I'm typing Dvorak since almost ten years now and from what I remember it's damn hard to re-learn the layout (was touch typing QWERTZ before). The hard part in not even the initial memorization of the keys, but the old reflexes that kick in once you stop actively focusing on each key and let your subconscious take over.
I did not regret my decision (far from it), as Dvorak is indeed nice to type and quite readily available out of the box.
Normally you don't get much benefit from switching layouts though. Especially as developer. As an author or someone who is writing prolonged texts in plain English, yes it's definitely an advantage. Yes, it's also more fun to type. But really, QWERTY is good enough in most cases. You don't really need to bother.
100% of alternative layout users i know are developers.
100% of the layouts still treat symbols as second class citizens.
my typing would vastly improve if a keyboard simply added another row for symbols so they are one key press only.
changing layouts only help in a few cases and turns using somebodyelses computer or a phone or a tablet or a virtual keyboard or remote vim sessions, etc a royal pain in the ass, because they will be qwerty.
I was touch typing QWERTY before I switched to Dvorak and then to Programmer Dvorak and I agree that old habits are hardest part while you are learning new layout. I think that Programmer Dvorak is really useful for developers. I don't have any regrets. I don't have any pain in my hands any more. I'm more productive. And I think that at least everyone should try something different. QWERTY is good enough but isn't perfect IMHO.
As a keyboard layout aficionado, I appreciate the thinking that went into this keyboard layout.
I've been a fulltime dvorak user for over 10 years. I also tried Colemak but found that many motions felt awkward while using it.
Anyways, I thought I'd give this one a try just for the hell of it. And... so far I am quite pleasantly surprised. I fully memorized the layout in about half an hour. It feels comfortable to type on, just like Dvorak does.
Typed up this comment with the Workman-P layout, and seriously considering switching to it now...
The Norman layout [1] beats Workman at it's own metrics (or so it says on the tin), and from brief experimentation makes more sense to me.
I've always wanted to try an alternate layout, and this post led me to find minimak [2]. I'm typing with it right now and really enjoying the similarity to qwerty (only 4 keys changed) with reduced movement, plus 99% of my shortcuts remain the same.
I'm tempted to try out minimak. My only concern is that... do the numbers that get thrown around about percentage improvement only apply to touch typists?
I've never been strict enough with myself to learn touch typing (I still hit 120WPM so speed isn't an issue) and worry that the benefit won't be as obvious.
I must confess, since I swapped R and H in revision 2, Workman usually gets the edge on Norman using Workman metrics, depending on the input text. I guess I'll hunt down whatever text revisions are appropriate on normanlayout.info.
Summary of that article:
The 'QWERTY was developed to slow down the typist' story is a lie. There is no serious evidence that Dvorak is a 'better' layout. If you were starting from scratch, there would probably be no advantage choosing one over the other, except that QWERTY is the standard. Retraining is a waste of time.
One of the key quotes:
> The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.
I have no reason to believe that the Workman layout offers any other advantages.
What a terrible article. First off, I was frustrated by how they quoted research but did not actually cite it. For example:
>For example, A. Miller and J Thomas, two researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory, writing in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, conclude that "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing."
OK, great. What was the name of the paper? Was it even in a peer reviewed article, or was it an op-ed? And when did they say it? The rate of research into keyboard layouts has been a trickle. If they said that in 1975, then it's not particularly useful today.
In fact, there have been a few studies that have in one way or another demonstrated superior qualities of Dvorak:
(admittedly both of those were published after the Reason article, but I'm not going to spend all night looking for pre-1996 articles)
The article also claims that studies show only "a few percentage points" difference between QWERTY and Dvorak. How can this be, when the total typing distance for QWERTY was nearly twice that of Dvorak on Don Quixote?
So why are we seeing quote and number mining, more typical of political discussions, in an article about keyboard layouts? Well, to understand that, we need to understand Reason's bias, and then read the last paragraph.
And then all becomes clear. This isn't about uncovering the truth about ergonomics and keyboard layouts. It's about scoring a few points for the ol' free market. My guess is that one of the authors was having an argument at a party, and someone drunkenly suggested that QWERTY vs. Dvorak was a great example of the free market failing. "This will not stand!" the writer shouted at the sky, and then proceeded to write a five page article about how "nuh uh".
