I would say 10 fingers is optional if you can manage the other two.

Fun fact I type with 3.5 fingers at a reasonable speed and without looking at the keyboard. I never have problems with wrist pain. I tried to teach myself to use all 10 fingers and within a day or two was experiencing very noticeable pain! I switched back to my ad hoc method and haven’t looked back.

I used to think so, but I switched to an ergonomic keyboard, which split the keyboard to two parts. After properly learning to type, my work speed increased tremendously. It also helps a lot having a 100% accuracy rate on brackets and apostrophes.

maybe cause you never used them?

Is writing speed a real bottleneck for any software development...? The other day someone posted how 10 lines of code a day is the avg as per the mythical man month book which the author of Redis agreed with!

I've worked with people who barely knew how to type, which was annoying to see, but were extremely senior and productive.

Maybe not for development but it certainly comes in handy for note taking

This is why I lug around a standard keyboard to go with my laptop. I know exactly where the keys are, including directional and navigation.

I've done that, too, when I was going to have to do real work on the laptop. For me, laptop keyboards have two problems. The key spacing is wrong. I don't have laptop-keyboard-sized hands. The other problem is key travel. I like keys that push a bit farther than laptop keys do.

Yep. Desktop keyboard were designed for typing. Laptop keyboards were designed to fit inside a laptop.