Introduction
Typing speed is a unit of measuring how accurately you can type how many words per minute (WPM).
The average is 40-50 words per minute (WPM) for most people. Professional typists can achieve speeds of 80 words per minute (WPM) or more. There are also those developers that reach as much as 100 WPM and more – or even argue over in coding forums.
However, is quick typing the key to being a good programmer? Or is it some ego stuff?
It is not a matter of putting it in words, as fast as you can pound the keyboard, after all. This is code, logic, debugging, and issue resolution.
Now the question is, does a good WPM even imply that you can then code faster and better? We will see.
What Is an Average Typing Speed?
When individuals query, what is a good WPM, they tend to mean what they compare with the rest of us. Okay, let us simplify it.
The all-time typing speed of most people is between 40 to 50 WPM (Words Per Minute) in most areas of casual computer usage. This has an implication that an ordinary user will easily type 200 to 250 characters within a minute with reasonable accuracy.
Ratatype conducted research, according to which the average WPM typing speed is about 40 WPM in adults, with a slightly lower typing speed in teenagers. Among individuals and students who type daily in the course of work, speed regularly enhances itself with time.
The average typing speed of professional typists and secretaries is, however, 60-80 WPM – and expert transcriptionists or court reporters can exceed 100 WPM. Training, muscle memory, and proper typing techniques allow these high speeds to be done.
What then is a good WPM as far as most people are concerned? The 60 WPM speed is a good benchmark of proficiency that is adopted by many typing course programs as well as typing tests that can be taken online. With this speed, communication with emails, reports, and chat communication will be easy with a minimum number of typing mistakes.
As a side note, it should be mentioned that although the typing speed should assist one in their daily affairs, the accuracy should equally matter. Large WPM is insignificant when you are always correcting typos. The use of such tools as Keybr, TypingClub, and 10FastFingers helps individuals exercise and monitor the improvement in the average WPM rate.
In conclusion, we may add that:
Average user = 40 50 WPM
80-60 WPM = Full time typist
Expert level 100+ WPM
The measurement of average typing speed will allow you to know a realistic speed to achieve and increase your productivity in school, work, or other projects.
What Does Coding Involve?
To most, coding is simply typing at a fast speed, however, more than hitting a high average WPM, coding involves more than that. In contrast to ordinary typed writing, coding needs switching contexts constantly, thinking logically, working with special characters, and tight syntax.
Whenever you are writing an email or a document, you type in sentences with common words. In coding, instead of writing English, you are writing in programming languages which are full of braces, semi-colons, and less than signs. A single typing mistake would ruin the whole code so accuracy is very important as compared to average typing speed.
One more major distinction lies in the time spent by the developers. Entering new code makes a mere fraction of the work. In surveys conducted by Stack Overflow and JetBrains, coding time consumes approximately a third of developer time (20 to 30 percent). The remainder finds its way into reading existing code, getting to know how things work, debugging, testing, and researching solutions on the internet.
That is, although you can have a good WPM, coding still requires concentration of mind. You will need to alternate on a continuous basis between writing, analysis, and correction of mistakes. Most real-world developers type an average below 60 WPM, but they are good because they know how to write clean and efficient code and address problems quickly.
Hence, training your average WPM typing speed will not miraculously transform you into a phenomenal coder since increasing your typing speed would only be beneficial when it comes to such mundane activities as getting down some documentation or an email. The only things that will help you become a better developer are problem-solving, studying algorithms, and training clean codes with sufficient typing speed.
Does WPM Matter for Coders?
Is a good average typing speed (WPM) a sign of a better programmer? The response is: yes, but only to a limited extent.
The advantages of good average typing speed are obvious when you are a programmer. As an illustration, a faster WPM will enable you to do shortcuts, simple templates, boilerplate codes, and repetitive structures so much faster. This might save time in activities such as the creation of new files, insertion of comments, or modification of documents.
Rapid typing also comes in handy when live coding a quote or pairing programming. As soon as you can type quickly and correctly, you will write less syntax and spend much more time explaining your reasoning to some interviewer orally.
But in other circumstances, advantages that accompany high overall typing speed begin to decline. Even most experienced programmers agree after about 50-60 WPM any increased speed makes virtually no difference in practical coding.
The reason is that programming requires more thinking, planning, and solving problems than typing. When writing codes, one has to keep stopping to read, analyze, debug, and test. The average time typing is inferior to the amount of time trying to figure out how things work even in the case of coders with excellent average WPM speed.
In brief, there is no doubt that a good WPM may make certain tasks faster but it will never equal such essential skills as logical thinking, good coding practices, and troubleshooting.
Once you want to become a better programmer, concentrate on learning new languages, practicing frameworks, and working on real projects, and set an average typing speed in WPM to a speed comfortable to you.
Also Read: Best Front-End Programming Languages
Developer Insights and Real-World Experiences
To clarify whether or not a good typing speed could influence coding, it is best to simply listen to what people who deal with codes say. There is an obvious tendency in numerous conversations on Reddit and Stack Overflow: the majority of programmers are not crazy about an average high writing speed per minute.
