Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyping entire novels

Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by m463 on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @09:53AM (#24697652)

Reminds me ... in a computer nerd way ... of "python the hard way" (which used to be very open/free, now it has changed)

You would not read or download the lessons. You typed all the python in word by word. I think it really helped the learning process to type it out. It was slow and deliberate, even to mistyping and making mistakes (and fix them).

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Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by tsumnia on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @02:27PM (#24700833)

Yup! To learn music, cooking, martial arts, etc., you start by following someone else to build the muscle memory on doing the skill. As a follow-up, my own research [1] on retyping code showed students earned higher grades and submitted less erroneous code. Replicating technical skills is a common practice technique that seems to have been "lost" in current CS education.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3373165.3373177

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Re:Show HN: I made a site where you practice typing by retyp... by kyuudou on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @11:00AM (#24698345)

I still have a directory tree around from doing those lessons. Given how picky python is about indent spacing, I agreed somewhat with the philosophy behind those lessons, particular for people new to coding.

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