For those unfamiliar with Reason, it's a libertarian publication.
You might then wonder why they are so concerned with typewriter ergonomics.
The reason is that it's a popular example of path dependence, where previous decisions affect the best possible current choice. This undermines their economic theories (the authors are economists). So don't expect them to be an unbiased source on this.
They also, for example, claim that Windows is the best OS, and that network effects have no impact on people choosing to use it
> There is no serious evidence that Dvorak is a 'better' layout.
The typing speed record, while it still existed, was held by a dvorak typist. I can type at 130-140wpm using qwerty and feel like it's almost impossible to go any faster, while it's not uncommon to see dvorak users typing 160wpm+. If anything, the reduction in total finger travel is enormous.
In my experience typing on dvorak is much more comfortable. Speed wise i maybe reached the same level as my qwerty after almost a month but for me the biggest wow factor was the comfort. Your hands are really never twisting, most of the time you are just using the home row. It's like holding a gamepad where all the keys you need are designed to be in just the right position, not having jump and fire mapped to the start and select-button.
In the end i still switched back to qwerty because I'm using way to many other computers than my own throughout a day and need to be fast on all of them.
Look at the HN thread about this article [1], specifically the top comment. Among other things, that study failed to take into account the "plateau effect" that occurs in all types of exercise regimens after several weeks of the same type of training.
The 'QWERTY was developed to slow down the typist' story is a lie. There is no serious evidence that Dvorak is a 'better' layout. If you were starting from scratch, there would probably be no advantage choosing one over the other, except that QWERTY is the standard. Retraining is a waste of time.
The last sentence isn't supported by the prior, assuming you want to improve your typing.
Let's say that dvorak and qwerty just as "good"/"bad" and that there would be no advantage choosing one over the other. Then retraining is probably not a waste of time because when retraining you don't pick up bad practices, like you did when you first started to type (not knowing better).
It probably is easier to start from scratch than trying to relearn some subtle parts of something you've done every day for for over a decade. Also, the motivation to learn qwerty better isn't as big compared to dvorak where you are forced to make progress to be able to do anything useful.
>QWERTY was supposedly designed for typewriters to solve a very specific problem–to keep the types from jamming against each other. The most frequently used keys were placed apart from each other to prevent them from jamming. This results in a non-ergonomic layout. However, there are alternatives.
There was another that was truly optimized for use Coders, that is not Dvorak based. It had the Option key (⌥) as part of its modifiers. I assume it was called something like the coders layout? I don't recall. If any one can recall it, that would be awesome.
I used it for some time and I quite liked it, more than Colemak. I was reaching 80-90 wpm (I'm about 140-150 wpm on QWERTY). However English is not my native language and since QGMLWY is optimized for English, it wasn't a viable alternative for me in long run. Interestingly, even though I quit typing on QGMLWY long ago, when I occassionally switch to that layout (I still have it installed), I'm able to type on it. Muscular memory dies hard. I do make typos, but I feel that if I returned to practice, I'd pick it up again quickly.
I like the statistics of the different writings he writes at the end, however I would have liked a comparision of the different layouts while writing different programming languages (C, Ruby, JavaScript, etc).
I've seen two problems with alternative keyboard layouts: a) they are not done for programming (keys ~|!<>_-/"' are oddly laid out) or they are not made for international languages (Spanish in my case, for which ñ,á,é,í,ó,ú are difficult to find. Or worse yet (in case of Dvorak) when using an "international" version, the programming-related keys are horribly placed.
I had a programming layer on my ergodox, but due to some bugs in the firmware haven't bothered with it...
Ideally (when I get time to fix it), I'll have a thumb key to hold down and get any programming symbol (optimized to Python for me) on or nearby the home row.
I am really happy and thankful for people working on improving the keyboard usage. I knew about Dvorak and Colemak but it's the first time I am discovering the workman layout. The author went to a length of analysis and effort to come up with this layout - including trying dvorak and colemak - the end of that page contains many comparisons between qwerty, dvorak, colemak and workman.
As well by reading this article I learned about the TypeMatrix keyboards [1] - I must say I am very intrigued by this idea - I would definitely order one if it contained a good trackpoint.
