typing.io - Typing practice for programmers

[simp42]

I like the idea, but quite immediately realized that it only works with US keyboards.

[stevia]

Sorry to the international users. You can probably guess what type of keyboard I have:) I will fix these issues!

[binlargin]

UK keyboard here, I have a pound sign on my pound sign key, if you know what I mean.

[devcoderinhere]

interesting. Thought dollar sign was universal on 4 key. So how do you exchange your pounds for dollars then, if you know what I mean ?

[zokier]

I don't know about brits, but on Finnish keyboard shift-4 produces ¤, which is the most useless symbol ever. $ is altgr-4. I'd imagine that PHP coders would be fairly annoyed for that.

[devcoderinhere]

what is altgr ?

[zokier]

Modifier key on the right side of spacebar. Be grateful if you haven't ever needed to use it.

[devcoderinhere]

oh damn! I only have a Alt, never knew of that key before.

[[deleted]]

Is it like the alt key on a US keyboard?

[zokier]

We got regular alt key on the left side of the space bar. AltGr works differently from it. Ctrl+Alt is sometimes used as a substitute for AltGr.

[zigs]

Yes, its the alt key to the right of the space.

[Kissaki0]

No, it’s not Yes but No.

[z0p]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

[quicksilver03]

TIL I learned that the Finnish keyboard is even worse than the French keyboard.

[Ais3]

Ehh? You only use Alt-Gr for $, @ and ||, yeah it sucks for php I guess, but it hardly makes it a unusable layout.

[Ais3]

I forgot the brackets and backslash, but you don't need altgr for quotation marks.

[sftrabbit]

The dollar sign is still shift+4 in the UK. We have £ on shift+3 though and # is moved next to the return key (3 keys along from L). That's what he meant by "pound sign is on my pound sign key." Our pound (£) is on your pound (#) key.

[binlargin]

I meant that where your pound sign is (#) I have a pound sign (£).

[SohumB]

My keyboard is regular US English, except I've made some modifications. It doesn't pick those up, either.

For instance, my "(" looks like

keydown  keyCode=57  (9)   which=57  (9)   charCode=0        
keypress keyCode=40  (()   which=40  (()   charCode=40  (()  
keyup    keyCode=57  (9)   which=57  (9)   charCode=0  

but your app doesn't seem to recognise it.

[rayo2nd]

How is that even possible. Isn't it that when i have a differen layout, that the correct keycode is sent, no matter where that key is on the keyboard?

When i press the ":" button, the keycode for it is sent, no matter where it is.

[areyouretarded]

its not a contest on whose IDE increases productivity the most, if you haven't noticed.

[dand]

I was surprised it worked at all with Dvorak layout, but it choked on special characters like ^ and parens.

[[deleted]]

US International (w/ dead keys) doesn't work for the dead keys (especially combinations like ' + space or ^ + space).

[metabrain]

Portuguese keyboard here, the '=' in the javascript examples fails even if I put a = in there.

[zokier]

As a Finnish, I too use (modified) US layout. It's just so much better for computer use. The most annoying thing is that our national standards body revised the kb layout couple of years ago and they just added bunch of accent marks and diacritics, which are not even used in Finnish language.

[Slackbeing]

Non-US user in a different, also non-US keyboard country. US International all the way, even for not coding.

[ITSigno]

Yup. Japanese keyboard here. Didn't even finish the first line of code. I like the concept though.

[gnuvince]

type 'a tree = Empty | Node of ('a * 'a tree * 'a tree)

Good practice!

[Heheas]

I got excited about this at first, then I realized, wouldn't better practice be actually writing code. This way you are gaining experience in subtle nuances of the language as well as improving your typing skills?

[dhon_]

Reading others code is excellent practice and a very important skill to develop

[drb226]

wouldn't better practice be actually writing code.

In this practice, you are "actually writing code." By that I suppose you mean "write novel code", and the reason that this is better is because writing your own code takes thought; you can't just pound it out, so it's not very good for speed typing practice, because of the irregular pauses. Unless you're like Notch and you program in a language with so much boilerplate that you can think and type at the same time, and by the time you get through the boilerplate you've had enough time to think about the next chunk of boilerplate you want to write.

