Ask HN: How fast should a programmer be typing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How fast should a programmer be typing?

4 pointscasper34511 comments

OK, I know it is not about the speed but the content. But just wondering peoples' thoughts since we are typing all day. When your in the zone whats your speed? My non-developer friends and I use to race typing and they would be like, "you are a developer shouldnt you be faster" - I wasn't

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If you're able to type really fast while programming what you're doing should probably be automated.

I think learning to type quickly is important. Not so much because of the speed, but because the muscle-memory required to type without looking allows one to not become distracted by the act of typing. From this perspective it is more important to be able to type without looking with few mistakes than worrying about words-per-minute.

That being said, I just tested myself and apparently I'm at 116 WPM this was higher than I expected.

I'm stunned. drakonka also said he does above a 100 WPM. I've done 3 tests on different sites right now, and I do between 50 and 60 WPM. How can you type twice as fast? Are you using something other than qwerty? Does your language have frequent short words?

No, standard qwerty keyboard. The test I took was on TypingTest.com (no affiliation, just first result in a web search) and chose the two minute, Aesop's fable test.

I don't tend to type fast when I code because I stop to think a lot. If I time myself on one of those typing speed challenge sites I usually get up to maybe 140-145 WPM, but in real life it never works that way. I type faster than I think, but there are very few typing situations in the real world where you aren't required to think at the same time.

TBH I've never been too proud of code I've typed quickly; the best stuff has always had about 10 or 12 revisions after I've made it, with lots of thinking about it in between.

Unless y'all are a bunch of Excel sorcerers, slow touch-typing should be all that's necessary.

If you can type without much thought, then I wouldn't worry about increasing your typing speed. Touch typing is nice because you spend less time thinking about the physical action of typing. 50wpm and 100wpm make little difference.

Eh. I type about 150wpm for a sentence or two already composed in my head. 100 when having to think ahead while writing an email. Probably about 30 while programming because that many more cycles are spent in the brain and fewer in the fingers. Not just on logic, but also hesitating to make decisions like “what should I name this variable?”

As fast as your speed of typing will allow you not to think about typing, i.e. your speed doesn't get in the way of your thought.

As quickly as necessary, but no faster ;)

Touch typing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Nor is speed. Accuracy counts.

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