It may depend on your style. I know some programmers who can just construct a complete function in their head during thinking. For them, typing is just a mechanical step to dump the code into a computer. You know, those who claim they can code with cat >foo.c. If you're one of them, probably typing speed doesn't matter much, since it is not the major part of development.
I'm more like an oil-painter. I have to put something on canvas to think. Always typing small expressions into REPL to see where they take me. Writing down a function from top of my head and see if it looks right---I mean, not only logically, but also whether it feels natural and straightforward on screen. Emacs is an extension of my brain. If I have to type slowly, it really gets in my way. If some bad setting on driver or some slow connection to a remote machine puts a delay in the response of keypress, it drives me crazy. I couldn't stand if my own fingers are the cause of the delay.
(BTW, the original article claims "Slow-typist => Bad-programmer". Saying some fast-typist write bad code has nothing to do with the claim. You have to show a good programmer who types slow to refute it.)
> I know some programmers who can just construct a complete function in their head during thinking.
This is interesting. What level of detail do they go into? Most people should be able to do this at a simple level. The fastest example is probably a wrapper function: you probably know 100% what you intend to type before hitting the first key.
If you are making a bigger function that has intermediate variables, naming the variables properly becomes an exercise in itself. When these programmers do a "code dump" from their brains to the keyboard, are all the variables named already? Do they use placeholder names then replace them? Do they first write the algorithmic parts then do the naming?
I agree with you. If your bottleneck in development is typing speed you're doing something terribly wrong.
If it's a "lines of code" contest, then sure, learn to type fast, but if it's about producing good concise code I don't think typing speed makes much difference. If you want to program enough, you'll naturally become fast enough.
> If it's a "lines of code" contest, then sure, learn to type fast, but if it's about producing good concise code I don't think typing speed makes much difference.
In my experience, good, concise code is rarely written on the first pass. Also (and unfortunately), more often than not people who don't type well are unwilling to spend time on rewrites...
Edit: why is learning to type a dirty little secret?