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Comment by FrankWilhoit | Hacker News Reader

Are there, really, developers whose productivity is first and foremost constrained by how fast they can type? If so, what else is known about them? What class of problems are they working on?

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It's not about how fast you can type, it's about how effortlessly you can type.

Programming involves long periods of thinking interrupted by short periods of typing. Anything you can do to reduce the mental effort of typing reduces the impact of this interruption to your train of thought.

Try programming by hunt-and-peck typing -- it's certainly possible, but having to think about putting each individual character on the screen is incredibly tedious and distracting. This is why people learn things like Vim motions or minimalist keyboard layouts -- anything that speeds up the feedback loop between your brain and your code is an improvement. It's not a drastic difference, but it's significant enough that I now feel mildly annoyed using a regular keyboard when I have to move my whole arm to reach the arrow keys rather than having them right under my fingers on the home row.

For me its not how fast I can type, my brain(ADHD or whatever this is) needs certain flow of speed; I think of something and want to type it, if I am delayed (e.g. imagine I change from qwerty to dvorak and am still learning) for whatever reason, e.g. key is stuck, my mind goes somewhere else, and then I have to "bring it back".

Also as I am typing one thing I am thinking of another, or even third, so if something goes wrong with the mechanics of the first thing, then whole set of dominoes fall and I have to go back.

Sometimes for a given thought I even type 3rd of 4th word instead of the first if for some reason my keys are not pressed. And then I type a word from the next thought and etc. It even gives me anxiety.

As I am typing the code, I am thinking about the code that is going to use the it, and then the code one layer up, I also think of the machine itself, its wires, cache lines, or I think of how the variable I am typing now is related to its surroundings, I imagine a ladder to the moon each step with its address, and I think how far are things from "me", and so on.

I cant speak of others, but for me keyboard layout and even key feeling/rythm is important just because it allows me to think uninterrupted.

btw thats why I hated the old butterfly keyboards, a tiny crumb gets in and then the probability of a key drops to like 80%, or sometimes it double presses.

I am very happy that apple moved away from the quest of making the keyboard 0 height.

I'm one of the people that uses neovim, a tiling window manager on nixos, and a weird split keyboard.

It's true that it will lead to healthier wrists and more productivity, but thats not the point. I know people with incredibly unergonomic setups and habits (vscode with membrane keyboard and a chronic overuse of the mouse) that get around the same or more actual features implemented as me. There might even be something to be said for more friction forcing you to think more.

The reason most of us do it (at least if we are honest with ourselves) is because it's fun---and that's ok. Jumping around in vim on a split keyboard gives me the same joy that watching my first lines of code execute in Gamemaker Studio 2 did in 8th grade.

It's always worth investing to make your work joyful.

I have a really similar setup to yours. NixOS, Niri, Draculad. I think being forced to use something like Windows 11 with something like VSCode would be very frustrating long term. Mostly the looming knowledge of we can do better, we have done better.

I used to think that typing speed was not really that important, especially when now we have so many LLMs doing the typing for us. But honestly, now I think it's even more important because the specificity and detail in your prompts are paramount to getting a good response, and something like a dictation tool (which is what I'm using right now) is really good for generating very specific prompts.

In fact, I wrote all this out using a dictation tool in ~20 seconds (258 WPM).

Curious, what dictation tool are you using?

Same, 258wpm is something.

FYI I wrote a comment in the same thread where I described the tools I use (TLDR: Whisper).

https://github.com/JinayJain/dictator

Built one for myself. It's context-aware and promptable.

Tested well on Linux, not so much on other platforms but in theory should support them.

It's a bit meta but I wrote it mostly using Claude Code. Once I had an MVP, I was able to prompt much faster by just speaking out what I wanted it to change.

Agreed. I installed Whisper on my Linux computer with a program called SpeechNote. The dictation is all done offline, and it is astonishingly good.

I also have a whisper dictation app on my Android phone (the app's ID string is 'org.woheller69.whisper', there's a few Whisper apps with the same name "Whisper", but this one is my favorite).

FWIW this was typed by hand on my phone, but these apps are both amazing.

I find fast typing is super important to my programming, not because I need to write walls of text, but because if I get into a flow state, I find it irritating if my thoughts are constrained by my typing speed.

There are developers whose wrists explode after years of holding down the shift and control keys. I honestly can't recommend a split keyboard enough from an ergonomics perspective. It's even more practical than a regular keyboard. You can put drinks or food in between the two halves, and if you get one using laptop-style low-profile switches you can put it in your pocket and take it with you anywhere on the go. Combined with some of those Android apps that give you a VTT and you can fit an entire coding set up in your pocket.

There's a lot of ignoring your question and telling an anecdote - some nice anecdotes, though.

I'd guess the answer is yes. If someone (somehow) gets into a junior dev role, has no to little experience, and hunts and pecks 20 words a minute, they'll have to get that up to 50/60 surely before they can be a more normally functioning member of a team, right? I think in some bad cases it could be priority number one.

If your job is producing text in files, you tend to need basic proficiency in typing.

