6 ms·

When I practice typing and make an error, I thought that perhaps it should automatically go back to the beginning of the word. Because the road leading to fast

When I practice typing and make an error, I thought that perhaps it should automatically go back to the beginning of the word. Because the road leading to fast typing is to type letters in groups, and having the muscle memories of common words might help with both speed and accuracy. The statistics could include frequently mistyped pairs and triplets, or basically, ngrams. And you can practice those in isolation. It will be like scale practicing of musical instrument.

danuker 4y ago
You can do that with Ctrl+Backspace. Or Ctrl+Left if you just want to move.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
This is a very desirable action. Once you get some speed up touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words. Infuriated by an emacs not having an ergonomic offering I bound M-w to backward-kill-word and found it so useful it's still in my .emacs file.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > Once you get some speed up touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words. Same. For some reason we always mix up "you" and "the", even though they are completely different words
- smeej 4y ago
  This might be something you would actually overcome as you build up even more speed by focusing on learning to correct the individual letters. I've been typing 120+ wpm for 20 years and it's actually surprising to me that this is a problem people have. It's that foreign to my experience. I could be totally wrong. It could just be that typing happens in different ways in different people's brains and bodies and that's why I can't relate to this, but I'd challenge you to try correcting the letters rather than the words and see if that doesn't have a compounding effect on improving your speed.
jacquesm 4y ago
Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make. What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time. Your nick, by the way, is perfectly suited to this endeavor.
- luuuzeta 4y ago
  >Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make. The other day someone posted a webapp they wrote that doesn't let you edit and that blurs all the text except the current line while you're typing. If you want to edit your text, you need to download the file. His aim was to separate writing from editing, which I think it's an interesting approach.
  - news_hacker 4y ago
    Anyone have a link for this?
    - luuuzeta 4y ago
      Found it! [1] https://write.sonnet.io/ https://write.sonnet.io/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183244
- nebulous1 4y ago
  > What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time. I've never been entirely convinced by this argument. I will always make mistakes, so I could argue that I need to be able to quickly fix those mistakes, so I should practice doing so to some degree. The implication that fixing your mistakes somehow trains you to make mistakes seems tenuous. I will admit that for me, my "end goal" allows me to see what I'm typing and requires me to correct my mistakes. If, for instance, your end goal has you not even seeing the text you're typing then there's probably no reason to go back and fix your mistakes. This is where the musical instrument comparison breaks for me. If your goal with an instrument is a performance, then with a musical instrument you can't fix your mistakes during the performance. You will still make mistakes, of course, you just won't be able to fix them. That said, if you're making a lot of mistakes then perhaps you're getting enough practice fixing them and should stop. It's just that I don't necessarily accept a hard rule that you should carry on regardless and the outcome will be better. I've never seen any research on this subject.

danuker 4y ago

You can do that with Ctrl+Backspace. Or Ctrl+Left if you just want to move.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

This is a very desirable action. Once you get some speed up touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words. Infuriated by an emacs not having an ergonomic offering I bound M-w to backward-kill-word and found it so useful it's still in my .emacs file.

LoganDark 4y ago
> Once you get some speed up touch-typing you ( I still do ) fluff whole words. Same. For some reason we always mix up "you" and "the", even though they are completely different words
smeej 4y ago
This might be something you would actually overcome as you build up even more speed by focusing on learning to correct the individual letters. I've been typing 120+ wpm for 20 years and it's actually surprising to me that this is a problem people have. It's that foreign to my experience. I could be totally wrong. It could just be that typing happens in different ways in different people's brains and bodies and that's why I can't relate to this, but I'd challenge you to try correcting the letters rather than the words and see if that doesn't have a compounding effect on improving your speed.

jacquesm 4y ago

Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make. What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time. Your nick, by the way, is perfectly suited to this endeavor.

luuuzeta 4y ago
>Except that instruments don't come with a backspace. If you want a closer approximation simply refuse to edit your texts at all: write it out in one go and refuse to fix any mistake that you make. The other day someone posted a webapp they wrote that doesn't let you edit and that blurs all the text except the current line while you're typing. If you want to edit your text, you need to download the file. His aim was to separate writing from editing, which I think it's an interesting approach.
- news_hacker 4y ago
  Anyone have a link for this?
  - luuuzeta 4y ago
    Found it! [1] https://write.sonnet.io/ https://write.sonnet.io/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183244
nebulous1 4y ago
> What you will find is that your speed initially drops to maybe 10% or even less of what it was before, but after a while it speeds up again and at some point you'll be typing faster than ever before because fixing mistakes takes a lot of time. I've never been entirely convinced by this argument. I will always make mistakes, so I could argue that I need to be able to quickly fix those mistakes, so I should practice doing so to some degree. The implication that fixing your mistakes somehow trains you to make mistakes seems tenuous. I will admit that for me, my "end goal" allows me to see what I'm typing and requires me to correct my mistakes. If, for instance, your end goal has you not even seeing the text you're typing then there's probably no reason to go back and fix your mistakes. This is where the musical instrument comparison breaks for me. If your goal with an instrument is a performance, then with a musical instrument you can't fix your mistakes during the performance. You will still make mistakes, of course, you just won't be able to fix them. That said, if you're making a lot of mistakes then perhaps you're getting enough practice fixing them and should stop. It's just that I don't necessarily accept a hard rule that you should carry on regardless and the outcome will be better. I've never seen any research on this subject.