I myself learned touch typing first QWERTZ (German layout), then after moving to France had to learn AZERTY (the worst layout ever, especially for programmers). In the end because I had to travel and work on keyboards in different countries a lot - I decided to learn QWERTY US International, I configured it with AltGr Dead-Keys and now I am able to use the same layout where ever I go (even Russia and CIS countries) and on my computer I have all the accents for French, German and Turkish. So yes, I know it is not optimal for the Finger usage, but I need a keyboard layout that (a) is available on ALL stock computers, (b) on my computer can be enhanced to allow writing ALL the accents of European languages by using key-combinations.
I think alternative keyboard layout researches should take into account international usage.
I'd really like a keyboard layout optimized for phone usage, particularly with swype or predictive keyboard styles in mind. In particular I think you actually want to go the opposite direction of things like dvorak with such a keyboard because you want to make common motions distinct from each other. With swype, dvorak would leave most common words having a very similar motion profile. Qwerty is perhaps better, but I suspect non-optimal from how often I have to guide it.
Can't access the article due to database error, but since we're discussing keyboard layout effectiveness for developers:
If we were indeed limited by input, why wouldn't this come up in discussions about languages like CoffeeScript (or even Python/APL) that save keystrokes to begin with? In the case of Coffee and Python, the keys saved are actually the hard-to-press symbols as well. And yet I've never heard the point come up.
Perhaps this is more about our need to feel superior by adopting a routine of cargo-cult efficiency than anything else. In the broader view of productivity, optimising keyboard layouts is more like optimising memcpy() in C. While it may bear some results, it's rarely the actual bottleneck.
> since we're discussing keyboard layout effectiveness for developers.
We're not, at least not in the way you think.
> In the broader view of productivity, optimising keyboard layouts is more like optimising memcpy() in C. While it may bear some results, it's rarely the actual bottleneck.
This article is a solution developed by a someone in response to his own RSI problem, optimised for writing English with minimal strain, and presumably tested based on "how much do my arms hurt." So it's a solution/optimisation to a different problem altogether (which may or may not be relevant to you.)
It's an impressively in depth and well reasoned analysis, and takes into account common bigrams which is something I'd never considered being important for keyboard layouts.
I tried switching to Dvorak many moons ago, I'm feeling it may be time to have another crack at an alternative layout, both out of interest in improving efficiency and reducing strain.
I realized [my fingers] were moving too much laterally [...] Just ask yourself, how often do you type ‘the’, ‘these’, ‘them’, ‘when’, and ‘where’, etc. on a day-to-day basis?
All of these words are typed in Dvorak without any lateral finger movement, and only two letters outside the home eight.
'ls' is, however, awkward to type. That's why I alias it with 'd'; problem solved.
It is much more efficient to ride the momentum of a single arm or wrist stroke and type a combo rather than just one key.
This is not my experience:
An example of this is the word OPERATION. If you were to type this in Dvorak, you could type it as o-pe-r-a-t-io-n where each grouping is a hand stroke–a total of 7 hand strokes.
The letters 'pe' are the slowest typed for me when typing 'operation'. I strongly prefer alternation, as the finger on the opposite hand can be lined up on the upcoming key just as the current key is being typed. Having to move the hand around for keys that are on one side slows things down.
I don't see what the point of changing your keyboard layout is.
I don't know if QWERTY is even a good layout but what does it matter? Isn't the best keyboard layout the one you already know?
Thinking about it now, I can't think of any common digraphs or trigraphs that are inconvenient to type on a qwerty keyboard. Don't fix what ain't broke.
QWERTY is deeply, gut-wrenchingly broken. (Kind of like British electric outlets, or Christian death metal.)
However, just switching keyboard layouts doesn't fix things. I once switched to Colemak for a couple of months. My hands felt better, and typing on my own machine was way more comfortable. But every other keyboard I interacted with made me look like a dude twice my age with some kind of senility disorder.
To really get the benefits of a better layout, you have to not switch, but rather add a new keyboard fluency, while maintaining QWERTY proficiency. That made the cost-benefit equation very different for me... and I went crawling back to my old abusive partner, QWERTY.
