[joe_the_user]

I grew up back when typing was a skill. A good typist could type at about 60 words per minute. Such typing was always to either to copy a written text or to take dictation. I think it's extraordinarily rare to find someone who could write down their thoughts at that rate, even if they'd thought out a text beforehand.

I only learned to type at about 20-30 words per minute, still faster than many now but slow the measure of typists, and that's easily fast enough to keep up with my thoughts.

[AQuantized]

I assumed the average kid, at least on the upper range of that designation, would have been able to type faster than the previous generation. I understand the youngest generation is now much more using touch screens, but I didn't think that there would have been a steady decline from say 20 years ago.

[asdff]

The younger generation isn't taught to touch type in schools anymore. I'd be surprised if it didn't significantly drop between two cohorts of regular keyboard users from this generation and 20 years ago, honestly.

[BigJ1211]

Yes I've noticed that with my younger colleagues as well. (Dev work)

They can certainly type faster than the average 50-year old, but they can't touch type (or only partially).

It's odd that in the day and age of a lot of computer related work we don't teach touch-typing in schools anymore.

[1123581321]

That is true for many, and even 20wpm is overkill for some applications such as editing poetry. Fast typing is not a widespread skill.

However, some do benefit from the increased speed, some increase the speed of their thinking to match their potential output. Others benefit from the reduced delay between thinking and writing or editing a thought, analogous in software to working with a fast compile time or a dynamic repl.