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In my experience, there's much more to 'programming' than typing out new code. Where typing speed becomes an issue is in communicating with people, not machine

In my experience, there's much more to 'programming' than typing out new code. Where typing speed becomes an issue is in communicating with people, not machines: trying to have an IM conversation with a non-touch-typist is painful, and when you have emails or documentation to write, it's much more reasonable for typing speed to be the limiting factor. I don't want such things to be a big chunk of my day, and being able to type quickly helps keep the amount of time I spend doing that to a minimum and lets me get back to coding :).

BrandonM 12y ago
> ...when you have emails or documentation to write... I totally agree. Every editor or typing speed article is accompanied by posters claiming that it's not important for programming, and I just have to think that they haven't spent a lot of time working in a team. Typing and thinking about code is never more than 2/3 of my job. Writing emails, commenting code, creating procedures (e.g., for releasing), documenting our infrastructure... These activities require a bit less thought and are always limited by my typing speed, even with vim and 100+ WPM. Getting through them slower would mean spending less than half of my time programming, or worse: a pile of undocumented code and systems, and increasing irrelevance in team discussions.