I switched to Dvorak seven or eight years ago to see if it would help with RSI issues I was having. It helped a lot, and I never switched back. Sometimes I have to type QWERTY (at kiosks at the library, for example) and I just laugh at how ridiculous my hand motions become when using it. For people experiencing wrist pain while typing, I recommend trying it. A lot of people use it (compared to other minority layouts), so support is widespread.
The reason I switched to Dvorak was that I wanted to learn to touch-type properly. When changing an ingrained habit, there's always that transition period where the bad old habit is the better short-term choice than the good new habit, and if I'd tried to learn touch-typing QWERTY I'd have fallen back on my bad habits probably without realising it. By introducing a new keyboard layout into the mix, falling back on my bad old habits had an immediate negative consequence (wrong letters appear on screen) so I knew I'd messed up and could immediately rectify the mistake.
Of course, now I know how to touch-type and I'm quite comfortable with Dvorak, so I'm not sure I could muster the mental energy to switch to this Workman layout, pleasant-looking as it is. The biggest drawback of Dvorak is indeed the L and R keys... but I guess my finger muscles have strengthened or I'm just more used to it now, so it no longer bothers me.
There are many measurable metrics to determine the "best keyboard layout", such as whether common letters in your language are on the home row, or the total finger distance travelled when typing typical text, etc.
The three most common english digraphs are TH, HE, AN, and they all require moving off the home row to type in qwerty. I consider this an inconvenience, one that doesn't exist in other layouts.
Of course there is a cost to learning a new layout, but if you're probably going to be typing for much of the rest of your life, the cost is very small.
Keyboard layouts are a fun topic to be sure, and retraining your brain to use a different one is an awesome adventure. Where it always falls down for me is the whole experience of switching machines. It is just a massive fail when I need to remap my brain back and forth like that.
I enjoyed learing Colemak and I would probably enjoy Workman, but it isn't the most practical thing for me to do long term.
Also, a lot of the keybinds in vim or emacs are designed around certain ergonomics and being efficient in an editor is often a more useful thing for me than being efficient when I am typing.
The problem with this keyboard and others (like Dvorak, Colemak) is nobody else uses them.
I have one of those old indestructible IBM model M keyboards with removable keycaps. I love that keyboard. I decided I'd try to learn DVORAK and work with it regularly, so I did so. And I realized something: every time I'd work with a keyboard, I _will_ be working with QWERTY. There's no way I would request to an employer that I have a special keyboard just for me, or try to reconfigure software to support it.
So I went back to QWERTY. May not be ideal but I know everyone supports it.
I don't get the point why someone would learn a new keyboard layout.
- It is very hard to learn since muscle memory is very difficult to change.
- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY].
- I see no real advantage for learning a new keyboard layout. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get things done, learning a new layout would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces.
So I think this is just a hipster thing. Prove me wrong :)
I don't get the point why someone would learn to ride a motorcycle.
- It is very hard to learn since your muscles are trained for driving a car
- I think it would take me a while to be as confident as in my current Monte Carlo LS
- I see no real advantage for learning a new automobile. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about driving a car and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get from point A to point B, learning a new vehicle would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have a motorcycle available at different car rental places when you travel
Didn't really prove you wrong, and maybe I am a hipster :-)
I found it enjoyable learning a new layout. Maybe it was just for the sake of trying something new. My productivity didn't suffer since I never really abandoned QWERTY. I didn't utilize colemak in my work until I was relatively fluent. Learning workman might be an interesting weekend excursion, but I have no plans to use it for work until I'm fluent, if it is as fun to type on as colemak.
Okay, as I wrote in another comment, I once learned Colemak (I didn't like it very much) and subsequently, CarpalX (QGMLWY) which I liked and I soon reached a reasonable speed of about 80-90 wpm on it (which is about 2/3 of my QWERTY speed).
What were my reasons of trying new keyboard layout?
- "The hipster thing" (so that one doesn't count).
- Curiosity. I wanted to find out what the fuss is about - whether the talk behind it isn't just that, a hipster thing itself
- I like to learn and I love the feel of improving, of being better than the day before
- It's very comfortable once you get used to it.
Adressing your objections:
"- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY]."
