Hacker News Reader

Comment by pzxc | Hacker News Reader

I recently disregarded the competence of a coworker (who is in a programmer position) because I took a class with them and saw that they could not type. They were hunting and pecking. (This guy is 50 years old so has had plenty of time to learn)

Is that wrong? Does being bad at typing force you to be more thoughtful and actually make you a better programmer? Or does it just mean it takes you longer?

My thinking is that you are not doing much thinking while you are actually typing, so not being able to type proficiently just means you're slower and that's it. So all else being equal, a programmer that can't type well is a red flag.

View on HN

I see no correlation between typing fast and being a good programmer.

I mean how much do you even have to type to program, if I produce a page of good code in a day, thats a good day, and it doesn't take long to type.

There's no correlation but at least it makes you more productive. Like using an IDE or good editor does not make you a good programmer, but it could improve your productivity in the right situations. For example, I don't want to waste a lot of time hunt-and-pecking emails or IM. Touch typing helps.

I type about 105 wpm using four fingers (my index fingers and my thumbs); I don't touch type at all but I also don't look at the keyboard, I just know where the keys are from muscle memory (when switching to a keyboard that is unfamiliar to me it takes me a minute or two to adjust if the keys are particularly different in shape/size from ones I usually use). I'm not sure what that says about me as a programmer.

In any case I don't think it makes sense to use typing speed as a measure of programming competence because typing speed is never the bottleneck in producing real, useful code.

Things get really weird when you consider the effect of template / tab completion systems like yasnippet in emacs and numerous non-free alternatives.

(template systems are an editor extension where you type "i" "f" "tab" and magically an entire if statement stanza instantly appears all perfectly formatted and ready for the details to be filled out.)

So if I type at 40 wpm, but 4 keystrokes of mine do more than 16 keystrokes from someone who doesn't use a template system, does that mean I'm effectively typing at 160 wpm? I guess so.

I also use an extension that magically aggressively indents so I don't indent, my editor takes care of it for me, so I guess I'm typing at infinite wpm when formatting code, compared to someone who hand indents.

> I type about 105 wpm using four fingers

> I also don't look at the keyboard

> I just know where the keys are from muscle memory

You are touch typing though. You may have an unconventional style, but that is irrelevant.

I guess it is touch typing if you define touch typing as any kind of typing without looking, but it isn't what most people think of touch typing, I don't have any sort of "rest" or "home" position.

I never really considered a "home" position, but I think my fingers do tend to end up around roughly the same keys between thoughts: [L-shift]SDF / KL;'

I would say it's wrong, typing faster will not produce better software. Most of the time involved in writing software is not actually writing it. You may type 3x faster but if he is 5x faster at coming up with a quality solution then your gains will be lost.

Think it the other way around: if someone can come up with a solution 5x fater than you and also type 3x faster than you, then how long you are going to catch up with him.

Sure, if they are hunting for the correct keys that is a bad sign. However I don't equate super fast typing with actual speed of progress. Very rarely am I coding as fast as I can type. In fact, that never happens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com