Yet another typing site! Thankfully they allow Facebook log ins, so I checked them out. I like that feature at the bottom of the picture you put, where it shows how you rank, percentage-wise.
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- Yet another programmer switching to Colemak
Yet another programmer switching to Colemak
- Started by jsmithy
- 34 Replies:
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I like 10fast fingers because there is little variability. In typeracer for example, some passages I type 20-25 wpm faster than other passages, that is a huge difference. But since 10fast uses the same words, I get a better gauge. I also like if for learning common words, check out the practice section.
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jsmithy said:
I like 10fast fingers because there is little variability. In typeracer for example, some passages I type 20-25 wpm faster than other passages, that is a huge difference. But since 10fast uses the same words, I get a better gauge. I also like if for learning common words, check out the practice section.
You like 10fast fingers because it's easy. Yes you get a better gauge at typing easy words but what do you do in the real world when you have to type hard texts with loads of slang, punctuation, people's names and technical terms? Cry mummy mummy, I'm not doing that?
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10fast is definitely easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't a better gauge of your progress. With typeracer my wpm standard deviation is huge, with 10fast, its very small. My typeracer speed can drop for days, even though I'm improving, strictly based on what texts it gives.
Also, 10fast does have the advanced speed test, and also the 1000 most commonly used words that have much more variability than the standard test. To improve over all words you need to use more varied texts and other sites, but that doesn't mean that 10fast can't help.
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The best results come from a varied diet. Training the 1000 most commonly used words is probably a very good idea. Even better might be to use Amphetype and train your most problematic words! (Curse you, 'there' and 'that'!)
Training texts with lots of punctuation can be good too. But unless punctuation really trips you up, I suspect the common words will have a greater impact on your overall typing speed. Getting better at the odd stuff could on the other hand influence typing comfort!
Last edited by DreymaR (14-Feb-2014 14:17:20)
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thats what i'm having a go at - got the top 1000 in amphetype divided into blocks of 100. working my way through those and once i've done each say 4 or 5 times i'm going to delve into the stats and generate a few lessons where the problems lie
will hopefully reap some efficient rewards - get me into the halowed megaracer territory..
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That's a good idea putting the 1000 words into Amphetype... now if only Amphetype had a scramble words option!
I'm also inching back to megaracer territory... but inching :)
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i think it does to a certain extent - it can pull out passages to type randomly rather than in order
beauty of it is that its written in python so prob easy to dive into and hack around to get it to do what you want if the features not already there
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It's been around three years since I started my colemak journey and I decided to make an update on my experience. Initially I practiced very hard with Colemak for several months, doing daily typing tests and practice with programs such as Amphetype. Since then I haven't really done any typing practice and just have been going about my daily business until this last week when I decided to compare my starting speeds with my current speed.
Typing Speed:
My typing speed was at about 90% of my qwerty speed after three months, 74wpm (typeracer 10races without selecting text). In the 2 1/2 intervening years my comfort with the colemak language has definitely improved and with it has come a slow increase in typing speed. My typeracer scores this past week are 88wpm (10 races without selecting text), this is 106% of my old qwerty speed. This 14wpm gain won't make me better with my job and I was perfectly happy with my old speed, but it's nice to see that my increased comfort has a tangible effect. I did some Amphetype typing and scored 84wpm avg with 98.4% accuracy. Finally, I did some 10fastfingers runs and got the following, 103wpm normal, 88wpm advanced.
Comfort:
Obviously very subjective but I feel very comfortable typing and I haven't had any of the wrist/finger strain that I used to have with qwerty. I really do feel that I can tell the difference in daily typing, especially after a long work day, when my fingers don't feel sore and overused. So I have to say that this has been a huge improvement for me and makes me happy to have switched just for this increased ease of typing.
Experience:
At this point I type slightly faster and more comfortably than ever before and I'm happy to have switched. Especially because of the comfort, I feel like typing in Colemak is something that I'll benefit from the rest of my life.
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Thanks for the writeup, and grats on the good typing experience! :-)
*** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
*** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***
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