Typing fast isn’t important for coding, or writing, or any kind of productive tasks. As long as a person types fast enough to get the job done, it’s not the bottleneck. Thinking of what to type is the bottleneck.
But I have recently come to realize there is one task for which typing fast is very important. That task is real-time text chat.
Among my friends in our chat server, and among co-workers on Slack, some people are much more chatty than others. They write more messages. They write longer messages. They have more involved conversations. They have the greatest amount of participation.
Others do not chat as much. I’m sure they have their own reasons, and that’s fine. It’s not right or wrong to participate more or less.
But I realized one day there was a very strong correlation. The people who participate the most are all people who are sitting at computers with keyboards (mostly mechanical ones) and are very proficient at typing. They can all type at least as fast as they can think.
People who use their phones more often, or are slower typists, can’t keep up in a text conversation. If they try to write a long complex thought the conversation will pass them by. They can only get out a shorter sentence in time, and that really puts a damper on their communication. It’s like someone with a quiet voice trying to get a word in a very loud conversation.
This really clicked for me recently when a co-worker admitted to being a very slow hunt and peck typist. They are an excellent engineer, so it’s not a problem there. However, this person is also the person who loves to do Slack huddles all the time. It all made sense. I was absolutely overwhelming this person in text chat with an entire paragraph of ideas before they could peck out a sentence. Of course a huddle is easier for them.
I would like to make a suggestion to slow typists out there who have to use real time text chat. Either learn to type fast and/or start using speech to text features.
I'm a fast typist but horribly slow at typing on a phone. Whenever I'm in a fast and deep group conversation I feel compelled to go to a computer to keep up with the pace.
I totally noticed that the most active persons in a conversation are those who type the fastest, and conversely. Seems totally logical.
Being a kid/teen in the 90s into the early 00s, online chatting and gaming before voice comms were common definitely led to me learning to touch type very very fast and accurately.
And yep, I'm a prolific text chatter amongst similarly fast-typing friends and colleagues. It's still my preferred mode of communication. When all parties can keep up it's a really enjoyable medium.
Indeed, my English typing was significantly improved once I had to type a lot in IRC---I can type around 120 WPM nowadays. That said, the tendency to do Slack huddles seems much more complex than typing speed. Writing has an intrinsic delay compared to speaking, and that delay can sometimes suppress important informations without realizing. For that reason I'm fine with huddles from managers, but would prefer a dedicated meeting or textual conversation over other huddles.
I was quite proud of the fact that i could easily out-type my 1200 baud modem.
Tech improved and so did my typing.
Late-night C64 BBS's when the sysop jumped in and started talking to you in real-time was the biggest pressure cooker to learn to type, to learn to type fast, and to watch the screen while you type.
The came IRC, and well; in busy channels it was tricky. Today Slack feels slow with all the animated crap.
Yeah, when I was a kid one of my biggest motivators to type faster was chatting with people. I got faster at typing because I "had" to, because it bothered me when I wasn't able to get a message across as fast as I was thinking it. It probably helped I took piano lessons as a kid as well... I type around 130wpm these days and indeed, am very active in work discussions via text.
I type at a similar speed and I attribute it to playing MMOs as a kid. You had to type really fast if you wanted to make callouts during fights without dying. :-)
It continues to boggle my mind why there would be engineers who cannot touch type - not just for speed but because your brain now has to spend part of its processing cycles trying to find the next key on the keyboard.
I learned touch typing long after the beginning of my pro developer career. That made a huge difference. The main benefit is it make typing easy. Which is important when writing docs and comments. And with that I can handle much more because there is no need to keep all in my head. I can write it down, switch the task, then come back. Also helps organizing my thoughts. I can write them down while thinking, then easily scroll back and forth. It's never too late, I definitely recommend you to learn touch typing, if you are not working for the government of course. There are many websites which make it fun and easy.
