breyerjs

Good luck with your switch! I tried to highlight that it's a difficult but highly rewarding path, if you stick with it.

The first time I (unsuccessfully) applied for internships, I listed my paralegal work experience and a few programs I'd written. The chatbot I mentioned in the post was the highlight, even though it was not very impressive.

When I applied to internships successfully, I was in grad school. So I listed most of the courses I'd taken. I had more projects to my name at that point too. The most exciting was a Python script that used machine learning to figure out who wrote a passage of text. I'd done that for one of my Computational Linguistics classes and was really jazzed about it.

Hope that helps!

I was actually learning React around the time I was learning to touch type. So, naturally, my first project was to build a typing test[0] :) Looking back, I cringe at the code quality. But it worked and I had fun doing it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I like the idea of typing out code though! I think there are some sites that do that, like https://typing.io/

[0] https://github.com/breyerjs/typequick

Ah, sorry it took so long to respond—I was at work. I used KeyHero[1], mostly because the passages were interesting enough to keep me from getting _too_ bored.

I studied a few charts beforehand, but the repetition is really what made it sink in.

[1] https://www.keyhero.com/free-typing-test/

We were taught to touch type in grade school, but I goofed off during those lessons. I got through college without needing it. I was a speedy point-and-peck typist, which was good enough for that period of my life.

Later on, when I learned to program, I found that my slow typing speed frequently caused me to lose my train of thought midway through a line of code. It was frustrating enough that I spent a month teaching myself to touch type. Basically, I took online typing tests over and over after work.

Since then, my typing speed has at least doubled. I don't look at the keyboard anymore, and I'm able to get my thoughts down with _much_ less friction. I can't recommend it enough.