typing practice for code

why code breaks a typing speed

A course built on prose teaches you the letters, the comma, the full stop and the shift key, and stops there. Code spends its time somewhere else entirely: brackets that must close, quotes that must match, semicolons, arrows, underscores, and the number row struck by the fingers that get the least practice. The first time a fast typist opens an editor their speed roughly halves, and it is not because the words are hard — it is because half the keys are ones they have barely pressed.

real lines, not symbol soup

It is easy to generate a drill of random brackets, and it teaches almost nothing, because the thing that makes code hard to type is the shape of the sequences rather than the characters in isolation. An arrow function, a dictionary literal, a WHERE clause — each is a run your hands can learn as one movement. Every line here is something you would actually write, in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript or SQL.

then the ladders

Beyond these lines, code mode is four ladders of small programs, each rung adding exactly one new thing to the one before it. Every rung is a program that runs, so you are typing working code rather than a fragment, and the new characters arrive a few at a time instead of all at once. The indentation is shown but never typed — you type what a person types, and the editor's job stays the editor's.

it watches which keys go wrong

The same engine that runs the lessons runs this, so the keys and pairs that slow you down are recorded as you type, and the practice that follows leans on them. That matters more for symbols than for letters: nobody has a weak e, but plenty of people have a weak brace, and it will not fix itself while the drill keeps offering words.

free, and nothing leaves the device

No account, no ads, no tracking, and no server to send anything to. Your progress is stored in this browser and nowhere else, which is why it works offline and why there is nothing to delete elsewhere if you stop using it.

what you'll type

1. print("hello, world")
2. const total = items.length;
3. SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = 42;
4. let count: number = 0;
5. if (x > 0) { return x * 2; }
6. def greet(name): return f"hi, {name}"
7. for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) sum += i;
8. values = [3, 5, 8, 13, 21]
9. arr.filter((n) => n % 2 === 0)
10. import { useState } from "react";
11. UPDATE cart SET qty = 6 WHERE id = 79;
12. user = {"id": 1, "name": "ada"}
13. export type Point = { x: number; y: number };
14. assert total >= 0 and total <= 100
15. path = os.path.join(base, "src", "main.py")

questions