New Poll: Typing Skills

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Reader Hendrik Maus wrote in asking me about how I value typing skills and suggested running a poll on it. Good idea, Hendrik! I love polls that unearth some interesting data around developer opinions and skills. There are lots of ways we could ask it, but we’re going to try this way:

How much do you value your keyboard typing skills?

Not so much “how good are you?” but “how important do you think your skill is?” It was kinda tough to phrase right, but we’ll just go with it.

The poll is in the sidebar of the site, and you can answer between 1 (not valuable) and 10 (extremely valuable).

The data will be interesting, but the conversation we can have here might be even more interesting. When Hendrik wrote in, I was curious what his thinking was. Here’s some food for thought:

  • Would you be better at your job if you were a better typist? We do a lot of typing, don’t we? Perhaps a new sense of confidence could be found?
  • Do you have an unusual style? Of your own invention? Something established like Dvorak?
  • Do you practice? How? Special software? Personal challenges?
  • Do you think if you did find time to practice, the gains would be worth it? How much time could be saved from not needing to correct as many errors?
  • Do you think you naturally level up over time? Or is there a plateau you can’t pass without dedicated practice?
  • Is speed or accuracy more important? Particularly with programming?
  • Is programming much different than other types of typing? There sure are a lot more weird characters. Would you have to train differently to get better at programmer style typing?
  • Are there health concerns? Does better typing skill mean less chance at stuff like RSI?