Typing test, anyone?

December 7, 2008 by Amr

So I'm wandering around, while having Suhoor and I come across a post by Jeff Astwood where he argues that Coding is just typing. But that's just a strong headline which doesn't tell the actual message. He claims that typing is one of the core programming skills. That doesn't seem correct either. That said, I doubt I'd see a good programmer who doesn't type fast.

I'm the type of person who writes code in big chunks (couple of nights ago I wrote 290 lines in one go) with intervals to think the next chunk through. I never considered myself a fast typist. But I would claim that my reasonable typing speed, and comfort while doing that, helps me sculpt my code (which is the way I write new code). Move up and down, tweak here and there. Oh an idea, 20 seconds and it's written down, oh no wait. Move up, replace this with that. Done. Execute! (and repeat).

In his git Google Tech Talk, Linus Torvalds argues that git's exceptional speed at doing certain tasks (e.g. branch merging) changes the way you work. Makes you think differently about those tasks and how to utilize them. "That, is is the kind of performance that actually changes the way you work. It's no longer doing the same thing faster, it's allowing you to work in a completely different manner.", he says. I agree. While that doesn't seem necessarily true (aka: it will just take me a bit longer but I will do it!). In practice however, I almost always find it's.

I took the typing test at http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php and ...

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