I used to type >140 WPM at high accuracy when I was younger without home row. These days I think I likely sit closer to 90 WPM or so, since I really just don't really need to type super fast very often and am pretty out of practice. I reckon home row is probably not terrible or anything, but like a lot of weird old ergonomics advice, I just don't trust the idea that you must or possibly even should use home row. For example, the best advice regarding ergonomics I've ever had is not to have proper posture at all times, but rather to get up more frequently and not sit in the same position for too long. Likewise, it feels a lot more natural to let my hands move around a bit, and as it would turn out my mouse arm is the one that wound up having more discomfort from long term computer usage. So clearly, YMMV. But a lot of us who didn't do home row are confused; some people will go as far as to say it's literally wrong not to, and I say, burden of proof is on you all.

When I was in the 8th grade (back in the 1900s), I took a typing elective class, because I figured if I was going to be in front of a keyboard typing for a living as a programmer, I should learn to do it right.

That was a rare very good decision for kid me back then, and it's paid off ever since.

I spent basically all my life not typing correctly at all, since I learned from online gaming without a teacher.

I ended up with a technique that had my whole hand shifted to be over WASD like when gaming with pinky only used for modifiers. It was even worse for my right hand as only recently I actually monitored how I typed, and I highly underuse my ring and pinky fingers on that hand. Worst part is I never use my thumbs for spacebar, I found out I literally shift my entire right hand to use my index finger every time I hit spacebar.

Despite all of this I regularly typed ~120wpm. I think when it comes to speed almost everybody adopts at least some peculiar techniques.

I only say typed past tense because I recently got into split ergonomic keyboards with keywells and columnar layouts and my old typing technique literally just does not work. I had to learn how to "correctly" type from scratch, but relatively quickly got to the similar speeds. Now I can easily swap between the two techniques depending on whether I'm using my laptop keyboard or not and type almost the same speed, I'm still a tad bit slower using "correct" technique. But I will say it is a hell of a lot less movement and tension in my hands typing correctly.

> A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs

Saving typing was never a value add for intelligent tab completion, it is mostly used for discovery and recall (what members does the type of this expression have?), not to accelerate your WPM. After around 20-30 wpm, typing speed is not a bottleneck in programming, but size of the API and how much you can fit into your head most definitely is.

While I was learning a new keyboard layout (Colemak) I went from > 100 WPM to starting from ~20 WPM. I think I got pretty productive when I reached 60/70 WPM and was surprised how much tab completion and computing assistance I relied on anyway. After that experience I think fast typing speed is overrated. (Now I’ve a somewhat useless skill of being able to type > 100 WPM on two different keyboard layouts.)

Edit: note if you are a typist and transcribe a lot of text for long periods of time without break, typing speed is important. But that’s mostly not any of us. But hey maybe I don’t write enough documentation and comments..

I am at least 99th percentile on typeracer. I wonder how much of these alleged LLM speedups are from people with low WPM and/or vim fluency.

Even just knowing how to move the cursor quickly (ctrl+arrow keys, using shift as necessary) is a good reflex to have. I always see people pressing arrows / backspace etc repeatedly rather than moving a word/block at a time.

Learning to touch-type effortlessly is IMHO one of the most useful thing to learn, for anyone typing regularly, but especially for programmers. It doesn't have to be fast, but just fast (and automated) enough not to cause a bottleneck.

Unpopular opinion nowadays: This bottleneck is what makes needlessly verbose programming languages annoying. Having to wait for your fingers (or eyes) to catch up with your toughts tends to kill the flow.

I also never learned the proper way of typing with home rows and all. And like the article author I also type at 100wpm. It's sufficient for me. I now need to try the author's suggestion of just typing as a therapeutic session. I suspect ~100wpm is enough for this therapeutic purpose whereas 60wpm isn't.

I sorta disagree, however fast you can type, the computer can manipulate text faster. Our brains are huge slow things. We should employ them at what they are good at, coming up with better abstractions and better frameworks.

The desire to type faster is a strong signal indicating that you need better macros.

My goal has always been to type as fast as I can think, and if I need to move a lot of text around in a dumb way to use tools to help. Vim commands, text macros, refactor tools, formatters, etc. I type at about 90wpm, but when actively developing rarely go above 65.

I use "dynamic finger allocation", close to the standard fingering but not exactly. It's hard to describe as anything other than "closest finger that isn't currently in use". My burst speed is over 200 (peaked roughly 240) but I usually stay around 160-170 in 1-minute tests.

