In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.

The real argument for using stenotype keyboards for coding is not typing speed, it's avoiding RSI. On a stenotype keyboard you "type" chords by pushing down with your arms, not your fingers - it's a bit like playing an organ, or a synth keyboard. You don't hear about many organists getting RSI (though some piano players do). The fingers also just move a lot less, much of the "moving" to different keys is also done with the arm muscles.

I agree w/ others in this thread about the underlying challenges for using a steno keyboard for coding. You basically need to pick a custom chord for every program identifier, keyword or symbol, and somehow make those chords memorable. Perhaps a custom IDE featureset can help, leveraging the LSP or tree-sitter parsers?

Speed is not all that important but being able to reliably touch type is. The translation from the mental to the screen should be done with a minimum of conscious thought as that detracts from thinking about the code.

To the extent it's important at all it's a matter of removing mental load. Anything you have thought of but not yet put on the screen is load.

Raw typing speed is not a blocker to being a good programmer. However, I've generally found that if someone types fast (and uses shortcuts especially in his editor), it usually a sign that he's done a lot of it and that has proven to be a decent proxy for coding experience. This is specifically for junior developers.

This is likely true in many instances and types of problems, where you are working on novel issue, and just need to think deeply.

On the other hand, I routinely encounter simpler problems where I can metaphorically "see" a page of code in my head that just needs to be flushed out of my mind's buffer, and I'm waiting for my hands to do the typing. I'm a moderately fast typer (somewhere between 70 and a 100 wpm), and it routinely is a blocker in my flow.

So, your mileage may vary, and I don't fully buy the argument. If one is going to be doing many hours of this activity every day for their life, why not get good at this aspect also?

Ironically writing less code is probably better!

It's not a roadblock, but it is an issue since faster typing leaves you with more time for thinking, but also has can have an important side-benefit of not breaking flow if you're not distracted for long

> In my experience, typing speed is never the issue. I've worked with truly 10x and better programmers in my life and the road block for even them is thinking not typing.

Thinking is a lot easier when your output is seamless and reliable though. Nothing sucks more than debugging typos. The code should work, but it doesn’t. You know you did everything right, but it just won’t work.

20min later … oh wait it’s a typo. Fix was perfect just mangled between brain and keyboard.

Double bad when for whatever reason you can only debug on a remote environment and every iteration takes several minutes.

Learn to type fast and reliably. It’s easily one of the highest ROI things I ever did.