People always like to say "thinking, not typing, is the bottleneck". This is a totally wrong way to think about it, because for the most part you don't think while you type. You think, then you type. They happen at different times! The more time you spend typing, the longer it is before you can start thinking again.
> You think, then you type. They happen at different times!
Really? I can certainly type while thinking cause I did so while writing this very sentence, and I have assumed that they are pipelined and improving one without another is meaningless up to some threshold. I should note that I don't think in English, but I can pull English words incrementally from my mind so I don't think that matters much anyway.
Learning to touch type is all about automating the typing, reducing the cognitive load. The load is reduced to a point where one is thinking ahead a few words and the typing sub-process (as in sub-conscious) works the queue. That queue can be dozens of characters long. But stick one non-touch char in there and the queue blocks until that char is cleared.
I've been orienteering and the only time I'd stop is when the terrain didn't allow safely reading the map while in a jog. Or when I encounter an unexpected landmark, indicating I lost my orientation. Otherwise everything is planned while moving towards and scanning for the next waypoint in the queue.
I don't know how much resource is shared for physical and mental activies (my wild guess is "a bit but not much", but I don't have any backing evidence), but I'm sure that important decisions are exceptions rather than norms.
Agreed, though different people have different thresholds for "enough". 100 WPM seems to be conservative enough for most people including me though, so that is a good target.
I can't really read the article as it went down for me so the article may have already mentioned this, but I think touch typing is a bit more important than the raw typing speed, which heavily depends on the exact text and personal conditions.
Link didn't load for me, but at least I can say that I agree with the title.
I type reasonably fast (about 120 WPM on a good day, 100 WPM on a normal day, according to Monkeytype), but I've said for quite awhile that you get around 95% of the benefit of fast typing by simply getting to 50 WPM.
I do think that there's value in being able to touch-type, but I think the benefits after that tail-off pretty quickly.
Getting faster at typing is fun, and it won't "hurt" you or anything, but like many things, I think a lot of the benefits are overhyped.
Typing fast is incredibly useful for taking notes during meetings.
If you can basically transcribe the conversation in real time, it helps a lot.
Ofc you could record and run it through TTS, but that's overhead, gives you a messy huge textfile with lots of unnecessary information, and has privacy/legal issues
Please allow enough time for the Belgian webmaster to type in the HTML+CSS after you send your GET request.
In the earliest days of the Internet, every Cisco router installation included a community of dedicated monks who painstakingly cleared the EVIL bit and copied each packet to each outbound interface in a hex editor.
Fast typists have been in demand ever since the studios ceased broadcasting cartoons live. It was these heroic figures who transferred lightning-quick creativity from inkpot and paintbrush, to keyboard and mouse.
I've been writing code for almost 30 years. I don't touch-type and don't use all fingers, but still manage 125wpm and can type without looking at the keyboard. I've not put any additional time just to learn to type, it just happens over the years.
I find it very useful that I can quickly have my ideas flow from my mind into the screen.
I learned to touch-type over 40 years ago (on an IBM Selectic). I'm not the fastest, but the advantage is that I don't even think about typing anymore, the words pretty much flow automatically out of my fingers.
Typing fast(er) for me went hand-in-hand with the fun of experimenting with mechanical keyboards. Once you hit a certain stride, there is a satisfying audible and haptic feedback that settles into a gratifying rhythm as you compose your thoughts on screen. Do yourself a favor and invest in a keyboard that pleases you if you have to clack (or thock) into the void for more than a couple hours per day.
Typing fast isn’t important for coding, or writing, or any kind of productive tasks. As long as a person types fast enough to get the job done, it’s not the bottleneck. Thinking of what to type is the bottleneck.
But I have recently come to realize there is one task for which typing fast is very important. That task is real-time text chat.
Among my friends in our chat server, and among co-workers on Slack, some people are much more chatty than others. They write more messages. They write longer messages. They have more involved conversations. They have the greatest amount of participation.