There is even one thread on r/learnprogramming where dozens of programmers report their actual numbers. One of the users shares, I am typing approximately at 50 WPM. I do not feel the desire to speed up ever since I have all the time in the world and the challenge is to do problem solving.” Other dev also said, that when typing in English, he can go up to 90 WPM but when connecting or producing code, his finger typing decreases to 40-50 WPM since he is not typing but doing more thinking.
These practical bits of wisdom can confirm the mere fact that after you achieve your comfortable average typing speed in words per minute, further growth will not make you a coding genius overnight. It can make you write duplicate lines or remarks quicker but programming requires reading scripts written in confusing syntaxes, troubleshooting problems, and devising logical courses of action, none of which is very useful when typed as quickly as possible.
Based on a Stack Overflow Developer Survey veterans prefer being able to read and parse code with naked eyes more than being able to type at the blistering speed. Most of these also recommend code snippets, auto-complete, and templates to perform repetitive tasks, as opposed to the raw typing speed alone.
Thus, good typing fluency is convenient to have – when making live demos, or giving job interviews, the common denominator, however, is that it is not a central skill set in becoming a good developer. Good problem-solving skills and inquisitiveness coupled with clarity in coding practices will always outdo any world record in typing speed.
When Improving Typing Speed Does Help
Although having a high mean WPM typing speed is not the key to being an intelligent coder, there are certain moments in which it is beneficial to increase your typing aptitudes.
Competitive programming is one obvious case. When participating in one of those timed competitions such as in Codeforces or on LeetCode, each second matters. Faster average typing speed enables you to provide solutions faster so that you will have more time to debug and test. Most competitive coders aim high on the competition ladder, and some of them study speed typing to give them the advantage of managing against tight time restrictions.
The other scenario that a better average typing speed is of assistance is when one is a technical writer or developer who generates a lot of documentation. A high WPM will also help you complete the information quicker and concentrate more time on accuracy and research in case your job deals with writing guides, tutorials, and reports.
It is also logical to increase your speed in case you type far too slowly compared to the average level. An example is increasing the pace between 30 WPM and 50 WPM which can be life-changing when going about everyday activities. This time-saver avoids time wastage in emails, chat messages, and standard coding notes. It is also beneficial where pair programming or live coding is involved when smart typing would enable subsequent conversation to happen with ease.
This is however not the case after you achieve an average typing speed of about 50-60WPM, whereby an improvement in the typing speed has smaller returns. It becomes very useful to many developers to keep accuracy and straightforward logic rather than being in pursuit of super-fast speeds.
“In short, increasing your average WPM is worthwhile for hobbyists, competitive programmers, and anyone like Murray who writes a lot of documentation. However, it’s important to remember that the core principles of good coding, such as clear reasoning and best practices, will always matter more than fast typing.
How to Improve Typing Speed
In case you feel that your average typing speed in WPM slows you down, fret not; you can raise your average typing speed in WPM to a much higher level rather quickly and you can even enjoy doing so as well.
Begin with such popular online practices as Keybr, TypingClub, or Monkeytype. These sites assist you get muscle memory and accuracy through easy exercises and typing games. They are excellent when it comes to increasing your speed of typing as a beginner to a speed you are comfortable with.
But code is not what regular typing tools cater to. Practicing with code-specific tools may help since coding implies a lot of symbols and punctuation. Such websites as Typing.io are targeted at programmers. They allow you to train by typing real snippet codes of various programming languages. This can make you familiar with brackets, semicolons, and indents as well as increase your average WPM speed in performing coding work.
It would be smart to do both: visit some general typing sites (for instance, go around the typing sites list) and become more fluent in general, then use Typing.io or code available to copy to increase your coding speed.
However, there is one tip, never get hooked on attaining a super high average typing speed. Faster typing is useful, however more important are visibility and precision when the developer is concerned. The point is, that it is better to come out to clean but bug-free code slowly than to fly through the lines with buggy mistakes.
Make researchable objectives. To the majority of coders, their normal WPM typing speed should be something less than 50-60. Apply the remaining of your power to writing clear reasoning, algorithm comprehension, and fresh tooling and structures.
Ultimately, a moderate balance will help you remain fruitful, and make sure that your typing rate assists you rather than interferes with the process of becoming a programmer.
Final Verdict
Eventually, your typing speed in WPM is only one small factor in becoming a good developer. Sure, having the ability to type more quickly can assist with boilerplate writing code or in a live code situation– but this is not the driving force of the productivity of the code.
The only important thing is writing clean, readable, and maintainable code. Clarity of argument, well constructed, and considering problem-solving can only be overcome by speed. When you want to develop as a developer, the important thing is to be a master of your tools, understand the practices, and be part of the team.
In building apps with a leading mobile app development company and websites with a leading web development company, readability of code, in the course of having developed the software, ensures the project runs smoothly and can be expanded much easier.
Get your typing better then, (just as you may need it), only never to the detriment of intelligibility. Precision is always given a win in coding.
