Input speed is totally a major part of being a productive programmer. Not necessarily raw words-per-minute typing (it helps, but how much of programming is wor

Input speed is totally a major part of being a productive programmer. Not necessarily raw words-per-minute typing (it helps, but how much of programming is words, compared to symbols?) But navigation speed around your machine and environment makes a huge difference. Things like cutting a block of code and jumping down two screens to paste it. Or memorizing all the keyboard shortcuts for your debugger, so your mind stays on the problem rather than nosing around toolbar buttons. Or operations as mundane as fixing the indenting of a block of code, that a programmer could easily do a hundred times in a day. Save five seconds on that and it seriously adds up. I naturally zip around (Windows) environments very fast. I can typically compile and alt-tab over to the output directory and copy and paste to a deployment folder in under two seconds, often before the programmer watching next to me registers that I've done it. This seriously matters! Like you say, programmers with this practiced skill set can code quicker and debug quicker and ship quicker. (There are downsides; I can't stand pairing with a slower typist, drives me crazy.) Laptops are right out for serious productivity for me, for this reason. My hands know all the (Windows) keyboard shortcuts in the Ins-Del-Home-End block of keys, so my navigation speed on a laptop keyboard without that usual layout drops to half or worse. Actions per minute as a metric can go beyond Starcraft. It matters for programming too. I dearly wish to see the day when neural human-computer interfaces become readily available and accurate. Imagine just thinking 'click' at a toolbar button and there it goes. Not just for typing and programming either, but how about games? Imagine playing Starcraft at the speed of pure thought, with no APM constraints to get in the way...