Others do not chat as much. I’m sure they have their own reasons, and that’s fine. It’s not right or wrong to participate more or less.
But I realized one day there was a very strong correlation. The people who participate the most are all people who are sitting at computers with keyboards (mostly mechanical ones) and are very proficient at typing. They can all type at least as fast as they can think.
People who use their phones more often, or are slower typists, can’t keep up in a text conversation. If they try to write a long complex thought the conversation will pass them by. They can only get out a shorter sentence in time, and that really puts a damper on their communication. It’s like someone with a quiet voice trying to get a word in a very loud conversation.
This really clicked for me recently when a co-worker admitted to being a very slow hunt and peck typist. They are an excellent engineer, so it’s not a problem there. However, this person is also the person who loves to do Slack huddles all the time. It all made sense. I was absolutely overwhelming this person in text chat with an entire paragraph of ideas before they could peck out a sentence. Of course a huddle is easier for them.
I would like to make a suggestion to slow typists out there who have to use real time text chat. Either learn to type fast and/or start using speech to text features.
I'm a fast typist but horribly slow at typing on a phone. Whenever I'm in a fast and deep group conversation I feel compelled to go to a computer to keep up with the pace.
I totally noticed that the most active persons in a conversation are those who type the fastest, and conversely. Seems totally logical.
Being a kid/teen in the 90s into the early 00s, online chatting and gaming before voice comms were common definitely led to me learning to touch type very very fast and accurately.
And yep, I'm a prolific text chatter amongst similarly fast-typing friends and colleagues. It's still my preferred mode of communication. When all parties can keep up it's a really enjoyable medium.
Indeed, my English typing was significantly improved once I had to type a lot in IRC---I can type around 120 WPM nowadays. That said, the tendency to do Slack huddles seems much more complex than typing speed. Writing has an intrinsic delay compared to speaking, and that delay can sometimes suppress important informations without realizing. For that reason I'm fine with huddles from managers, but would prefer a dedicated meeting or textual conversation over other huddles.
I think you are 100% right.
I was quite proud of the fact that i could easily out-type my 1200 baud modem. Tech improved and so did my typing.
Late-night C64 BBS's when the sysop jumped in and started talking to you in real-time was the biggest pressure cooker to learn to type, to learn to type fast, and to watch the screen while you type.
The came IRC, and well; in busy channels it was tricky. Today Slack feels slow with all the animated crap.
Yeah, when I was a kid one of my biggest motivators to type faster was chatting with people. I got faster at typing because I "had" to, because it bothered me when I wasn't able to get a message across as fast as I was thinking it. It probably helped I took piano lessons as a kid as well... I type around 130wpm these days and indeed, am very active in work discussions via text.
I type at a similar speed and I attribute it to playing MMOs as a kid. You had to type really fast if you wanted to make callouts during fights without dying. :-)
It continues to boggle my mind why there would be engineers who cannot touch type - not just for speed but because your brain now has to spend part of its processing cycles trying to find the next key on the keyboard.
I learned touch typing long after the beginning of my pro developer career. That made a huge difference. The main benefit is it make typing easy. Which is important when writing docs and comments. And with that I can handle much more because there is no need to keep all in my head. I can write it down, switch the task, then come back. Also helps organizing my thoughts. I can write them down while thinking, then easily scroll back and forth. It's never too late, I definitely recommend you to learn touch typing, if you are not working for the government of course. There are many websites which make it fun and easy.
Steve Yegge wrote about this ages ago: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirties...
People always like to say "thinking, not typing, is the bottleneck". This is a totally wrong way to think about it, because for the most part you don't think while you type. You think, then you type. They happen at different times! The more time you spend typing, the longer it is before you can start thinking again.
> You think, then you type. They happen at different times!
Really? I can certainly type while thinking cause I did so while writing this very sentence, and I have assumed that they are pipelined and improving one without another is meaningless up to some threshold. I should note that I don't think in English, but I can pull English words incrementally from my mind so I don't think that matters much anyway.
