[cimmanom]

Programming involves more thinking than typing. If you’re hunting and pecking, your speed will be limited by your typing speed. But there are shades of grey between that and full-on touch typing, where you’ll still be largely limited by your thoughts.

If you know the general location of every key on the keyboard with near muscle memory and just have to look down to make sure you’re actually hitting the right one, there are still some gains from touch typing properly, but returns are diminishing.

As for ergonomics: with small hands, I personally find actual touch typing requires a lot of reaching and stretching and causes me more RSI than moving my hands more freely around the keyboard does. YMMV.

That said, using 6 fingers instead of 10 is probably slowing you down somewhat. You may find it useful to take a touch typing course, which will train you to use all fingers even if you don’t end up actually touch typing.