
How much does typing speed matter for programmers?  - jseliger
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/09/does-typing-speed-matter/
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projectileboy
The reason it's hard to take slow typists seriously as programmers isn't that
typing speed affects your ability as a programmer; the issue is that it speaks
to how much time you've really spent in front of a computer, actually writing
programs. I've never met a slow typist who had written gobs of code (good or
bad).

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T-hawk
For a programmer, words-per-minute text typing speed is not so important, but
_navigation_ typing speed is. I'm talking about the ability to, without
conscious thought, tab around between windows, hit the command keys for
operations like copy+paste, and use speedy text navigation shortcuts like
Ctrl-arrow keys and Home/End. The more a programmer can instinctively take
shortcuts like that, the more he'll maintain mental flow on the real task
instead of diverting effort to managing his tools. I don't have any hard data
of course, but anecdotally I feel a large correlation between environment
navigation efficiency and work productivity.

This applies to more than just programming, like spreadsheet work as well. A
user who's learned End-navigation or fill-down shortcuts can get a complex
Excel sheet done in significantly less time.

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wallflower
Whenever I hear a developer pounding away frenetically at the keyboard, 9
times out of 10 they are pounding away at an email.

~~~
StavrosK
Whenever I see an artist furiously drawing lines on a piece of paper, 9 times
out of 10 they are writing.

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dshankar
Tl;dr people spend more time thinking than typing, but the benefit of fast
typing is the ability for your hands to keep up with your brain.

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OmniBus
Average typing speed is enough. Programmers do not look at the keyboard when
typing.

Novice speed does hamper efficiency. Finding alphabets, numbers and symbols on
keyboard interrupts programmers' thought.

Fast does help much as programmers do not type much one at time but thinks
more between lines of code. Usually programmers write a few lines even a few
characters for adjustment.

For programmers, good use of editor is more important. Able to use keyword
short-cuts to cut and paste, replacing pattern of text, finding text, moving
text between files is a key to efficiency.

~~~
cagey
Agree on all points.

I watch "over the shoulder" of many software engineers at my (Windows-based)
work, and 90% of them work at a CMD shell/console with QuickEdit mode
disabled; software that I'm responsible for spits fully qualified logfile
names out to said console, but rather than copy + paste the filename into
Outlook's attachment File Open dialog, they laboriously click their way thru
the "Explorer" dialog pane trying to find the same file. I sometimes point out
that they could easily copy and paste the name from the console into the
dialog, and some of them have an "aha!" moment, but most simply don't "get"
it.

OTOH I've watched experienced unix developers who type at fantastic speeds,
but with a significant error rate: bzzzzz (a command line) enter [error];
bzzzzzz (a whole new command line intending to duplicate the intent of the
first) enter [error]; (third time's the charm?). Slow down or use line-
editing? No... These are far less the rule than the mouse-click-happy Windows
users, but clearly there are many ways to be inefficient...

The fewer times I (a marginal typist) am forced to type out a copy of text I
see on the screen, the more productive I am. My work processes are optimized
along this axis: let the computer do the work instead of my fingers whenever
possible.

~~~
T-hawk
Funny, I usually observe the opposite use of copying at a command-line window.
I often see co-workers and client users copying and pasting as little as 4 or
6 characters out of a command window, when in that case it would be more
efficient to simply retype it rather than reach for and point and aim the
mouse. These are tokens usually like investment account numbers or ticker
symbols or the like. The excuse is usually "to make sure I get it right" -- as
in many jobs, covering your ass from any mistakes is more important than
actual productivity gains.

~~~
cagey
Maybe your co-workers and clientele are all skilled typists who _never_ make
transposition errors. But I've dialed enough wrong numbers due to simple
transposition (mental) errors (and made analogous typing errors) to know how
easy it is to make them. If 'persons unknown' had to move _my personal_
investment account number around via data-entry, I'd feel much better knowing
they were copy-pasting and not manually transcribing.

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xenophanes
The thing is it's _easy_ to comfortably type, say, 60 words per minute if you
use a computer a lot and care. When I learned to type I could do 20 or 30 or
something, but when I found chat programs my max speed went over 100 after a
few years. As long as you have any reason to be typing a lot, your speed
should increase to the point where you're "fast" and don't care anymore.

Sure the benefit of typing 80 wpm instead of 60 is not that much. But the cost
isn't much either, it happens naturally for heavy computer users.

If you're not typing reasonably fast, one has to wonder: why not?

No doubt a few people will have some good reason why not, or just say "I'm new
to computers". But others will have a dumb reason. Others won't have ever
thought about it. So you can learn about people by asking this.

It's kind of like: any serious programmer should learn a decent text editor.
Yes you can code in a crappy one. Yes most of the time is spent thinking not
text editing. But if you aren't using good tools one has to wonder: why not?

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hallmark
I don't think words per minute is the best measurement of programming speed,
if we are trying to assess the efficiency of translating thoughts into code.
The speed of navigating between files and functions and editing blocks or
terms (delete, insert) deserves strong weighting as well.

~~~
xenophanes
Agreed, plus programming is symbol heavy while most WPM tests focus on prose.

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xenophanes
When you write, you don't just type constantly the whole time. You think a
bit, decide on something to say, type it, then think of the next thing. The
better you can type, the shorter the delay before you get back to thinking
again without still having to remember what you're currently writing down. And
typing itself is quite distracting for a weak typist, whereas a good typist
doesn't pay attention to typing and keeps his mind on the content. The same
applies to programing. Typing does matter.

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swolchok
If you want to increase your typing speed (or waste a lot of time) anyway,
check out <http://play.typeracer.com/> . In addition to popular works, you can
configure it to make you type samples from open source projects in your
language of choice.

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stuaxo
Yes, it's great for impressing the others in the boss so they know you are in
fact technical (apart from building all the stuff).

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sofuture
Not at all if you're programming APL/J/K/Q!

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jaxtapose
Typing speed is probably irrelevant. Touch typing is probably important for
programmers to master, even if it is just so they don't have to break their
zen state while programming.

