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In my experience, there's much more to 'programming' than typing out new code. Where typing speed becomes an issue is in communicating with people, not machines: trying to have an IM conversation with a non-touch-typist is painful, and when you have emails or documentation to write, it's much more reasonable for typing speed to be the limiting factor.

I don't want such things to be a big chunk of my day, and being able to type quickly helps keep the amount of time I spend doing that to a minimum and lets me get back to coding :).




> ...when you have emails or documentation to write...

I totally agree. Every editor or typing speed article is accompanied by posters claiming that it's not important for programming, and I just have to think that they haven't spent a lot of time working in a team.

Typing and thinking about code is never more than 2/3 of my job. Writing emails, commenting code, creating procedures (e.g., for releasing), documenting our infrastructure... These activities require a bit less thought and are always limited by my typing speed, even with vim and 100+ WPM.

Getting through them slower would mean spending less than half of my time programming, or worse: a pile of undocumented code and systems, and increasing irrelevance in team discussions.




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