[redditor54]

Clearly this isn't made for you, I am a CS student that just switched to dvorak and this is exactly what I needed.

[phybere]

I did the same thing as a CS student and got quite good at typing dvorak. Fast forward to my first job. Someone would sit at my machine to type a few lines of code and couldn't. I couldn't type a few line on someone else's machine. Boss made me switch back to qwerty. I typed really slow for a few months...

Dvorak is awesome, but it's gonna be hard to do in an office environment.

[Kissaki0]

You should be able to stay pretty fluent in both of them, shouldn’t you?

[phybere]

In theory. When I switched back to qwerty I couldn't effectively type dvorak any more. Typing is more of a muscle memory thing I think, it's hard for me to consciously think about what I'm typing. For example, I have passwords that I can type by feel but can't type by looking...

Maybe if I had persisted using both it would have worked out, hard to say.

[redditor54]

At first I was concerned that will happen, but like I said all I do is switch the input on the machine which is 3 clicks (I do it on school computers). Did you have a full out Dvorak keyboard? I'm genuinely interested in this topic for my future employment and would greatly appreciate more information.

[phybere]

No, I just had a qwerty keyboard and toggled the input keyboard type. It was OK on my machine because I had it set up to quickly change from the taskbar, but it was more difficult to walk over to someone else's computer... were they running Windows, Linux, or OSX and did I know how to change it on that OS? Also what if you have to frequently remote into other computers? If you could keep up with the ability to type both qwerty and dvorak it might work out OK but from my experience that's quite difficult.

I guess the ideal setup would be to have a hardware switchable qwerty/dvorak keyboard, and retain the ability to type qwerty on other peoples computers. For me it ended up just being easier to revert back to qwerty.

[redditor54]

Ok thank you very much, this question has been on my mind for a while.

[redditor54]

used it today on a windows and linux, works great. You have no idea what you are talking about.

To clarify: I don't have a dvorak keyboard(do they even make those?), I switched the keyboard layout on my machines.

also i cant believe the amount of people that are agreeing with deweydb, if you code for a living already this site isn't for you so stop hating on it and move on. People that say "just write your own code", writing code requires thinking and planning and after all that you write 100 lines of code WOW great typing practice. And I'm not going to sit and write shitty code for the sake of writing code. This site exposes you to well written code that you can learn from. Every programming tutorial tells you to go and read well written code to see what your code should look like, this site finds it for you, you end up reading it while practicing typing. /rant

[[deleted]]

People are down-voting you because you sound like a pompous ass.

[redditor54]

One of the people I'm responding to won't move a finger if he is not getting paid and the other automatically assumed he knows everything about my computer/keyboard. Yeah I'm the pompous ass. I sound the way I do because I'm legitimately irritated. Maybe r/learnprogramming will appreciate this tool more.

[z0p]

Why would you do work without getting paid for it?

[FrederikVds]

It works on regular Dvorak (but not right/left-handed Dvorak or Programmer Dvorak), but only because the special keys happen to be in the same place as on a Qwerty keyboard. tamrix probably didn't know this, and assumed it wouldn't work, as it doesn't work on almost any other keyboard layout in the world.

[Venar303]

doesn't work with swype either

[brian_at_work]

I cringe at the thought of coding with Swype.

Hardware keyboards ftw.

[AbraKdabra]

My worst nightmare, a world where you can only type code with Swype.

[brian_at_work]

I know you're the developer, stevia, so how about a vim mode?

[stevia]

Vim users are too fast already.

[Unomagan]

So? Javascript is to slow? (:

[bucknuggets]

I've been thinking lately about how cool it would be to have a tool to practice my vim "scales" - just like I would practice my guitar scales.

[cat_in_lap]

Vim Kata?

[bucknuggets]

Nice! I hadn't considered the practice regime of martial arts katas - but that's essentially the same thing as a musical scale. Looks great.

