Typing Speed Tester — Time user input, calculate WPM + accuracy

[ghostdeveloper404]

🎯 Description

Build a simple program that measures how fast and accurately a user can type a given prompt.

• Show a short text/snippet.
• Time how long the user takes to type it.
• Compute WPM (Words Per Minute) and accuracy (%).
• Display a summary at the end.

📚 What You’ll Practice

• Input/output
• Timing & basic math
• String comparison
• Functions & clean code
• CLI user experience

✅ Tasks

• Create a new folder: your_name/typing_speed_tester/

• Add main script: typing_speed_tester.py

• Include a sample prompt in code (or load from prompts.txt)

• Display the prompt clearly and start timing when user begins typing

• Stop timing when user submits input (e.g., presses Enter)

• Calculate:

  • Time taken (seconds)
  • WPM using: WPM = (characters_typed / 5) / minutes_elapsed
  • Accuracy (%) using: accuracy = (correct_chars / total_chars_typed) * 100

• Print a neat summary with:

  • Prompt length (chars & words)
  • Time taken
  • WPM
  • Accuracy

• Add README.md explaining:

  • What the project does
  • How to run it
  • Example input/output

• (Optional) Add requirements.txt (if you use any libraries)

🧪 Acceptance Criteria

• Running python typing_speed_tester.py launches the tester in the terminal.
• User sees a prompt, types their response, and gets time, WPM, and accuracy.
• WPM and accuracy are calculated using the formulas above.
• Code is organized into small functions (e.g., get_prompt(), measure_time(), calculate_metrics(), compare_text()).
• README.md contains run instructions and a sample run.

🧩 Example (CLI flow)

Prompt:
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Start typing and press Enter when done:
> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Time: 7.84s
WPM: 68.5
Accuracy: 100.0%

💡 Hints

• Use time.perf_counter() (Python) for precise timing.
• Normalize strings before comparison (e.g., compare char-by-char; consider trimming trailing whitespace).
• Decide how to handle backspaces/typos; simplest is to compare final typed string against the prompt.

🚀 Stretch Goals (Optional)

• Live timer while typing
• CPM (characters per minute) in addition to WPM
• Per-word accuracy and highlight mistakes
• Multiple prompts loaded from a file
• Best score tracking via a local JSON file
• Difficulty levels (short/medium/long prompts)
• Colorful CLI output (e.g., Colorama)

🏷️ Labels

good first issue beginner-friendly help wanted

Need help getting started? Follow our First Contributions Guide or ask in Discussions 💬

Good luck and happy coding! 🎉

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[atharva-khachane]

Hi @ghostdeveloper404 , Can you please assign this to me??