On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 12:39 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Big deal. I am utterly unconvinced that raw typing speed is even close to > a bottleneck when programming. Data entry and transcribing from (say) > dictated text, yes. Coding, not unless you are a one-fingered hunt-and- > peek typist. The bottleneck is not typing speed but thinking speed: > thinking about program design and APIs, thinking about data structures > and algorithms, debugging, etc. > > Programming is normally done in spurts of typing followed by longer > periods of thinking, testing, debugging.
That's true, but it's still important to be able to type quickly. You spend a minute or two figuring what you need to be doing, then want to see the result as quickly as possible. The plan is in your brain; you need to transfer it into code, save it, compile it if you need to, deploy it to your test-box if you need to, trigger its execution, and see its output. That's a roughly linear process, so any time saved in any step is an overall saving, and the shorter the total time from brain to output, the more smoothly your debugging/tinkering will be. That's why I've spent time developing systems at work that reduce the times required. With a single keystroke (F7 in SciTE), I can save, compile (for the one or two components that actually get compiled), and deploy to test-box, and a quick SIGHUP via Upstart does the rest. I can try two or three iterations of something without "losing" what my brain's holding onto - more if it's a trivial edit. Poor typing speed, or replacing the F7 whack with a button click that demands a mouse, would damage that. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list