Whats your max wpm in typing? | Hacker News Reader

Whats your max wpm in typing?

Do you type with insane speed? whats your speed?

It typically takes more time to decide what I need to type, and once that’s done actual typing speed isn’t a factor.

Other than bragging rights or doing transcription, does it really matter anymore?

Surprisingly I find it does! The bulk of the time shouldn't be spent typing I agree, but often once I've mapped out what I want to do I need to type a lot. Improving my typing helped my "flow" as I made less mistakes and was generally faster once I got to the "make it happen" stage.

81 WPM is my highest. Can hit low 70's any given day. Self taught inefficient style. Never learned to Touch type. Mishitting keys often enough is my barrier. So keyboard does matter. I need tactile to cut down those errors. Red switches (Linear) I can drop into the 50's.

Funny enough we had a party day after Thanksgiving and I had a typing competition for friends and family using 10fastfingers. First place I awarded a $10 Starbucks gift card. Surprisingly the majority were faster than I thought and I am not that much faster overall despite being into computers since I was 9.

The fastest that night was a 22 year old ex-gamer now in IT that scored 91 WPM. Slowest we saw was 8 WPM for a 9 year old and some seniors also were under 10 WPM. The majority fell in 40-65 range and these were mostly career corporate types and a few public school officials. The surprises for me were my 14yo son who got 77 WPM and a 25yo female nurse that got 71wpm.

My wife's 36yo cousin wasn't there for the party but I have seen him several times coast at 110WPM and his highest I've seen is 132WPM.

I used to type fast enough that it never felt like it was a limiting factor. Then on a couple of occasions I got shooting pains down the back of my right hand and I couldn't type for several days. Because of that I looked into alternate keyboard layouts and that rabbit-hole led me to developing a keyboard layout that was easier to transition to than Colemak/Tarmak that performs about as well.

What I found trying to learn my new layout is that I don't type enough in a given day as a software developer, so had to practice regularly on typing sites. I quickly got back up to around 70 wpm which was slower than I was typing before but it was far more comfortable and I rarely find I need to type faster. I'm generally limited by how fast I think.

This is very much the same as when I'm playing StarCraft 2, I can go over 140 APM but that tends to be spamming keys with automatic rather than situationally appropriate actions--with better plans and thinking I can be more effective at 100 APM.

Never counted but I can touch type accurately until I become conscious I'm doing it at which point I get in the way. Generally I start to appreciate how good I'm doing, at which point my 7 year becomes better than me.

100 WPM at 98% accuracy.

It used to be 80 WPM. Then I learned Dvorak, which also boosted my QWERTY +20 WPM.

Now I switched to a split keyboard, and I'm slowly gaining my typing speed. I went from 20 WPM to 65 WPM in two weeks. It's not supposed to make me faster, it's just a nice hack with extra thumb keys and layers to lower travel speed for those things you do a lot.

About 120 to 130 wpm, depending on the keyboard and what I'm typing. 95% ish accuracy, but it doesn't really matter since everything is autocorrected or autocompleted anyway.

Been typing since I was like 5 or 6 years old though, first Mavis Beacon and then IRC and Everquest and other MMOs. Voice chat wasn't that popular back then.

I've plateaued at 85, occassionally reach 100. I'm happy since I only learned to touch type at 32.

If I check on monkeytype it's around 130wpm but as others have said it really depends on what you are typing.

(for what it's worth I learned to touch type on an old typewriter decades ago, however my wpm was much slower then as the typewriter would lock up if I typed too fast)

Right if I'm doing a typing test, I can do 150 on a good day with good posture and being warmed up. Typing tests are really picky about accuracy --if you have a single typo, it'll kill your WPM and they typically won't let you continue without correcting it to be exact, plus you're usually reading & retyping exactly what you see including every bit of punctuation and exact capitalization.

But if I'm typing casually, e.g. a discord chat or certain types of code, it's much faster. I imagine the other fast typers here can reach insane speeds in these contexts. The way I can describe it is you have clusters of letters where your fingers hit the keys at almost the same time, and it no longer sounds like distinct key hits.

Edit: the keyboard selection matters a lot too. I'm nowhere near as fast on an IBM Model M as I am on a modern laptop (chiclet?) keyboard. I'm a little slower on a thinkpad than I am on a Dell or Mac laptop. A real typewriter would be the slowest as the metal can get all jammed up --that's a unique skill in and of itself.

I never heard of monkeytype, tired it, thanks. And the magic number is:

41 wpm with 100% accuracy. Unlike others I must say this is faster than I expected and I am actually happy with it.

In real life I expect my speed is probably like 10, as I think of what I am typing. Even less when I have to do spelling corrections.

Depends if its sesquipedalian, onomatopoeia or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

It was like 80 when I typed "wrong" (mainly with 6-7 fingers), I learned to touch type like 4 years ago and switched to a 40% keyboard, now I'm typing at 60-65wpm max I guess, but it does feel better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

This would be better as a poll, you'd get more people responding if that's what you're after.

I tested the other day and was about 84 WPM IIRC. Of course, your WPM is meaningless if you make dozens of errors.

(For the record, I don't type perfectly accurately but make probably no more than 10 errors per minute.)

90-130wpm from anything from the keyboard on my desk to an iPad Pro w/ Magic Keyboard propped up on my knee in the car.

We need more high WPM in austere environment tests that aren't just a flat desk ;)

45 WPM with 95% accuracy if the wind is at my back and I'm pointed downhill.

It's been getting stuff done for decades. My typing isn't the slow part of my development process.

I top out at about 100-110 WPM, but it really depends on what I’m typing. That’s basically “transcribing printed, boring, regular English.”

80-120wpm @ 100% accuracy (fixing mistakes)

Faster for normal texts, slower with punctuation/code/etc

About 120 in the old days, and I type "wrong."

I typically test around 90-100wpm.

60 wpm with 96% accuracy bleh!!

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