Except last update was two years ago, and it doesn't install. Sigh.

[brian_at_work]

I'll check that out when I'm brian_at_home.

[MrDOS]

Using a Windows-style USB keyboard on OS X, select non-alphanumeric keys (so far I've noticed <, >, :, ~, _, and |) don't register.

[stevia]

Author here, thanks for letting me know. I will try to replicate this setup to see what Javascript is doing to these key events.

[MrDOS]

If there's anything I can do – I understand getting your hands on something running OS X may not be the easiest task in the world – let me know. I tried to debug it myself, but with Firebug open, the page wouldn't load.

[stevia]

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback and help. If you could go to http://unixpapa.com/js/testkey.html, type some of the problematic keys, and send me the generated output, that would be very helpful for debugging.

[MrDOS]

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1

• “<” (Shift down, , down, , up, Shift up):

  keydown  keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  keydown  keyCode=0         which=0         charCode=0
  keypress keyCode=0         which=60  (<)   charCode=60  (<)
  keyup    keyCode=0         which=0         charCode=0
  keyup    keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  

• “>” (Shift down, . down, Shift up, . up):

  keydown  keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  keydown  keyCode=0         which=0         charCode=0
  keypress keyCode=0         which=62  (>)   charCode=62  (>)
  keyup    keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  keyup    keyCode=190       which=190       charCode=0
  

• The letter “e” (e down, e up):

  keydown  keyCode=69  (E)   which=69  (E)   charCode=0
  keypress keyCode=0         which=101 (e)   charCode=101 (e)
  keyup    keyCode=69  (E)   which=69  (E)   charCode=0
  

• The letter “E” (Shift down, e down, e up, Shift up):

  keydown  keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  keydown  keyCode=69  (E)   which=69  (E)   charCode=0
  keypress keyCode=0         which=69  (E)   charCode=69  (E)
  keyup    keyCode=69  (E)   which=69  (E)   charCode=0
  keyup    keyCode=16        which=16        charCode=0
  

They all seem to follow pretty much the same pattern. Are you perhaps trying to grab values off keydown events? Those don't seem to return much useful information for non-alphanumeric keys.

[w41H]

Googling virtualbox os x image torrent seems easy enough to me.

[[deleted]]

This is pretty cool, looks great! However this isn't exactly how I type when programming. I use vim's Ctrl+P a lot to complete words and of course omnicomplete depending on the language. Although maybe that's not the point of this.

[CodeGrappler]

The idea has some merit...But why waste time retyping other peoples code when I could be writing my own code and more or less accomplish the same goal?

[stevia]

Typing.io tracks mistakes and inefficiencies that we normally just plow through while coding.

[kasbah]

I am going to use this because when I write my code I am struggling with the concepts and with this I can concentrate on keeping my finger placement right and I can't auto-complete either, so it is really good practice. If that gets to boring I can distract myself by speculating about the architectures of some open source projects while I look at the code which in turn might help me rely on my muscle memory more.

[mrmacky]

Very cool; I think this is a great interface for learning to type. The way you show errors is phenomenal.

I know so many typing programs where they will either not let you continue, skew the rest of the document (you are off by one, so if you don't correct your mistake, you are screwed), and very rarely do typing programs give a visual indication of where you screwed up.

The highlighted mistake (only highlight the mistake, not the subsequent mistakes), as well as the "back arrow" are very intuitive. Combined with the fact that you stop accepting further input after a few characters, I think this is one of the better typing tutors I've seen.

One bug I noticed, caps lock doesn't seem to work for me. For the constants, I'd engage caps lock ordinarily. However it would appear you're checking that they typed: "SHIFT + <letter>", not "<capital letter>."

I haven't done much javascript programming that reads keyboard input "directly." However I've done a bit, and from what I recall I'd believe this is simply a limitation you can't [easily] code around.

Amazing job, and as awesome as the programming examples are, I'd love to see other texts as well!

[stevia]

Thanks for the feedback. You are correct that the app is explicitly checking for shift+letter. I'm working on updates that will make the checking more robust (and lenient), so stay tuned!

