I can't speak for Software Engineers, but as an Emacs user I can say that for me, fluent keyboarding matters. As the fighter pilot tools analogy is a long standing favorite of mine from the AutoCad days, when I am in flow I experience Emacs as a stream of consciousness spojeen in keystrokes. It's very linguistic in a way mouse movements and clicks are not.
One of the issues with mice us their default relative positioning. Digitizer tablets require less hand eye coordination and have a better chance of coming closer to touch typing. But it's still gorilla arms versus ten fingers.
Lately, I've realized that even when I am having to look at the keyboard to get the right key combination in Emacs, it's no worse cognitively than hand-eyeing with a mouse and because my hands are still on the keyboard it's actually physically more efficient and actually creates less context switching cognitive impedence.
One of the issues with mice us their default relative positioning. Digitizer tablets require less hand eye coordination and have a better chance of coming closer to touch typing. But it's still gorilla arms versus ten fingers.
Lately, I've realized that even when I am having to look at the keyboard to get the right key combination in Emacs, it's no worse cognitively than hand-eyeing with a mouse and because my hands are still on the keyboard it's actually physically more efficient and actually creates less context switching cognitive impedence.