<i>"Ability to type quickly and accurately maximizes the effectiveness of time spent in the flow of programming. Hunting and pecking means you only capture a fraction of what could have been done."</i><p>I submit that typing speed matters, but only as a component of what I'll be unoriginal and call actions per minute (<i>significant</i> APM, to be precise). More important components of SAPM would be pushing blobs of text around (editor knowledge) and manipulating/filtering blobs of text efficiently (Unix toolchain).<p>A 60wpm developer who uses rectangle commands and pipes a portion of buffer to shell to transform it may have higher SAPM than a 150wpm developer ignorant of the various shortcuts available.<p>To further flog the RTS analogy: typing speed and keyboard shortcuts that operate on one line are micro. Regex replace, sed/awk-fu, multiple buffer usage, etc are macro. To be an efficient dev both are necessary but not sufficient -- all the micro and macro in the world can't save you from brain-dead decisions.
<i>> Developers with a curiosity about their craft grow into better developers. This takes time away from the immediate work of pounding out code (point 1), but makes one more effective over the long run. </i><p>This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. On the surface it seems to be an opposite of a `The Duct Tape Programmer' (whow gets the job done quickly when it matters most) -- but probably that's matter of self-discipline and having the goals set straight.<p>Now the question is, how do I pick such programmers in an interview? The ones that are curious about our craft, yet self-disciplined?
The real question to ask is this: By reading this article, how much time have I wasted?<p>Sure, it took a few seconds to jump through my RSS reader, yep, it took a bit of time to read it because it's an interesting article, and obviously, I am now here, writing this comment and thinking whether I should inflict the link on my twitter followers, perhaps even on facebook.<p>And then the coup de grâce at the end of the article itself<p><i>> There are other factors relating to flow which can be optimized. For example one can block off chunks of time</i><p>Well oops?<p>In general, the internet <i>sucks</i> for productivity, but at the same time it's really really hard to code without it.
Typing speed is completely irrelevant.<p>When I'm keyboarding in "stream-of-consciousness" mode (IM session, taking notes, etc.) my typing speed is well north of 160WPM. But when I'm writing code I type in fits and bursts -- a blur of fingers for a while, then blurs with small gaps of silence, then blur-peck-peck-pause-peck-peck-blur. Lather, rinse, repeat.<p>I'd bet most programmers exhibit this behaviour, but are (for the most part) unaware of it.
Typing is not the bottleneck: <a href="http://sebastianlab.com/post/140303165/typing-is-not-the-bottleneck" rel="nofollow">http://sebastianlab.com/post/140303165/typing-is-not-the-bot...</a>