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Comment by nathanb | Hacker News Reader

My complaint is that it will often give you words that are nearly English words (but not actually). If you really want to type quickly, you will sort of type one word at a time rather than one letter at a time (time yourself typing an English phrase rather than words composed of random letters). I kept getting errors because I would type the words my fingers thought was coming, not the actual non-word I was supposed to type.

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I type 142 WPM on average. I think the lack of real English words is a structural flaw of this application.

To get really fast typing speed, you need to develop muscle memory for words not just letters. For example, when I type the word "complete" I don't think "c", "o", "m", etc. I literally just bolt out the word complete without even thinking about it. I don't believe there is any other way to be able to type more than 2 words per second.

This might be useful to get you to a certain level of moderate proficiency but I believe it will hurt you at higher levels.

I thoroughly agree. I type 115WPM and one letter at a time knocked me down to 80WPM on my first go through. Bleck!

> you need to develop muscle memory for words not just letters

I think I agree. Is there any research on this?

Yes, I type words, not letters. So I saw 'pon' and tried to type 'upon'.

That and the not-supporting the backspace thing got me a bit.

Still, its a great website design, very easy to get started.

> Yes, I type words, not letters. So I saw 'pon' and tried to type 'upon'.

"pon" is an English word, its a (perhaps rare, now) shortened form of "upon" (through age, among other things, it is established both with and without an apostrophe.)

I've only ever seen it as 'pon, which like wav'ring or 'neath, doesn't indicate to me a new word, just a poetical elision of an unwanted syllable. At any rate, word or not-word, it's rare enough that I'd think it an error if I encountered it in a typing improvement program from 2015.

It might be a word in English[dictionary], but it's not a word in English[used].

On that subject, what does the word "wyrm" mean?

Sounds/Looks like the name of a tech startup. :)

It's sometimes used for mob names in video games, where it is interchangeable with "worm."

Edit: Apparently I'm wrong (it's not interchangeable for worm), and it means snake/serpent.

Dragons, not worms or snakes.

Wyrms are dragons, or similar creatures of legend. You'll encounter them pretty commonly in video games.

This is a mana wyrm from Warcraft:

http://huangstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/WoWBurningCrusade_...

And this is a wyrm from the Final Fantasy universe:

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/ffxi/images/e/e9/Wyrm.jp...

I'll let you google some more. :)

    Æfter ðám wordum
    wyrm yrre cwóm 	
                          After those words
                          the wrathful wyrm
                            came,
    atol inwitgæst
      óðre síðe 	
	                  awful cruel visitor
                          a second time,
    fýrwylmum fáh
    fíonda níosian 	
                          with hostile, gleaming
                          flood of fire to seek
                          his foes
    láðra manna·sydaudio
    líg ýðum for· 	
	                  the hated humans;
                          the flame came forth
                          in waves,
    born bord wið rond·
    byrne ne meahte 	
                          burned shield to
                            the boss;
                          the byrnie could not
    geongum gárwigan
    géoce gefremman 	
                          to the young spear-
                          fighter lend support
    ac se maga geonga
    maéges scyld 	
                          but the young man,
                          under his kinsman's
                            shield
    elne geéode
    þá his ágen wæs 	
                          courageously
                            advanced,
                          when his own was
    glédum forgrunden.
    Þá gén gúðcyning 	
                          consumed by fire.

-- http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html

It uses a lot of uncommon words (and at least some proper nouns - small cities and such), but I have yet to see something that's not a word. Also, it gets better once you get through calibrating a few letters. There just aren't that many common words that use only the 5 letters it starts out with.

This is the last set I had: ven␣yearly␣ter␣timentain␣him␣they␣brokent␣clar␣wers␣quest␣wils␣comewhat␣lead␣who␣the␣luctive␣wills␣missue␣and␣the␣advant␣edmunion␣that␣suffect␣who␣the

There seems to be at least a handful of made up words in there.

Would it be possible to edit this comment and stick that in a code box or something? It's breaking the page width.

Can you please edit your comment to add some spaces? This comment makes the comment section horizontally scroll and very difficult to read other comments. Why doesn't HN force wrap long lines? :/

Arguably, hn should break up long "words" outside of "code"-blocks. Just stick in a few zero width space[1] U+200B/ or soft-hypens[2] U+00AD/.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_space

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_hyphen

I think for practicing it's better to not rely on muscle memory.

Not if you want to improve your muscle memory, which after a while becomes the point of continued practice. Unless you're training to transcribe cipher text (truly random sequences).

I haven't seen any research specifically for typing -- but I think it stands to reason that we use word-images when typing, just as we do when reading, listening and speaking. Once we become proficient at using typing to communicate.

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