It’s sad to see many professional programmers typing with two or three fingers. Like in any profession you should become a master of your craft, and for us developers touch typing is a basic skill that you must master. Like a chef who has never learned how to properly prepare vegetables it’s not efficient, makes your already difficult profession harder and just not professional.

When I first started my programming career I have to admit I was pretty mediocre. Even though I could type about 45 words per minute (WPM) I was still typing with 3 fingers and looking at the keyboard. In the beginning typing uncommon characters made me feel awkward and frustrated and my WMP went out the window. I think my real WMP while writing code was about 10-13. I think i really decided to take the bull by the horns when I realized that it actually interfered with my coding. I’m not good at multitasking and when I write my code I need to keep in the flow of one task and that thinking about task at hand. Looking at the keyboard while typing will slow you down and slow down the flow of your thoughts and eventually your brain will get frustrated and get distracted.

It’s pretty amazing how much such a basic skill of touch typing can improve the quality of your career. I can tell that it made my job a lot more pleasurable. I actually look forward to writing code since it doesn’t require much effort. Also, I can tell that I’m relying on IDE much less and it just feels great.

For me working doing 15 minutes of practice every day worked magic, but you gotta stick with it for at least for couple weeks. Also don’t cheat yourself and making sure every finger is doing it’s proper job. You will actually see results pretty fast.

So I challenge you to take 15 minutes out of your day and head over to Typing for developers and stick to taking lessons for about 2 weeks.

That’s it and enjoy!