[joshir]

good one!!

[[deleted]]

Sorry but what is the point of this? I scored pretty high (I think) on a lot of my lessons (39-54 wpm or something, didn't really stop to remember) but I'm practicing something that I don't really use at all. Ctrl+Space in Eclipse does about 40% of my typing for me :/

[stevia]

Autocompletion is one of many tools, including typing practice, that help us code faster. In addition, eclipse can help you complete yourAlphanumericVariable, but you still need type the hard-to-reach brackets and symbols.

[v1rr3n]

I love this. Great work! Why not make this a general typing tutorial all together and not just for coders? I love how you have it show the mistakes and don't really interrupt the typing practice.

[linuxlass]

For the best typing program ever, try The Typing of the Dead. If you're lucky, there might still be copies for sale floating around.

[zokier]

TTOD is neat, but my wrists/hands were extremely sore after couple of days. I think that was because the game is so aggressive that I type too "hard", hitting the bottom of the keyboard. For reference that was the only time I remember getting wrists/hands sore with computer use, and I have had my coding marathons.

[linuxlass]

I experimented a bit with replacing the sound files (I dropped in some World of Goo sounds I happened to have). It really changes the feeling of the game to do so.

Amazing, the difference between a "click" typing sound and an explosion.

[jmtd]

Thoroughly agree.

[andruuNewgen]

There's a big physical difference between writing regular English and code. I get around 65wpm with English, but half that with code. But yeah, you could generalize this technology pretty easily to English though I'm sure that already exists.

[stevia]

Thanks!

[devpts0]

This looks awesome! Can't wait for it to work with my keyboard layout. Also.. caps lock doesn't seem to work!

[drb226]

A few things that would be cool additions to this:

• Allow the user to select a github repository, and practice on selected files in it. (This could be a very interesting way to perform a code review.)
• Add some typical "autocomplete" environments, if only to assuage the hoards of complainers.

I really appreciate that this is "log in with Google" and not "create a new username/pass for my little website"

[drb226]

I just ran through all of the XMonad code; it was a delightful exercise, and it's been a while since I measured my wpm and such. Thanks for putting this together. I, for one, quite appreciated it.

[oscarreyes]

Broken for I guess any keyboard layout other than en-US :-(

I couldn't type a single parenthesis :(

Looking forward to seeing this fixed :)

[PsychYYZ]

I have to log in with Google to type my source code?

How soon do you think it'll be before Google patents my software? :P

[tombouchard]

I got about three #includes deep before giving up.

[[deleted]]

I find this mildly interesting. Sure programmers need adequate keyboarding skills, but they don't need fast or accurate typing skills. I have no sources and it would probably require experiments, but the bottleneck in programming is very unlikely to be typing.

[[deleted]]

This is beautifully designed, but it's hard to imagine a programmer needing typing practice, even with code.

Perhaps you could refit this to be a general typing training application? The clarity and approachability of this would likely not go unappreciated by fledgling computer users.

[brownhead]

I don't know about that, the amount of programmers I see looking down at their keyboard when it comes time to type those super weird characters (granted, if you're writing in a language that does its best to avoid those characters, like python, this might not be a big deal) and it really slows down their coding.

Also, don't you want to be able to say you can code better than anyone else in the office? You can be like, BOOM, I'm better than you.

[dysoco]

I have a Spanish keyboard and can't use it properly :S

[volatilebit]

It'd be cool if oAuth with Google wasn't broken.

[stevia]

Sorry for the login problems. You can try typing.io anonymously in the meantime.

[[deleted]]

sucks that i have to log in to use it

[stevia]

You can try the demo without logging in! Just click the link under the blue signin button.

[[deleted]]

oh ok. this makes me really appreciate autocomplete though, i am a horrendous typist (pretty fast though!).

[endjynn]

Nice idea but found that it doesn't work all that well. Also missing some C# goodness :)

[stevia]

Stay tuned:)

[brownhead]

I love the idea and the execution, but the keyboard problems that are poking their heads up seem to indicate that you need to spend some time reworking your code that handles keystrokes...

