Something that bothered me about this is the fact that I prefer to type brackets - (), [], {}, - at the same time, and then move my cursor inside them to type. It makes sure I don't forget a closing bracket, and it's faster than searching for the bracket + shift key twice (once at the open bracket and again at the closing bracket).

Re: Typing.io: Typing Practice for Programmers

#70

Post by spo81rty »

Edmond wrote: post #31
peeters wrote: post #25

All this does is make me realize how much I take my IDE for granted. In no example that I tried did I even get past the first line before I missed using IDE autocomplete or shortcuts. It got under my skin that I had to type out each character. Take the Scala example. I would NEVER type "@SerialVersionUID" with correct casing. I'd maybe type "@Ser" and then auto complete. Or "@SV" and then auto complete. I can't recal…

I have to somewhat disagree, I think autocomplete is one of those IDE features that is no doubt quite useful but I think its contribution to developer productivity is greatly exaggerated... frameworks that are well designed for instance are far more important contributors to developer productivity... so my question to you is, what if a tool has a framework that allows you to get a lot done with significantly less cod…

Having frameworks is great. But you still have to type code to use whatever those frameworks are. Having intellisense is critical for any IDE. How do I know what methods exist in your framework without intellisense? Without intellisense you might as well be programming in a text file.
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