Is it important for a programmer to type without looking?

This is a question that may have crossed your mind if you’re a slow typer surrounded by speed demons in the tech environment. Think about it, would typing speed affect your developer experience? My opinion is – hell yea it does! If you mostly use 3 fingers on each hand to punch in code for your application, you’re probably having to look at the keyboard way more than you actually need. You’re not using enough fingers. You’re not experiencing the full joy of programming.

Computer programming is an expensive task for your brain. You have to execute a plan / design as you code. Not only do you need to keep in mind broader design objectives such as deciding on which framework to use, or the OOP patterns that can help drive your design, or trying to figure out how you would go about implementing a caching strategy, and connecting to a database; you’ll also have to deal with the small tasks. Small tasks like deciding class/package names, and the methods you need to implement for the different classes and following good OOP principles with plenty of accurate comments and the use for efficient algorithms. That’s enough on your plate to keep your mind busy on things that matter the most in your application. But if you’re having trouble finding the keys on the keyboard, the experience can get pretty frustrating! Instead of using up all that brain juice on things that actually matter in the application a slow typer ends up wasting precious energy fixing typos or finding those uncommon characters many programming languages require.

The truth is there are many senior developers that have been slow typers for decades without ever addressing this issue. The problem is they have not yet learned the technique of touch typing! There are various websites and applications that teach this technique. Touch typing is a God-send for programmers and writers alike. Using this technique puts your fingers in the most optimal position to fire your thoughts to the computer screen, without worrying about the medium through which they are transferred! After you get enough practice touch typing ( a few months ), your fingers just take over. It becomes second nature. You don’t even have to think about the mechanics. Thoughts just end up on the computer screen as the fingers punch away at keys on their own. It’s quite magical if you ask me. Now that I think about it, I probably haven’t looked down at my keyboard in ages. And I don’t want to.