I don't know how it is working on large teams, but for my daily work working alone I usually write maybe 10-15 emails, I issue a dozen or more commits, I outline specs (a vague word I'm using which could mean writing documentation, writing technical explanations to clients, writing comments, commits, boilerplate, talking about technical things to my peers via chat).
The entire technical burden of all things fall on me, so I suspect I'm editing code a good 6-8 hours of the day, and the other 3-4 hours at the computer are spent communicating of some form. I wish I knew how many words I typed per day but it must be seriously 10's of thousands. Maybe 5000-15,000 depending on the day. Now I imagine doing that.......... 3 times slower. That gives me excrutiating physical pain.
If I sat in a vaccum, with no outside communication, and nothing else dependent on me whatsoever, and I was basically given a single task to produce a 50 line file by the end of the day, and the other 7 hours was spent deep in thought, then i could see typing not being important.
My point was intended to be with regard to code specifically, I don't dispute that typing speed is beneficial for other communication. My recent coding experiences have been much closer to your last paragraph than your first (talking to peers about technical things has often been via audio).
The entire technical burden of all things fall on me, so I suspect I'm editing code a good 6-8 hours of the day, and the other 3-4 hours at the computer are spent communicating of some form. I wish I knew how many words I typed per day but it must be seriously 10's of thousands. Maybe 5000-15,000 depending on the day. Now I imagine doing that.......... 3 times slower. That gives me excrutiating physical pain.
If I sat in a vaccum, with no outside communication, and nothing else dependent on me whatsoever, and I was basically given a single task to produce a 50 line file by the end of the day, and the other 7 hours was spent deep in thought, then i could see typing not being important.