[samspot]

I was taught in typing class that its better to skip errors and then come back and correct them when you are done. Not that I follow that advice especially often, but I wonder if it would be more helpful to do that. I didn't like during the demo that I was forced to correct the problem before continuing.

[psykotic]

Take it from someone who averages 140 WPM and peaks at 160-170 WPM. Don't skip errors and return to them later. Do delete whole words (alt-backspace) and re-type them from the beginning. When you get really fast, almost all typing errors are transposition errors. By the time they register you are already several characters, even words, ahead. Trying to correct them character by character will throw you off.

[gcr]

If you use emacs, what do you think about `flyspell-auto-correct-previous-word`? It's like autocorrect, but it only happens when you invoke it and it always happens on the last misspelled word rather than the word under point.

[psykotic]

Never tried it but that sounds like it could work great.

[plorkyeran]

I can't really imagine that working very well when coding. It'd cause huge issues with autocomplete and autoindent.

[pacmon]

I agree. I believe the most typing classes are focused on the word processing end of things rather than programming. While waiting to correct errors afterwards can be faster for regular documents, I would absolutely never do that when programming.

[edanm]

Actually, I doubt it's even better for regular documents.

In the writing discipline, people will often tell you to write a first draft without correcting errors, then go back and error-correct on the second draft. But that's not about typing errors, but rather grammatic/narrative errors in your writing.