Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throw1234651234 902 days ago
Can you take this please http://wpm-test.com/programming-typing-test/

It's all fun and games until it's code. I barely clear 50 wpm on that, and I know where every key is without looking. I actually dread typing those 3-10 lines on that test, which is how I know I could use more practice, but can't find the time for it.

9 comments

neat idea, but horrendous font selection. the upper case "I" in deletedIds is indistinguishable from lower case "L". also, didn't like the feel of typos. typically, I know when I make a typo and immediately hit the delete key to fix it. the fact that there's no indication of the typo visually other than the highlight stops progressing is counter-intuitive. I would much rather see the incorrect chars typed as is but then maybe have the highlighting change color. also agree with a sibling comment about unnecessary white spaces, while the writing code in a minimized format is also counter intuitive. hitting enter at line endings is muscle memory just as much as cmd-s/ctrl-s after completing blocks is for me.

edit: after taking the first attempt and then writing this post, I went back to try it again. It said 6 wpm. Tried it again, and it said 5 wpm. That's clearly BS. I thought the first one was an accidental key press that started the timer while I made my comment here. But after restarting it to get an even slower ridiculously wrong time just really makes me mad I wasted my time.

Fine I'll try despite having a painful hand right now, my WPM mention was not coding specific btw but I am always happy to help a throwaway account; I got "You can type 80 words per minute", and slightly more pain now.

The biggest thing that got me here is that it doesn't match my coding style and especially whitespace at line endings were annoying. Also I'm on the couch on my laptop, not behind proper desk.

Still, thanks for trying. If it helps, I have been using this "throwaway" for years!
For me, the excessive spacing makes this pretty painful. If we need a whitespace buffer inside every set of parentheses, I'd expect the IDE to do it for me.
1) My wrists hurt now

2) Thank god for autocompletion and other things IDEs do to save you from typing so much

3) It's weird and unnatural that the test requires so much whitespace.

4) This reaffirms my decision to get myself a keyboard kit like the Elora or Lily58. Main benefits being the otholinear layout and moving the mod keys and others like ([{}]) to the thumbs or other more ergonomic positions.

I got 33, would probably have got a couple more on a programming language/style I'm familiar with instead of whatever that is. (Spaces on the inside of round brackets? Empty bracket pairs with a space between them? No space between if and the opening bracket? Madness.)
I got 62 then tried again and got 63. Seems to be about where I'm at for programming stuff. I will say that the style of code is slightly different than my own coding style which seemed to also hamper me a bit.
That is not a great test. Maybe it's just me but I don't often write code with the proper code style (or even semi-colons depending on the language) and let the IDE handle all of that.
Okay I get why programmers get carpal tunnel now. I've never done so many unnatural moments in such a short period of time. (30 wpm)
46, but I only touch type A-Z then freestyle some of the other characters. Except ( ; , . the close ones)
this is pretty cool. ty for sharing.

>You can type 74 words per minute

>You can type 84 words per minute

(After a few attempts)

I self learned to type using "Iankey"[0] (the manual[1]). In my opinion, it is one of the best training tools I tried - I should search around my old backups to see if I can still find it.

[0] https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/68105/Iankey/ [1] https://www.habisoft.com/pcwwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=apl...

It seems to have been preserved here with a download link https://www.habisoft.com/pcwwiki/doku.php?id=en:aplicaciones...

Somebody also uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/IanKey-Crash-Course-on-Typing-v3...