> I can’t really relate to “I need to type faster!” programmer optimizations, nor complaints about things like static typing slowing people down because it’s a few more characters...

One common loop in programming is "hypothesize, test, evaluate".

If you're exploring or playing around, the quicker you can execute iterations of this, the more likely it is you'll succeed in what you're trying to do.

In that case, stuff like "unused import is a compiler error" or "static typing required" slows down iteration, so gets in the way of rapid prototyping (or whatever).

"Typing quicker" wouldn't benefit the 'hypothesize' nor 'evaluate' parts, sure, but it'd help you reduce the time it takes to test an idea.

> stuff like "unused import is a compiler error"

For things like this I’d much rather spend the time to improve “quick fix” suggestions in my development environments. The computer can fix the problem much more easily than I can learn a new keyboard layout.