Physical and mental activities compete for resources.
In orienteering, people are taught to stop before making important decisions.
Learning to touch type is all about automating the typing, reducing the cognitive load. The load is reduced to a point where one is thinking ahead a few words and the typing sub-process (as in sub-conscious) works the queue. That queue can be dozens of characters long. But stick one non-touch char in there and the queue blocks until that char is cleared.
I've been orienteering and the only time I'd stop is when the terrain didn't allow safely reading the map while in a jog. Or when I encounter an unexpected landmark, indicating I lost my orientation. Otherwise everything is planned while moving towards and scanning for the next waypoint in the queue.
I don't know how much resource is shared for physical and mental activies (my wild guess is "a bit but not much", but I don't have any backing evidence), but I'm sure that important decisions are exceptions rather than norms.
Your typing just shouldn't lag behind your thoughts. Once you are fast enough, working on it will have diminishing returns.
Agreed, though different people have different thresholds for "enough". 100 WPM seems to be conservative enough for most people including me though, so that is a good target.
I can't really read the article as it went down for me so the article may have already mentioned this, but I think touch typing is a bit more important than the raw typing speed, which heavily depends on the exact text and personal conditions.
And when your typing does lag behind your thoughts it makes coding a huge chore. Asking for changes in PRs becomes a huge burden.
Link didn't load for me, but at least I can say that I agree with the title.
I type reasonably fast (about 120 WPM on a good day, 100 WPM on a normal day, according to Monkeytype), but I've said for quite awhile that you get around 95% of the benefit of fast typing by simply getting to 50 WPM.
I do think that there's value in being able to touch-type, but I think the benefits after that tail-off pretty quickly.
Getting faster at typing is fun, and it won't "hurt" you or anything, but like many things, I think a lot of the benefits are overhyped.
To this day, the best way to practice typing, for me, is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Typing_of_the_Dead
Typing fast is incredibly useful for taking notes during meetings. If you can basically transcribe the conversation in real time, it helps a lot. Ofc you could record and run it through TTS, but that's overhead, gives you a messy huge textfile with lots of unnecessary information, and has privacy/legal issues
I’ve been writing code for money for 10 years. I’m a terrible typer, probably 40WPM and not consistently touch typing.
I never cared that I was slow, I’m fast enough. I do wish I was more accurate though.
Link is not loading for me.
Same. Might've been hugged, though I doubt it considering how recently it's been added.
Please allow enough time for the Belgian webmaster to type in the HTML+CSS after you send your GET request.
In the earliest days of the Internet, every Cisco router installation included a community of dedicated monks who painstakingly cleared the EVIL bit and copied each packet to each outbound interface in a hex editor.
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt
Fast typists have been in demand ever since the studios ceased broadcasting cartoons live. It was these heroic figures who transferred lightning-quick creativity from inkpot and paintbrush, to keyboard and mouse.
https://www.wired.com/story/simpsons-live-animated-episode/
I've been writing code for almost 30 years. I don't touch-type and don't use all fingers, but still manage 125wpm and can type without looking at the keyboard. I've not put any additional time just to learn to type, it just happens over the years.
I find it very useful that I can quickly have my ideas flow from my mind into the screen.
I learned to touch-type over 40 years ago (on an IBM Selectic). I'm not the fastest, but the advantage is that I don't even think about typing anymore, the words pretty much flow automatically out of my fingers.
typing fast is not
typing without looking at the keyboard is.
...but it is fun!
Typing fast(er) for me went hand-in-hand with the fun of experimenting with mechanical keyboards. Once you hit a certain stride, there is a satisfying audible and haptic feedback that settles into a gratifying rhythm as you compose your thoughts on screen. Do yourself a favor and invest in a keyboard that pleases you if you have to clack (or thock) into the void for more than a couple hours per day.
Faster typing can mean faster thinking and faster iterating.
Combine it with 10 gig fibre browsing and working