Try typing words like "number", "bus", "zany", "excretion", etc. and you'll soon learn why sticking with the "proper" fingering is absolutely idiotic if you want speed and comfort. You can waste time and effort moving the "right" finger all the way from the bottom to the top of the keyboard, or just hit the key with the perfectly usable one sitting there idle.

To elaborate, when typing "number" I use the index and middle finger to chord "nu", then "mb" is the next chord with the left index and right middle, which naturally pulls down my left hand enough that "er" is easily done as a final chord with the left ring and middle fingers.

>A lot of the value added by various intelligent tab completion and LLMs is easily replicated by typing variable and function names at 100+ wpm.

The contrapositive of this is that, if you don't type at 100+ wpm, intelligent tab completion and LLMs add a lot of value you wouldn't otherwise get. Most of us don't, so this ends up being a vote in favor of the AI.

I also wonder if it’s a bit better for your hands. I feel like having my pinkies just kind of hanging there while I type causes the nerves to atrophy.

Typing is not an underrated skill at all though. It's probably one of the most gatekeepy "you can't call yourself a programmer if you're bad at it" thing I've ever seen.

The only time typing speed has helped me is when people try to gish gallop me when I’m messaging them and I’m able to gish right back faster than they can respond. That’s…not exactly healthy though.

I type fast.

I don't think I could Mimik a LLM. But I'm prompting fast so that helps

It is my guess that everyone in the thread with "Hey, I don't type normally either and my speed is just fine" comments are likely staring at the keyboard when they type. All two-finger typists I've personally witnessed, even the extremely prolific Roger Ebert, couldn't effectively transcribe a printed document with their learned typing style.

If you never have to type something you're reading, I'm sure unique typing styles are just fine.

Looks like we overlapped in writing our comments. I'll leave mine, but I wanted to voice support for yours. I started at 8 y/o and have a similar "story". In particular, it sounds like your hands and mine do a lot of the same thing.

Anecdotally, I don't know anybody who types w/ a personalized style who has wrist RSI.

I absolutely adore doing "improvisational piano" terminal sessions w/ people watching, particularly when I'm operating a GUI or CLI that I know really well. I slow myself down by narrating and, if it's an in-person gig, gesturing. Doing stuff in front of people in realtime feels a lot like jamming on a musical instrument for me.

I also type unorthodoxly and quickly. Hands held diagonal (wrists straight), no particular finger-letter assignments. Closer to playing a piano. 33 years typing like this, going strong.

I can't think of any benefit of home row typing other than it's easy to teach in a prescriptive manner.

> I typically just use the index/middle finger on my left hand that covers most of the left hand side of the keyboard, depending on word (index might reach for the 'y' key sometimes) and the pinky for shift key. Right hand uses mostly the index, ring (for hitting backspace and enter) and thumb (for spacebar).

fwiw, you might be avoiding the ulnar nerve usage. Perhaps that makes things easier for your brain/cerebellum and spine, which then only have to coordinate movement in one nerve pathway.

if you've never had proper typing tests, then I'd suspect your WPM scores are not what you think. you may be typing keys at 110-120 WPM, but what does the score look like if you adjust for mistakes? It makes a bigger difference than most people are willing to admit.

I have a similar typing style, with two finger typing for nearly all keys except shift with uses my little finger. I too am at around 100wpm on average with peaks of ~130wpm depending on keyboard.

It's cool to see somebody else out there who types like I do.

My Mom got me Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and other tools to help me to learn to type "correctly", but I didn't have any motivation to learn how to type until I started playing the original Starcraft online. I needed to be able to communicate with teammates (and trash talk opponents) in a timely manner, so I was forced to learn to type fast. But as a result, I also developed my own unorthodox style that looks a lot like hunt and peck.

On a typing test where they provide me with what to type I can consistently get 60+ WPM, but when I'm typing something from my head I'm pretty sure I get 100 to 120.

> This is super interesting - I have typed "wrong" since the time I first picked up a keyboard, 6 or 7 years old, back in an age where typing was not taught in school or an expected skill everyone was just automatically meant to know. As such, I developed my own "style" which looks a lot like "pecking" a lot of beginners will do, but has adapted over the decades to something that is my own.

Hey, me too: https://vxtwitter.com/LoganDark/status/1919146616763617342

(I usually type with more than two pointers, that post was just to prove a point that you don't need more than two fingers to type quickly. You probably don't even necessarily need two, though I couldn't go nearly that fast with only one.)

Same. I’m embarrassed to explain how I type but I can do 125 (80 on iPhone, no swipe).

If I’m going to be real, just you’re naturally talented and coordinated with your hands. That’s why most people can’t relate. We should form a group where we do finger things. /s

Welp, sometimes you write a long letter, when you don't have time to write a short one.