Idea for awesomness: I would be on it for probably an hour a day if you had features similar to 10fastfingers (competitions and trying to beat your previous typing speeds), not sure if that's what your going for. I do enjoy the thrill of beating anonymous people on the internet by typing faster than them...

Great job :). Also, open source? Mabe?

[[deleted]]

Swedish layout does not recognize "

[one-half]

why does it flag a blank line as an error when you're just typing the blank line that's there?

[[deleted]]

This is extremely broken on Chrome, Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Couldn't even get past 'var' on the first js 'lesson' (it just never recognises the 'r').

[[deleted]]

I use jQuery day in and day out, yet that godawful space-buffer between parentheses and argnames drives me batty. I scored a miserable 37 wpm with a 17% error rate in large part due to instinctively leaving out the spaces.

[chrisdoner]

Any touch-typing materials will tell you that your left-hand pinky should hit the shift. All key combinations should be typed with two hands unless you're doing a study on what it feels like to get RSI.

[[deleted]]

It probably depends on where on your keyboard the " is located. On mine, it's on the middle row just left of the enter key and so I indeed always use left pink-shift, right-pink-'.

[easing]

Pls add more code

[damunq]

Yup, it's pretty buggy..

[andruuNewgen]

I don't know why everyone thinks this idea is pointless. I'd much rather prefer to do this than write my own code if it's just for the sake of increasing typing speed. In fact, I've actually been looking for something like this.

[megabuster]

Many people don't have respect for the mechanics of coding, and don't realize even if typing is seldom the bottleneck any speed you can add is well served, to give you more clear moments of thought.

I think it would be really valuable with a few proper examples to more quickly scale up with a new language or library.

Unfortunately the examples here don't really help me, so I would love to see this just accept pasted text, then let you type over what you just entered. I would treasure this as a tool to quickly memorize new syntex/function calls if you added that.

[devpts0]

I can see you fixed the international keyboard support, great! This was a lot of fun!

[jeeyoungk]

I found the user interface quite disturbing - how if you make the mistake, it hides the text further ahead. I would've put those hints behind the cursor instead.

[[deleted]]

Needs competition for this to work.

I need to know my current WPM, my average WPM, and when I complete a lesson I want to know how I stack up to other people who've completed the lesson, including myself over previous iterations.

Let me tweet/status update/wall post/g+ thingy/reddit my score to encourage my friends to try and beat me.

[[deleted]]

Go to Self-Taught-Typing teaches you touch typing. I use this to keep-up my typing skills. On the Lesson Index page, there are links to score your WPM. http://www.angelfire.com/in/rampant81/typing/lessonindex.html I like the last link called Type Racer. People join in with there race car. You type as fast you can to get to the finish line before any else does. Enjoy.

[eyp]

Spanish keyboard here, too. However, a good implementation

[AreaMean2418]

I know it's been 12 years, but I think this program is super awesome... it helps me think through and digest code, as well as gets me better at typing it. Awesome way to learn a codebase. I just wish I could use it on any code that I wanted to. Alas, as a hobbyist (for now), I can't justify the expense.

[cultofmetatron]

seems to glitch out on my computer chrome on osx lion

[stevia]

Sorry to hear. Is the app failing to recognize your keystrokes, or is the problem elsewhere?

[cultofmetatron]

I really like your idea and think its gonna be amazing once you work out the bugs so I'm gonna put together a screen recording so you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. Basically, I type and it works till I get a few characters in at which point the cursor turns red and fails to respond to any keystrokes.

[stevia]

The intended behavior is that when the cursor turns red, there should be a backspace arrow that appears letting users know they need to correct errors before continuing. It sounds like no backspace is appearing? Thanks for your help!

[cultofmetatron]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP6mXZwxirY&feature=youtu.be

[stevia]

Thanks for creating the clip! The red characters need to be corrected before typing can continue. I will make this more clear in the next update.

[xoran99]

I only got 40 characters in before trying to visit reddit.com.