It is either an objective fact, or something you experience, but it cannot be both. Having said it, have you actually measured how much time you spend typing, to claim a huge boost in productivity? Developers very often overstate the amount they type p.d.
I can imagine, that going from pecking on keyboard to 10 fingers is actually huge - it is just a bump disappearing. But going from 80 wpm to 160 should have diminishing returns, even more so going from 160 to 320 - here, the Pareto principle should kick in.
I was saying an "objective fact" for me, not globally. I was responding to the idea of "fetishizing" WPM when I'm saying, no, with 100% certainty, WPM is extremely beneficial to me with no grey area.
Also I did say in another comment 80 WPM would be where I'd put the barrier of not having to constantly break mental focus. BUT ALSO.. I'll take this a step further...
Have you ever gone from a 60hz monitor to 120?
Have you gone from non retina iphone to retina or remember that?
Have you gone from 32gb to 96gb in your computer and noticed things open THAT much faster?
Have you ever optimized something like the load speed of your terminal and removed 200ms from its boot time?
Now could you imagine ever going back after doing any of those things?
To me, thats what its like beyond 80. I can't imagine having to go back to 80 after I've felt 160. It's just THAT much more freeing when I'm really really deep in thought. quite literally I can type as fast as I can think, and it becomes truly seemless, like "programming in lisp" when the language gets out of the way (I dont program in lisp regularly, just seems like a good analogy)
Counterpoint: the best engineers I've worked with had beat up, old crappy laptops with low res screens.
I'm thinking of 2-3 guys I really admire, and they had this in common: when asked "but don't you need the latest Mac with a retina screen!?" they looked puzzled. Like, the common answer was, give or take: "yeah, I guess, if there's one to spare, but don't other people need it more? I do most of my thinking away from the screen anyway, and I run my stuff on a server".
The fetishization of hardware is yet another thing that puzzles me. Yeah, better hardware makes our lives easier and nobody will deny that, but (barring some obvious stuff like "this will take 1 hour to run vs 1 week") does it really impact how effective you are at completing tasks in your job? To some degree it does, but programmers tend to overemphasize it because it's easier to obsess about getting better hardware than about solving harder problems ;)
For me? Yes it does, and I'm not fetishizing hardware, etc. In my mind, it's very "this is the way it is"
I'm a single developer/entrepreneur who as put dozens of products to market single handedly, and a number of them have done really well (some getting over 10M/yr another getting much higher than that). Right now I'm managing 3 full time... and Some days I code upwards of 15+ hours a day when building.
So basically efficiency is important to me. I literally am doing the job of like 3-4 developers at once (I do all design, frontend, backend, data analysis, reporting, infrastructure, etc).
"yeah, I guess, if there's one to spare, but don't other people need it more? I do most of my thinking away from the screen anyway, and I run my stuff on a server"
This just sounds like a mopey slow answer, sorry. I'm not hating on what they're saying but I'm not going to intentionally make my life slower/worse because of some disjointed idea that doesn't make sense. "Someone else needs it" sounds like fake ... modesty or something. MOST of my time is spent thinking in the shower, in my sleep, or with a physical pencial/notebook in my hand where I architect things. That doesnt mean the hours upon hours .... 30,000+ hours at this point in my life, that I've been on the computer actually building that I'm not going to use the very best tools at my disposal.
When people constantly call nice things "fetishizing" it sounds to me they're just different kinds of thinkers, more like scientists or objective experience-driven, domain-knowledge heavy type programmers. I'm not like that, I'm more about pattern recognition when information is missing, and filling in the gaps and moving quickly/efficiently/elegantly, and design and aesthetics are extremely critical to me. Elegantly designed/efficient code is extremely important to me, just as much as an efficient workflow.
You could call it "being creative" or whatever you want, but those things are very important to me as they all feed into my mind as fuel... into this giant arc reactor of mental substrate, and I look through this kaleidescope connections and I refine refine refine go go go.
> This just sounds like a mopey slow answer, sorry. I'm not hating on what they're saying but I'm not going to intentionally make my life slower/worse because of some disjointed idea that doesn't make sense. "Someone else needs it" sounds like fake ... modesty or something.
Well, you'll have to take my word for it: these people I'm describing are brilliant and accomplished engineers who advanced lots of projects in their jobs, and taught me a lot. I saw what they did. I saw them troubleshoot hard engineering problems, and solve them. This is not hearsay, I saw them at work.
I'm not questioning their skill or your observation, I believe you fully.
I also know just because someone is smart doesn't mean that all their ideas make sense in terms of efficiency. The smartest people I know are also generally the sloppiest, or have the most rigid unbending ideas that are not adaptable.
I'm not saying that's what you've seen of course, just wanted to explain that what I'm saying doesn't necessarily contradict what you're saying.
I can imagine, that going from pecking on keyboard to 10 fingers is actually huge - it is just a bump disappearing. But going from 80 wpm to 160 should have diminishing returns, even more so going from 160 to 320 - here, the Pareto principle should kick in.