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CodingHorror:

When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code. [...] I believe in practicing the fundamentals, and typing skills are as fundamental as it gets for programmers.

The CS department of my university has no touch typing course for it's students. If typing skills are essential for programmers that seems suboptional.

Is there evidence that teaching programmers to type faster will make them better programmers?

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I follow the issue of programming productivity closely (I write a column for SD Times) and I am not aware of any study that supports this position. Of course that does not mean it's not true and, certainly, there is some fundamental truth to the premise that "you have to type to program." OTOH, no one codes at the rate of 200 strokes per minute. OTOH, there is definitely a perceptible speed difference between a skilled vi user and a person using a mouse for navigation -- could that translate into a measurable benefit? I suspect yes. – Larry OBrien Jun 9 '12 at 21:30
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@LarryOBrien-- ignoring the extremely tempting chance to resurrect the vim wars, I think that both of your other hands were covered by Brooks in 86 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet). One of the points I remember that Brooks argues in the essay was that IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) are not a silver bullet, and that so long as the work environment isn't working against you, it won't hinder you either. Personally, I think that debugging takes a lot more time, regardless of dev environment, than slowing down to type numbers. – mmr Jun 9 '12 at 23:10
If I may throw my opinion on the subject in, I would say that it has little to no effect on the speed of development. I haven't known a programmer to sit down, write code and have it work the first time - every single time. The majority of time spent programming, atleast for me or anyone I've known, is spent staring at the screen debugging - not necessarily typing. There's a whole dimension that isn't considered here - skill at programming. Slow typers who are excellent programmers might develop faster, but fast typers who have no skill aren't going to get much farther. – Christopher Jun 10 '12 at 7:38
I would say that when comparing 2 programmers of equal skill and work ethic the programmer who types faster is going to be more productive. But I do not think I know of 2 programmers of equal skill and work ethic to test it on. And this is not about being a better programmer it is about being a more productive programmer. – Chad Jun 11 '12 at 13:04
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The word "fundamental" is vague. Therefore it makes sense to formulate a claim that more testable. In the same article Jeff writes: "So if you want to become a great programmer, start by becoming a great typist." I think the whole article implies "typing skills improve programming skills". – Christian Jun 12 '12 at 13:05
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