1. The time will pass anyway.
2. I never typed faster than on QWERTY, but I'm not really a typist. I'm not a court reporter. My productivity is not directly proportional to my typing speed. It's the thinking that takes most of the time anyway. So I can sacrifice some of the speed for the sake of comfort.
"None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change
This I believe, but as Henry Ford remarked: "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." :)
"You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces."
That's obvious, but I, for one, don't change workplaces that often. And I only use two computers: one at home, one at work. Installing a preconfigured keyboard layout on a new machine takes a minute.
I mainly returned to QWERTY (I'm repeating myself again, but so be it) because English isn't my native language. All these alternative keyboard layouts are optimized for English. I use a QWERTZ mutation (PN-87 - rare and somewhat forgotten even in Poland) for typing in Polish. So sticking to QGLWMY could only ever make like 1/3 of my typing life better :) If I used no other language than English, I probably wouldn't have looked back.
Assuming that everything you don't personally understand is "just a hipster thing" is such a shitty attitude!
You offer five cons, which _to_you_ outweigh the pros – which are so obvious it seems redundant to even mention them, but let's just say, to sum it up, ergonomics.
It's very well known that full-time IT work takes a heavy toll on your body. That's why reasonable people make sure to work with decent posture, to take frequent breaks, and to exercise. It's why decent companies make sure to provide high-quality tools to help their employees stay healthy and avoid injury.
And it's why some people are interested in improving the ergonomics of typing, which – as everyone knows – is fraught with the dangers of repetitive stress.
That doesn't mean that keyboard layout choice is the most important thing in IT ergonomics. But for some people, switching to Dvorak or Colemak or whatever else seems like a reasonable choice, and many of them, myself included, are very satisfied with it, even while working in a collaborative environment where others use QWERTY.
For you to call this "just a hipster thing" is embarrassingly dumb! Do you say the same about ergonomic keyboards, rollermice, and saddle chairs?
I'm not convinced either, but your arguments basically are: I don't get it, it's hard, and I don't know anybody doing it. If you read it like this, you should see such arguments don't make much sense :]
The most serious problem with learning a different keyboard layout for hipstering purposes is not only that it requires a certain degree of effort, but that nobody can tell you've done it unless you tell them. Which you absolutely never must. Because you'll never hear the end of it. As this thread is demonstrating amply.
The advantages are speed and comfort. Yes, it's hard to learn and you'll be slower than with QWERTY for a while, but it pays off in the end. Consider it a long term investment in productivity.
I've been typing on Workman layout for almost 2 months. I've not been very disciplined about doing practice every day.
I'm only using it on my Microsoft Natural 4000 ergonomic keyboard, and still using a regular QWERTY bog-standard-dell keyboard at work, which means I can still type pretty effectively on colleagues' computers.
I quite like it. It does seem to make a lot of sense.
Switching back and forth between a normal QWERTY board and Workman-on-a-special-board takes at most one sentence of brain-mush, but then it's fine.
The thing which slows me down the most I think is programming in VIM. I'm not going to remap anything, as all the commands I think of as sentences (c)hange-(i)nside-(t)ag, (d)elete-(t)il, etc. And there's a lot of muscle memory to overcome. Also with sh commands.
Still, I do like it.
One of the reasons I decided to go for Workman rather than one of the alternatives is that the whole column-layout for physical keyboards seems like a better design in general, so one day, if I can afford it, I will try and get one.
I have been really struggling with RSI for a years now, so along with changing layout, I'm also trying to take more breaks, sit with a better posture, etc. It does seem to be helping.
After 2 months of very irregular typing on it, this also being my first time doing 'formal' touch typing, I'm around 50wpm typing normal prose, which still feels a bit slow to me, but I am improving.
It sounds like all of these layouts are just people taking guesses and reporting on their anecdotal experience.
Has anyone ever tried determining a fitness function (travel distance, priority finger use, sequential characters on nearby fingers) and running random layouts through a genetic algorithm?
For sample data use english, romance languages, open source code, etc, for a good general purpose layout.
If you're going to relearn a layout it might as well be the optimum one.
[+] [-] skriticos2|12 years ago|reply
I did not regret my decision (far from it), as Dvorak is indeed nice to type and quite readily available out of the box.
