Typing speed is not the bottleneck when writing software. The bottleneck is my brain. I see typing like the ability to do mental arithmetic: being able to do i

Typing speed is not the bottleneck when writing software. The bottleneck is my brain. I see typing like the ability to do mental arithmetic: being able to do it well isn't the thing that's directly valuable, but it removes distraction from the activity that is valuable, and that ends up making it valuable as well. Another way to look at it: the faster you think, the faster you need to type in order for it not to become the bottleneck (during the times where you're actually implementing an algorithm as opposed to designing it). Of course, that's not just a function of raw typing skill, but also of the tools you use and the verbosity of your programming language. (An amusing corollary of this is that for society at large, it's useful to have great hackers who are bad typists: they will be tempted to develop better tools from which the good typists can also benefit!) I've never known a great developer who did hunt-and-peck typing though. I do know great developers who have their own typing system. They simply never bothered to learn the "proper" way to do ten finger typing, and that's fine (unless those typing systems are worse for RSI, which was the case for me personally).