I guess you're rather imagining a really solid developer, types 70/80 wpm but never put any effort in to typing per se, uses whatever system or IDE is the norm and isn't bothered. Learns a few keyboard shortcuts here and there maybe, but again, who cares.

Imagine a counter to your question - if that last developer could click their fingers and get to an effortless, consistent 100 wpm, would they? Should they? I think the answer is yes, and yes. They can still spend as much time as they want staring at the ceiling thinking, with the notepad out sketching, etc.

Now, not everyone wants to think about it, and that's fine, other things matter more in the end. How pleasant of a colleague you are matters more in many cases. But surely the notion itself of typing faster being preferable is easily understandable - programmers are text file producers.

Typing speed might not seem that important if you're looking at the speed of typing and the overall amount of code that an engineer produces that ends up in a PR. But it might take 10x more code that are ephemeral versions that lead up to the full solution. If you're very comfortable with typing and editor commands to manipulate code efficiently then you can iterate faster, creating more intermediate versions of the code that then lead to better overall solutions just because you've tried out more stuff.

Just because it’s not the main bottleneck doesn’t mean it’s not worth optimizing. Also, yes I have seen devs that type so slowly they really would benefit from learning how to type properly.

I actually switched to an alternative layout and minimal keyboard like this just because it’s fun. If I can make my work day more fun, that’s a win in my book.

Yes: https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/

I recently replaced all my decade old consumer-level battery power tools with contractor-level ones. The old tools were fine to use, but the new ones are just an absolute joy to use. Some of that is just better design and build, some of that is just my perception, but in any case I love using them more.

My "fancy" keyboard is a lot like that. It lets me do some customizations that I really enjoy (ctrl when I hold z and /, esc + win next to a and ', "CAPS WORD", using thumbs for more than just space). I just enjoy using it more. Though it does have a few rough edges I probably need to see if I can fix, I CAN fix them.

I am however thinking that I probably would prefer one of the low-profile ones that is more like a laptop keyboard keys, the regular Cherry Blue desktop keys I feel like I'm tripping over a lot.

Conversely, do you think there are developers who would not benefit from being able to type quicker?

Communicating with coworkers efficiently is important for productivity too. While it's true that average speeds are low, I think the ability to quickly and effortlessly write out code or paragraphs of prose when needed is important to productivity.

It's about comfort, not speed. Moving to a minimalistic keyboard did wonders for me RSI.

I use a layout like this and I'm slower than on a traditional qwerty layout. OTOH, I also have far fewer RSI problems.

Speed is rarely a consideration in the community.

Changing keyboard ergonomics is absolutely not the way to deal with RSI. You should instead go to the gym and do proper physio exercises

If you have small hands and you are stretching for delet/backspace and a small kb allows you to hit this key without strain, it absolutely helps with strain on fingers.

I tried many things over the years including other ergonomics and gym etc.

Changing to a smaller split keyboard helped the most and I have not had pain since.

Granted mine has about 50 keys or so so it's not as extreme.

If you hand is in a position that is putting any of your anatomy at a weird angle no amount of exercise is going to sort that out.

It’s the opposite, actually

Going to a split, key well board, solved my wrist issues. I had severe issues on a traditional row stagger keyboard and they have just gone. The only time I feel discomfort is when I type on a row stagger keyboard again for two weeks (e.g. when taking my laptop with me during a trip).

It's not mutually exclusive but getting into the right posture is key. Otherwise you're just fighting against it constantly. That's why most doctors advise for change of habits as the first thing to look for. This is sometimes difficult as we want to keep doing the same things but changing keyboards ergonomics is a thing you can try. In fact my doctor was the one to suggest that for me.

Most keyboards have not spent a single thought on ergonomics, unlike chairs where it is common. There's not a lot of real research in this area and there are contradicting theories (some physicians even say that creating muscle in certain areas like the neck is not worth in the long term). Microsoft ergonomic keyboards have some studies behind and many people report success on split and column staggered keyboards.

I’ve never come across a doctor who doesn’t start by advising physio exercises

> You should instead go to the gym and do proper physio exercises

wish more people would heed this advice. my wrists are jsut as good as when I was in my 20's. in my early thirties I was starting to develop issues. they went away as soon as I started deadlifting and pullups regularly.

People will do anything to not address the fundamental weaknesses that are the true causes of their issues. They have wrist pain so they try and fix their wrist with crazy setups, even though they have huge tightness in their traps and never do any strength training. It barely needs anything either, just light strength, high reps low weight. Your wrists can take any keyboard and setup if you don’t avoid physio

And the best thing about doing this is that you can also change your keyboard to something else and use a different keyboard layout as well. They are not mutually exclusive.

I don't know about the gym, lifting weights is just another way to ruin your body imo.

Yoga, climbing, martial arts, swimming; there's no end of fun activities that lead somewhere while keeping you in physical shape.

It’s an obsessive thing imo, I don’t think it’s actually rooted in a practical thing. They’re just trying to justify an addiction

Everyone needs hobbies

One man’s addiction is another man’s hobby.

of course not. it's fun to mod and geek out about random topics.

i also assume that if you have RSI/carpal tunnel/etc then experimenting with your keyboards switches from negative switching costs to greatly positive

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