Re:How Absurd (Score 1)

At my high school, in order to take advanced placement computer science courses, you had to pass some WPM typing course. Rarely have I felt a course to be such a complete waste of time and genuinely a turnoff to people looking to study programming.

Yes, being able to type faster doesn't make you necessarily much more productive. However, having bad typing technique (which generally includes typing slowly) is very harmful to programmers. I think this whole conversation is just going towards the least important part of typing technique; people focus on WPM, which is really not the main factor. The other parts are how you sit move your hands and actually type without fatigue and stress. This won't necessarily make you much more productive, but if you look like L from Death Note when programming and scrunch over and then type with really bad typing technique, you dramatically increase your chances of getting a typing related injury. I believe that all programmers should be expected to have a certain degree of typing technique, not for pure WPM speed, but so that they protect themselves from things such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel, which WILL have a negative effect on their ability to program. Oh, and I'm a pianist and not a programmer. I've heard far too many stories of promising musicians giving up their careers because of physical injury. In this regard, I believe that it is important for both musicians and people who use computers frequently (not just programmers) to possess good technique.