Normally you don't get much benefit from switching layouts though. Especially as developer. As an author or someone who is writing prolonged texts in plain English, yes it's definitely an advantage. Yes, it's also more fun to type. But really, QWERTY is good enough in most cases. You don't really need to bother.
[+] [-] gcb0|12 years ago|reply
100% of the layouts still treat symbols as second class citizens.
my typing would vastly improve if a keyboard simply added another row for symbols so they are one key press only.
changing layouts only help in a few cases and turns using somebodyelses computer or a phone or a tablet or a virtual keyboard or remote vim sessions, etc a royal pain in the ass, because they will be qwerty.
[+] [-] Gonzih|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seferphier|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srgpqt|12 years ago|reply
I've been a fulltime dvorak user for over 10 years. I also tried Colemak but found that many motions felt awkward while using it.
Anyways, I thought I'd give this one a try just for the hell of it. And... so far I am quite pleasantly surprised. I fully memorized the layout in about half an hour. It feels comfortable to type on, just like Dvorak does.
Typed up this comment with the Workman-P layout, and seriously considering switching to it now...
[+] [-] ricardobeat|12 years ago|reply
I've always wanted to try an alternate layout, and this post led me to find minimak [2]. I'm typing with it right now and really enjoying the similarity to qwerty (only 4 keys changed) with reduced movement, plus 99% of my shortcuts remain the same.
[1] http://normanlayout.info
[2] http://minimak.org
[+] [-] eertami|12 years ago|reply
I've never been strict enough with myself to learn touch typing (I still hit 120WPM so speed isn't an issue) and worry that the benefit won't be as obvious.
[+] [-] deekayen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blowski|12 years ago|reply
Summary of that article: The 'QWERTY was developed to slow down the typist' story is a lie. There is no serious evidence that Dvorak is a 'better' layout. If you were starting from scratch, there would probably be no advantage choosing one over the other, except that QWERTY is the standard. Retraining is a waste of time.
One of the key quotes:
> The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.
I have no reason to believe that the Workman layout offers any other advantages.
[+] [-] mistercow|12 years ago|reply
>For example, A. Miller and J Thomas, two researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory, writing in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, conclude that "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing."
OK, great. What was the name of the paper? Was it even in a peer reviewed article, or was it an op-ed? And when did they say it? The rate of research into keyboard layouts has been a trickle. If they said that in 1975, then it's not particularly useful today.
In fact, there have been a few studies that have in one way or another demonstrated superior qualities of Dvorak:
http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~buzing/Articles/keyboards.pdf
http://atri.misericordia.edu/Papers/Dvorak.php
(admittedly both of those were published after the Reason article, but I'm not going to spend all night looking for pre-1996 articles)
The article also claims that studies show only "a few percentage points" difference between QWERTY and Dvorak. How can this be, when the total typing distance for QWERTY was nearly twice that of Dvorak on Don Quixote?
So why are we seeing quote and number mining, more typical of political discussions, in an article about keyboard layouts? Well, to understand that, we need to understand Reason's bias, and then read the last paragraph.
And then all becomes clear. This isn't about uncovering the truth about ergonomics and keyboard layouts. It's about scoring a few points for the ol' free market. My guess is that one of the authors was having an argument at a party, and someone drunkenly suggested that QWERTY vs. Dvorak was a great example of the free market failing. "This will not stand!" the writer shouted at the sky, and then proceeded to write a five page article about how "nuh uh".
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|12 years ago|reply
The reason is that it's a popular example of path dependence, where previous decisions affect the best possible current choice. This undermines their economic theories (the authors are economists). So don't expect them to be an unbiased source on this.
They also, for example, claim that Windows is the best OS, and that network effects have no impact on people choosing to use it
[+] [-] ricardobeat|12 years ago|reply
The typing speed record, while it still existed, was held by a dvorak typist. I can type at 130-140wpm using qwerty and feel like it's almost impossible to go any faster, while it's not uncommon to see dvorak users typing 160wpm+. If anything, the reduction in total finger travel is enormous.
[+] [-] Too|12 years ago|reply
In my experience typing on dvorak is much more comfortable. Speed wise i maybe reached the same level as my qwerty after almost a month but for me the biggest wow factor was the comfort. Your hands are really never twisting, most of the time you are just using the home row. It's like holding a gamepad where all the keys you need are designed to be in just the right position, not having jump and fire mapped to the start and select-button.