Haha I can relate, I went through a similar phase last year: https://jarbus.net/blog/zen-in-the-art-of-beat-saber/

It's key to my productivity, that's for sure. I type faster than most folks, but I'm not that fast, though I've never tested my WPM. I make up for it because I know my shorcuts, I choose tools that have good shortcuts, and I set custom shortcuts for things I do a lot.

Another thing is efficient use of screen real estate. Then you don't need to press any buttons at all, you just move your eyes.

Why put more barriers (not knowing how to type, keyboard shortcuts, etc) between your thoughts and reality? :)

Just switch to source code typing in the settings.

Went through the same process last year due primarily to trying to find a solution to my cubital tunnel syndrome. I dropped down to like legit 20wpm from ~120wpm. I'm back to around 100 or so but a lot more comfortable and with less pain.

I recommend either the Kinesis Advantage 360 pro or the glove 80 to anybody who uses a keyboard a lot for a living. I tried both and frequently switch between them.

Another thing I recommend to people with problems is to get literally the lightest keycaps you can, and while it may slow you down a bit try to bottom out less/type a bit lighter in general.

Yeah I switched to an ErgoDox after 15+ years of normal keyboards, and it was quite an adjustment. It took me at least a year just to feel comfortable, and another year to get back up to speed. Now, I'm the complete opposite - I tried typing on a normal keyboard a few weeks ago and was just as confused as when I first switched :)

In the same vein, I credit playing original WoW on a PvP server for much of my ability to type quickly. Can’t be sitting there pecking out a message for too long when there’s undead rogues lurking!

A lot of these people who say 100+ wpm or whatever really mean the 15 second test on monkeytype, that only tests words like “the” “that” “because”. It’s different than what an oldhead might mean by 100 wpm ;)

Maybe some people confused wpm and characters per minute... For writing software having 100% accuracy with numbers and special characters is more important than speed. I don't think 100 wpm is real for coding.

Yeah, I agree. It feels strange typing non existent words lol.

Used monkeytype for a while but then recently launched my own site: typequicker.com and been using it since

Would you consider giving it a go? Any feedback is appreciated

> Typing fast is a way to unlock the brain.

Cannot emphasize this enough. I literally built my own typing app for this reason - plateaued on monkeytype and wanted better detailed stats so I build typequicker.com

Playing a musical instrument also achieves this, it makes a game about the little things about the brain (an organ we all love), like sequencing, motor skills, etc..

Almost certainly the latter. IMO most people would benefit from practicing/learning QWERTY better than switching to an alternate layout (it's really not all that bad as it's made out), unless they have specific ergonomic issues, or they've got some really bad habits that starting on an alternate layout helps them unlearn.

> When there is almost zero friction getting thoughts into code it's very easy to enter a flow state

Couldn’t have said better myself - I learned touch typing and vim in parallel early in my early days and doing any text work is a bliss

I literally wrote about this a couple days ago: https://www.typequicker.com/blog/how-to-type-faster

An honourable mention to https://typ.ing too. It’s the same kind of tool from the guys behind the moonlander keyboard, ZSA.

I particularly like the spaced repitition at https://www.keybr.com/ and the heatmap of missed keys at https://www.keybr.com/profile.

I find the way that it handles errors to be super annoying—I type fairly quickly and hitting backspace is built into my muscle memory in a way that just seems totally incompatible with that site, even with the "Stop cursor on error" setting unticked.

To be honest I could never get into keybr - typing random words is kind of boring and pointless. I saw much better progress on monkeytype, typingclub and now typequicker

Might be just my preference, but I'd rather train on monkeytype.com. The icon for the space is confusing and the way it consider spelling errors too.

Its really fun once you get into it if you have the time, are somewhat linguistically inclined, and like messing with emacs configs/keyboard layers. Its not necessary for programming, but my reasoning was that I was going to be spending 8+ hours a day on the computer for the foreseeable future so it was probably worth putting the time in learning given I was already interested. Its much less physical effort to type, but does require more mental effort at first.

Probably not very helpful for programming. At least yet, maybe if voice command lines like Alexa or MCP Agents advance you could run a Stenographer to voice like 100% faster than what you could achieve just by running text-to-speech. But also at that point you could just speak, I guess.

Yeah, I saw this and didn’t like this either tbh lol

Prefer monkeytype or typequicker

I'm no expert typist and I can't speak to the OP's claims that a bump in typing speed translates to a corresponding increase in productivity, but I can attest to the fact that simple time spent practicing will improve your skills in almost anything, typing included. If you included a typing run at the beginning of your day and made sure you were using proper form, I think you might be surprised at how quickly and how drastically your typing speed might improve.

