Module #3 - Type Like a Tiger (Recommended)

Welcome back! Hope you had fun with the last module.

Now it's time to crack your knuckles and to put your fingertips to the test.

As you begin your head-first plunge into the world of analytics, it's important that you walk in with a few pre-skills. One of these pre-skills—often forgotten, yet utterly critical—is the ability to type quickly.

No Hunting and Pecking!

Why does it matter so much in analytics? Well, in analytics, you'll frequently be ideating, experimenting, and testing. You'll often come up with an idea for an interactive infographic, type it out in code, and only to run into an unexplainable bug. This bug might leave you scratching your head and frantically changing your code for who-knows-how-long before you finally stumble into a solution and begin the cycle again.

This iterative process is often extremely time-consuming and challenging, but it's made even worse if your fingers can't keep up with your ideas. What we've seen repeatedly in our coding programs is that a slow typing speed is a huge barrier to student success. The reality is Picasso wouldn't be the painter he was if he had to belabor every brush stroke. In the same way, you can't be a successful developer unless you can type at a reasonably fast pace.

Psh... I already iz fast

Now, we know what some of you may be thinking—I type plenty fast already. I can type out a paper in my sleep!

And that's great Mr. Hemingway.

But coding presents a different set of typing challenges. Instead of typing words, you're often typing brackets, parenthesis, and other unfamiliar symbols. These characters often trip up new developers who fumble around, trying to figure out where everything is on the keyboard.

Take, for instance, the below block of code. How long would it take you to type?

var wellSection = $("<div>"); wellSection.addClass('well'); wellSection.attr('id', 'articleWell-' + articleCounter) $('#wellSection').append(wellSection);

 

In order to maximize your learning during the first month of classes, it's important that you come in having practiced both your regular and your code typing skills.

For this reason, your task in this module is to achieve the following goals:

  1. A minimum regular typing speed of 50 words per minute
  2. A minimum code typing speed of 30 words per minute

These aren't lofty targets, by any means, but they will be a baseline check to confirm that you're reasonably ready. Take as much or as little time as you need to reach these targets. If you are even remotely worried about your typing speed, then don't skip this task! You'll thank us later.

Now get to it, Speedy!

P.S. If you ever need an ego boost, consider visiting Nitro Type. It's a fun little site where you can race against others practicing their typing. Plenty of fifth graders are on there... so it's always fun to smoke them. (Trust us. Over the course of the next few months, you're going to need any ego boost you can get.)

Additional Reading:

Supplemental Resources:

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