In the end i still switched back to qwerty because I'm using way to many other computers than my own throughout a day and need to be fast on all of them.
[+] [-] fsck--off|12 years ago|reply
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438124
[+] [-] tjoff|12 years ago|reply
The last sentence isn't supported by the prior, assuming you want to improve your typing.
Let's say that dvorak and qwerty just as "good"/"bad" and that there would be no advantage choosing one over the other. Then retraining is probably not a waste of time because when retraining you don't pick up bad practices, like you did when you first started to type (not knowing better).
It probably is easier to start from scratch than trying to relearn some subtle parts of something you've done every day for for over a decade. Also, the motivation to learn qwerty better isn't as big compared to dvorak where you are forced to make progress to be able to do anything useful.
[+] [-] Afforess|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ye|12 years ago|reply
Yes, there is, and it's even presented in the article. Finger distance traveled if horrible for QWERTY compared to other layouts.
[+] [-] Afforess|12 years ago|reply
Nope: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-li...
[+] [-] 4dl0v3-p34c3|12 years ago|reply
http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
Take not of the script you can download to pipe your scripts to, and learn what is the best layout you actually need:
http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?requirements
Here's a list of them:
http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keyboard_layouts
There was another that was truly optimized for use Coders, that is not Dvorak based. It had the Option key (⌥) as part of its modifiers. I assume it was called something like the coders layout? I don't recall. If any one can recall it, that would be awesome.
[+] [-] V-2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnemecek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xtracto|12 years ago|reply
I've seen two problems with alternative keyboard layouts: a) they are not done for programming (keys ~|!<>_-/"' are oddly laid out) or they are not made for international languages (Spanish in my case, for which ñ,á,é,í,ó,ú are difficult to find. Or worse yet (in case of Dvorak) when using an "international" version, the programming-related keys are horribly placed.
[+] [-] mharrison|12 years ago|reply
Ideally (when I get time to fix it), I'll have a thumb key to hold down and get any programming symbol (optimized to Python for me) on or nearby the home row.
[+] [-] kybernetyk|12 years ago|reply
Could you please run the linux kernel sources through that statistics application?
[+] [-] reirob|12 years ago|reply
As well by reading this article I learned about the TypeMatrix keyboards [1] - I must say I am very intrigued by this idea - I would definitely order one if it contained a good trackpoint.
I myself learned touch typing first QWERTZ (German layout), then after moving to France had to learn AZERTY (the worst layout ever, especially for programmers). In the end because I had to travel and work on keyboards in different countries a lot - I decided to learn QWERTY US International, I configured it with AltGr Dead-Keys and now I am able to use the same layout where ever I go (even Russia and CIS countries) and on my computer I have all the accents for French, German and Turkish. So yes, I know it is not optimal for the Finger usage, but I need a keyboard layout that (a) is available on ALL stock computers, (b) on my computer can be enhanced to allow writing ALL the accents of European languages by using key-combinations.
I think alternative keyboard layout researches should take into account international usage.
But this is just my opinion.
[1] http://www.typematrix.com/
[+] [-] stormbrew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexandros|12 years ago|reply
If we were indeed limited by input, why wouldn't this come up in discussions about languages like CoffeeScript (or even Python/APL) that save keystrokes to begin with? In the case of Coffee and Python, the keys saved are actually the hard-to-press symbols as well. And yet I've never heard the point come up.
Perhaps this is more about our need to feel superior by adopting a routine of cargo-cult efficiency than anything else. In the broader view of productivity, optimising keyboard layouts is more like optimising memcpy() in C. While it may bear some results, it's rarely the actual bottleneck.
[+] [-] vanderZwan|12 years ago|reply
We're not, at least not in the way you think.
> In the broader view of productivity, optimising keyboard layouts is more like optimising memcpy() in C. While it may bear some results, it's rarely the actual bottleneck.
This article is a solution developed by a someone in response to his own RSI problem, optimised for writing English with minimal strain, and presumably tested based on "how much do my arms hurt." So it's a solution/optimisation to a different problem altogether (which may or may not be relevant to you.)