The key is simply sticking with it over the long term. A general rule I find rings true is that people tend to overestimate their improvement over a month, but underestimate improvement over a year.

> but just doing a typing run at the beginning of the day feels like a really refreshing thing to do.

You might like typequicker.com - I added a daily typing test for this reason (has a daily leaderboard as well)

My friends now all ask each other “have you done the dsily?” lol

Give it a shot :)

I learned to type on a typewriter in school.... I'm around 150WPM.

Keep slowing down until you can get 100% consistently, then slowly speed back up.

I never touched Dvorak, I feel like it would hurt more than it would help, as I would often switch back to Qwerty, and I would confuse my brain.

A couple of recommendations on my end.

1- Go slower. (Then you can speed it up) 2- Try playing an instrument, or to a lesser extent, dancing.

I skipped typing classes altogether, and I'm not sure how; they were a requirement in every school district I attended and a prerequisite to the programming classes that I took instead. My typing has developed "organically"; I use most of my fingers at least sometimes, but heavier on index and middle.

> IRC and AIM in the 90s/00s were the big drivers for fast typing.

Those are how I developed my touch typing; the incentive was to see everything happening in the chatroom full of friends without missing anything, and being able to react quickly.

> The tactile response and feel of an electric typewriter is pretty cool.

Granddad was a retired IBM employee, and had a Selectric typewriter (either II or III, not sure). That thing felt (and sounded) awesome. The whir of the flywheel, the amazing feedback of the "thunk" of the ball hitting the ribbon. I used to type random crap that didn't need to be typed just to use that thing for a few minutes.

My typing class was one of the first in my school to use computers. Honestly we were probably a couple years behind other schools in this regard. I can still remember some of the students breaking down in tears because up until that point in their lives, they’d never touched a computer. These were high schoolers around 1997 or so.

For me it was MERC flavored DikuMUDs. When you're fighting a strong boss and you need to communicate with your team, you gotta be able to issue commands to the server as well as carry a conversation with your teammates.

> There’s special pain involved in watching someone type slowly. Even worse when there’s repeated mistakes.

Oh yeah - it’s rough. I’ve gone fully down the rabbit hole lol.

Typed on various sites, then built my own (typequicker.com if you want to give it a shot), then discovered vim, then QMK, then built my own keyboard and completely modded, etc, etc. Got really comfortable navigating with shortcuts, etc

Having to screen share and someone who is sharing then struggles for a while looking for the pipe character when they’re typing out a shell command I told them…it’s rough.

I feel folks though - typing correctly and typing fast is never taught. There are no standardized systems in place that emphasize this. (Which is another reason I built the app lol )

It takes very little time/effort to improve honestly :)

Coincidentally, I actually wrote about this recently as well:

https://www.typequicker.com/blog/how-to-type-faster

Thankyou

Yeah this is really good site!!

I used it for a while but plateaued after some time. Using https://www.typequicker.com/practice now - has more detailed stats and a daily typing test with a leaderboard to motivate me to do at least a little each day Lol

I'm curious:

- how many minutes per day?

- after each test, did you redo wrong/slow words?

My current typing speed, as measured by Monkeytype, is 80wpm (after a deduction for errors).

Came here to say this. It really is a well made site

I'm at 140, gaining ~1wpm per hour spent on it. Sometimes I feel like I'm only getting better at re-entering words on a screen

Wow, insane numbers!

Give typequicker.com/practice a try -(we’ve got a few text topics to choose from and capitals, numbers, etc) - just hit configure

Try this https://www.spreeder.com/app.php I am sure that the default 300WPM will be easy.

F and J make it easy to orient yourself, but the actual recommended fingering is not optimal for many keys and sequences.

nor does being a decent typist support any such claim.

Look at the scoreboards on typing sites like Typeracer and Monkeytype. There, 150 is decent, but nowhere near the top, with plenty of people averaging 200+, and a select few even manage to break 300wpm. Those near the top definitely do not use the standard fingering pattern.

Oh, I forgot there are people under 120wpm. How cute.

J/k I’m an ok typist with chronic RSI. Speech to text is a godsend.

> typing speed and vim skills are going to play less of a role in overall development speed as AI use increases

I feel like it will always be relevant. Both typing fast and vim.

I always bet on vim / neovim.

Even as tools like Cursor and Windsurf grow, Neovim will always catch up and beat them. Developer attitude of “I can do it better” or “I can build that” will always compete with leading tech products. Tools like aider are already gaining large adoption

Always bet on vim