Here's an interesting question: What is the speed and accuracy requirement of typing for a C++ game progarmmer at a junior/entry level position and beyond.
Thank you,
Josheir
Typing skills
"Sufficient and competent, respectively."
Your ability to proof-read and debug your code is more important, because once you learn to type, generally you'll write what you intended to first time... its the things which you didn't have in your mental model of the code at the time you were writing it that are going to bite you most often. More bugs are caused by getting the logic of a test or a looping structure wrong, than are caused by having one too few semicolons or one too many minus signs.
My typing speed (and I am slow) never interferes with my programming, since typing speed is not really a gating factor. I spend far more time thinking about the problem, designing some new system, or debugging in IDE.
As others have said, programming isn't just typing as fast as you can on a keyboard.
Programming is predominately about thinking. Words-per-minute is not a problem.
As programmers, any time we encounter situations where we're actually limited by typing (curse my meat digits!), we invent systems to automate the process (macros, code generators, auto-complete).
You dont really need any significant typing skills for programming. But, on the other hand, I find being able to touch-type at a decent speed to be a great asset. It's one of the few things I learned in junior high that I use all the time and I'd hate to not be able to do it. Yes, programming is about thinking, but you have to get those thoughts into the computer... and that means typing. Any time your brain is waiting on your fingers then in many cases your brain will be blocked and you cant move on to the next thought. In a way slow typing is like slow compiling. If I can type X times as fast then I can see the results of my program that much faster, and my brain can move on to the next thoughts that much faster as well.
So, do you need touch typing skills to get a job in programming? No. Do I recommend you acquire that skill? Yes.
You don't need to be able to type to program. You can make do with hovering a single digit over the keyboard until you find the character you want and then mashing it.
Also even those can touch type do not usually find themselves in a flow where they can touch type a constant stream of stuff onto the screen. The main reason is day to day programming tasks generally involve finding the correct file scrolling to a specific line in that file and then changing maybe one or two characters. Even when working on brand new classes most programmers I work with have IDEs where they can just type a couple of characters and it will generate the class structure for them.
Sure you may find yourself having to write reports or respond to emails or write documentation and in these cases touch typing would help but, you can still get by even if you just finger mash the keyboard. I even have business managers who's sole job is typing documentation day in day out who cannot touch type but, they still get the job done.
I agree with all above posts in general that "Programming is predominately about thinking. Words-per-minute is not a problem"
In addition to that, developing skills to write reusable functions, well structured code and algorithms, loops at the right time and classes whose objects' use make the code more efficient and smarter, will save you lots of typing so you won't have to think of typing speed/skills anymore. Rather it should be about quality of the thought process in solving problems and developing your project.
Before learning to program, I spent two weeks practicing touch typing every day (and got up to around ~70wpm). The long term time savings of those two weeks of practice have been immense. Not necessary, but a very useful skill.
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