@danbruc, to supplement and extend pgt's response: I'm a touch-typist, and when on some rare occasions I have to hunt-and-peck while programming (e.g. a finger

@danbruc, to supplement and extend pgt's response: I'm a touch-typist, and when on some rare occasions I have to hunt-and-peck while programming (e.g. a fingercut or something), I'm absolutely and totally frustrated on how horribly slooooooow it is; kinda like being handicapped; imagine e.g. being able to use only your one hand to type; or, even better - having to type with your nose! (yes, nose, really!). Now, knowing that, I imagine that being able to type with this amazing steno speed, one feels a similar level of improvement vs. touch-typing. So, that wasn't a straight answer to your concern, but given that I do feel like described above, I believe it shows that it somehow proves important to me as a programmer. Ah, also, now I remembered, there's the "classical" article on this by Jeff Atwood, which is worth a read: http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-are-typists-first-programmers-second/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-are-typists-first-programmer... edit: Also, now that I thought of it somewhat more, there are two additional benefits: One is, that typing faster leaves me with more time to do the actual thinking. Second one is, that makes my code more "lightweight" for me, in that it's somewhat easier to delete/iterate/refactor stuff, knowing subconsciously that I can quite easily type something similar ("other variant") fairly quickly.