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I’ve always had the opposite experience. When I am unable to type well I am massively less effective. This happened when switched from emacs to vim, or got a ne

I’ve always had the opposite experience. When I am unable to type well I am massively less effective. This happened when switched from emacs to vim, or got a new keyboard with a weird layout, or broke my thumb, or, hell, anytime I use a phone. First there’s the cognitive overhead involved with the task itself, as opposed to letting your fingers do the work while you think about real stuff. Second, when you’re slow at typing, typing becomes the bottleneck more often, and your brain is sometimes idling waiting for your typing to catch up. Your brain has the hard part; it should always be the bottleneck. Third, typing fast gives you more options, because you don’t consider “how long will this take me to type out?” when considering different approaches to some immediate challenge. If opening a REPL and evaluating something is going to take you five minutes, you might not do it. I suspect your friend was a fast worker despite being a slow typist. If he learned to touch-type, he could always have spent the same time thinking as he does now then less time and effort actually typing it.

smugma 4y ago
I understand what you're saying and often feel that way. I think one point to be taken away is not to judge capabilities of X (say, programming) based on Y (typing speed). However, sometimes I have the opposite desire. I can type on a normal keyboard at 80-90 wpm. On an iPhone I'm probably 1/4-1/3 of that. However, I probably spend 60-90 minutes a day reading/writing emails from my phone. Sometimes going slower allows you go to faster. > Your brain has the hard part; it should always be the bottleneck. Or maybe not. Lots of famous people (particularly physicists) talk about the importance of letting the mind wander i.e. the opposite of making sure it's the bottleneck. I'm a slow phone typist but it's still easy to do. My brain can still think of the next thing to write, or wander.

smugma 4y ago

I understand what you're saying and often feel that way. I think one point to be taken away is not to judge capabilities of X (say, programming) based on Y (typing speed). However, sometimes I have the opposite desire. I can type on a normal keyboard at 80-90 wpm. On an iPhone I'm probably 1/4-1/3 of that. However, I probably spend 60-90 minutes a day reading/writing emails from my phone. Sometimes going slower allows you go to faster. > Your brain has the hard part; it should always be the bottleneck. Or maybe not. Lots of famous people (particularly physicists) talk about the importance of letting the mind wander i.e. the opposite of making sure it's the bottleneck. I'm a slow phone typist but it's still easy to do. My brain can still think of the next thing to write, or wander.