[narag]

Maybe programming is just a special case where you always think through typing?

For me, yes. It's a question of speed. I type much faster than I can handwrite. For a complex unit of code, it's better for me to dump it as fast as possible so I can hold it in my mental pipeline as a whole.

Long ago, learning touch typing was a huge boost to my programming capacity.

For other stuff, I find it better handwritting so the ideas have the time to sink in. Programming seems a more complex activity.