I love that this thread popped up when it did, as part of a new years resolutions of sorts I decided to start writing short stories and have been thinking about this topic quite a lot. For me it depends, when I know exactly what I need to say, it's pretty quick 70-80 WPM or so, that's with the pauses, edits, etc.. If am really struggling to come up with the words, it's probably closer to 10 or 20. One of the perks of being able to burst type though, and I don't really have a better term for it, I'm able to just kinda tense my muscles and 'jiggle' my fingers in fast succession, is that I can backspace and move the cursor _very_ quickly on the edits. Typing is a means to an end though, the hardest part of writing is ensuring the communication fits the bill. If the bug is tricky, for example, my words per minute can turn into words per day :)

Being a programmer probably allows me to be faster than a lot of other speed typers for specific tasks, but I'm nowhere near as fast as they tend to be for straight word counts where the numbers tend to look like 100% accuracy at 200+ WPM. As an example, I always set my text editors to backspace both words, and sentences (ctrl+backspace, and shift+backspace). This trick, jiggling, and good searching, allows me to move through code _much_ faster than most other programmers I've meet. The only exceptions have been people who've setup and mastered vim, (sorry emacs folks, I've just never encountered any of you in the wild) and I've been slowly been working on gaining proficiency there.

Another user pointed out that there is a zen mode for monkeyType, I'm trying it out on this post. I just sat down to write for the night and I'm using this as my warmup (going this fast requires it for me). I knew a good bit of what I've wanted to say as I started this post but there have been some pauses and edits.

MonkeyType claimed 72 for this comment, bit faster than I would have guessed, I'm curious as to how realistic that number really is!