The speed of typing and ten-finger typing

Do you think the speed of typing is important in programming?
:slight_smile: :upside_down_face:

I often am thinking carefull, rresearching, and problem-solving as I type, so I don’t usually type super fast as I code.

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I don’t think it is. I think it will behoove you to increase your speed, but I know for a fact some people at work don’t type very fast. I work at as a Software Engineer and several were playing the online game Type Racer. A few people were really slow, one hitting in the high 30’s in WPM. I type really fast and these same people are way better programmers than me. In the end, it is about problem solving and it isn’t a race.

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Nah. Speed is nice, but accuracy is much more important. I’ve seen a fair number of programmers and work hunting and pecking.

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I just recently tried to change my typing speed after learning how to as a child(re-learning 26 years later). I didn’t learn the proper way and just learned to type without any set pattern and realized that I could never type over 50-55 wpm tops :). So, I up and decided one day that I wanted to see if I could become any better at it and maybe open up some job opportunities for myself that involved typing for a livng.

So, I went all the way back to the beginning and started to learn the correct way with proper finger placement and I can now type over 70 wpm routinely and have hit speed bursts of up to 150 wpm. Last week I was sitting at 78 wpm avg on a site that does random typing speed tests where you can compete vs 4 or 5 other people at a time :). What I learned is if you get a typing program, it can help greatly improve your typing speed if you stick with it over time. I suggest using rapid typing tutor and creating your own custom courses with random book text that you can find online, there are some keys that it won’t allow you to put in, but overly all it will help a ton.

Make sure that you put in at least 20 mins a day for like a half a year, and constantly make sure that you are hitting the right keys with the right fingers because it surely makes a difference once you start to get it. Also, a piece of advice, really work on those keys like x,z,q,c,v at first. Then after a few months of doing it and you start hitting around 50 wpm, start working on using your right pinky to really start focusing on hitting the backspace key every time quickly. Once you are months in and have done these things, begin working on the special characters and number keys and implementing them and before you know it you will be hitting 60 wpm or above.

Once you get to that point, focus strongly on learning to keep your fingers as loose(the stiffer your fingers the slower you’ll type) as possible while your typing because it helps increase your speeds up to 30+%. Hope I helped you out some and yes I think it is important to be able to type faster although I am not a programmer myself. I think it has greatly reduced the time in which I’ve started learning new things with web development and I highly suggest you do what I said above before you even go a lot further.

Once you start seeing speeds of 50-60 wpm, head on over to the typeracer website and start racing people live in online typing speed competitions daily and it will help you even more. Sometimes I beat people on there finishing with 97 wpm :), but my age is sitting at 75 wpm right now I think. You need to make an account first, but you might want to jot down the website address for later :). Hopefully you take my advice, you’ll probably want to thank me later since I told you step by step how to greatly improve it. Really focus on those pinky keys though since your pinky fingers will be the weakest.

The issue is that since you rarely use those keys in comparison to others, those fingers are extremely weak which makes your mind very uncomfortable with making the adjustment and you will find that your brain tries to use other fingers to hit the keys instead, which you don’t want because it will slow you down over all :). You can fix this from the get go by spending some time with letter based courses for the z,x,c,v,q, and w keys. I strongly suggest you work on the first 3 from the get go, good luck to ya.

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Btw, 100fastfingers is a garbage site long term imo, use keybr or typeracer instead :). BTW, if you listen to what I told you in the first message and actually go and download rapid typing tutor for free, you’ll likely see increases of at least 25% in the first few weeks and probably anywhere from 5-15% increase in accuracy as well. When I first started the transition, I went down from 55 wpm to 5-12 wpm re-learning the right way in the first few days. By the end of the first week, I was hitting around 20 wpm, the 2nd week I was hitting mid 20’s to 30’s, 3rd week mid 30’s, and by the end of the month low 40’s. In the same time frame, my accuracy went from around 70% into the 80’s. After a couple of months I started hitting in the 50’s wpm wise and into upper 80’s to lower 90’s in accuracy. Now, a year later, I am avg 75+ wpm with 98-99% accuracy, so yes, it can be done.

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Little inspiration for ya buddy :). I go back and forth between roughly 68 wpm avg and 78 currently, but this is from December :). If you notice, that is out of like 400-500 random text competitions. That is me that won the race with 89 wpms, and up at the top right are my stats over all the races, it says typemaster: 76 wpm avg out of 454 total races.

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My average typing speed is 80WPM, with lots of errors and typos.

As a developer my average line output peaks around 800 LINES the ENTIRE day. Programming is a lot more than typing!

You can be a fast typist and still be slow at programming. You also could be a fantastic programmer and not type as fast.

Generally the more you type, the faster you get, regardless of what your typing.

I recommend forming good typing habits, good posture and erganomics. The last thing you want is to be hurting yourself :smile:

Saw a sign in a pharmacy once - “Speed is important but accuracy is everything” - Wyatt Earp

Hello CynLynn, It’s nice to meet you here. I’m Kewe Richard, i’m new in this site but i don’t know where to start from. so i would like you to help me out. thanks!

Hello, Kewe. It’s nice to meet you, too.

I’d suggest just starting with the FreeCodeCamp lessons as presented. The lessons begin with HTML and CSS, then move on to JavaScript. That works quite well.

Good luck!