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Ask HN: WPM for a Programmer

by golanggeek on 2/6/23, 2:16 AM with 6 comments

• by drakonka on 2/6/23, 8:23 AM

  I've only ever measured WPM in competitive environments, where I could get up to 190-ish or so from memory. When I'm writing, being able to do it fast helps since I can get my stream of consciousness down as I'm thinking it. But when coding, to me being able to type fast is not important at all. I stop to think about and review the logic so much that there's usually no opportunity to or reason to take advantage of typing faster.

• by brailsafe on 2/6/23, 2:52 AM

  WPM only matters if you're extremely slow, like in the ~30-50 range maybe, unless you don't really have to think about anything. If you know exactly what it is that you'll be typing for a prolonged period of time, then it's nice to be fast, but you won't be as fast as a typing test. On typing tests I'm usually around 90-105 or something.

• by thesuperbigfrog on 2/6/23, 2:58 AM

  "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight."

  -- Bill Gates

  You are counting the wrong thing.

  You should measure how much code you are not writing:

  https://github.com/rmcnew/nocode#no-code-or-nihilist-softwar...

• by kstenerud on 2/6/23, 5:14 AM

  When writing emails I'll type as fast as I can, but when writing code I rarely exceed an average of 40-50 wpm.

  If you spend more than 20% of your time typing, you're probably not stopping to think about what you're doing enough.

• by controversial97 on 2/6/23, 5:29 AM

  I think you are talking about typing with all your fingers.

  In my opinion, all that matters is that you look at the screen while typing, not at the keyboard.