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Comment by petervandijck | Hacker News Reader

"For their next challenge, they had to type 25 words a minute" That's pretty slow, right?

...further underscoring the shockingly poor quality of the applicants.

Steve Yegge says every programmer should be a fast, accurate, touch-typist:

  http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html

I couldn't find his minimum-speed prescription, just now, but he does say 70 words a minute is easily obtainable for anyone with two hands.

Yeah, I disagree with this post a lot. Unless you're typing out Java factories by hand with no IDE support, any speed approaching touch-typing is going to do you fine. 70 words per minute is not necessary.

That's what you think, until you're working with someone and you watch him/her typing out Unix commands at 20 wpm, making constant mistakes.

People who watch horror movies and then complain about being scared have themselves to blame :P

As I recall, to pass grade 9 typing in my Toronto area high school I had to type 40 WPM net.

My dad's high school students in Infotech have to get up to 30 wpm to qualify for (cross-applied) community college credits in IT 101.

That's pretty fast for hunt-and-peck using your index fingers only.

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