[+] [-] lelf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefsack|12 years ago|reply
I tried switching to Dvorak many moons ago, I'm feeling it may be time to have another crack at an alternative layout, both out of interest in improving efficiency and reducing strain.
[+] [-] barrkel|12 years ago|reply
All of these words are typed in Dvorak without any lateral finger movement, and only two letters outside the home eight.
'ls' is, however, awkward to type. That's why I alias it with 'd'; problem solved.
It is much more efficient to ride the momentum of a single arm or wrist stroke and type a combo rather than just one key.
This is not my experience:
An example of this is the word OPERATION. If you were to type this in Dvorak, you could type it as o-pe-r-a-t-io-n where each grouping is a hand stroke–a total of 7 hand strokes.
The letters 'pe' are the slowest typed for me when typing 'operation'. I strongly prefer alternation, as the finger on the opposite hand can be lined up on the upcoming key just as the current key is being typed. Having to move the hand around for keys that are on one side slows things down.
[+] [-] theboss|12 years ago|reply
I don't know if QWERTY is even a good layout but what does it matter? Isn't the best keyboard layout the one you already know?
Thinking about it now, I can't think of any common digraphs or trigraphs that are inconvenient to type on a qwerty keyboard. Don't fix what ain't broke.
[+] [-] veidr|12 years ago|reply
However, just switching keyboard layouts doesn't fix things. I once switched to Colemak for a couple of months. My hands felt better, and typing on my own machine was way more comfortable. But every other keyboard I interacted with made me look like a dude twice my age with some kind of senility disorder.
To really get the benefits of a better layout, you have to not switch, but rather add a new keyboard fluency, while maintaining QWERTY proficiency. That made the cost-benefit equation very different for me... and I went crawling back to my old abusive partner, QWERTY.
[+] [-] tokenrove|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samspot|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thristian|12 years ago|reply
Of course, now I know how to touch-type and I'm quite comfortable with Dvorak, so I'm not sure I could muster the mental energy to switch to this Workman layout, pleasant-looking as it is. The biggest drawback of Dvorak is indeed the L and R keys... but I guess my finger muscles have strengthened or I'm just more used to it now, so it no longer bothers me.
[+] [-] zodiac|12 years ago|reply
The three most common english digraphs are TH, HE, AN, and they all require moving off the home row to type in qwerty. I consider this an inconvenience, one that doesn't exist in other layouts.
Of course there is a cost to learning a new layout, but if you're probably going to be typing for much of the rest of your life, the cost is very small.
[+] [-] programminggeek|12 years ago|reply
I enjoyed learing Colemak and I would probably enjoy Workman, but it isn't the most practical thing for me to do long term.
Also, a lot of the keybinds in vim or emacs are designed around certain ergonomics and being efficient in an editor is often a more useful thing for me than being efficient when I am typing.
[+] [-] kefka|12 years ago|reply
I have one of those old indestructible IBM model M keyboards with removable keycaps. I love that keyboard. I decided I'd try to learn DVORAK and work with it regularly, so I did so. And I realized something: every time I'd work with a keyboard, I _will_ be working with QWERTY. There's no way I would request to an employer that I have a special keyboard just for me, or try to reconfigure software to support it.
So I went back to QWERTY. May not be ideal but I know everyone supports it.
[+] [-] mlu|12 years ago|reply
- It is very hard to learn since muscle memory is very difficult to change.
- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY].
- I see no real advantage for learning a new keyboard layout. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get things done, learning a new layout would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces.
So I think this is just a hipster thing. Prove me wrong :)
[+] [-] joemccall86|12 years ago|reply
- It is very hard to learn since your muscles are trained for driving a car
- I think it would take me a while to be as confident as in my current Monte Carlo LS
- I see no real advantage for learning a new automobile. None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about driving a car and the urge to change it.
- When you want to get from point A to point B, learning a new vehicle would be the last thing you want.
- You may not have a motorcycle available at different car rental places when you travel
Didn't really prove you wrong, and maybe I am a hipster :-)
I found it enjoyable learning a new layout. Maybe it was just for the sake of trying something new. My productivity didn't suffer since I never really abandoned QWERTY. I didn't utilize colemak in my work until I was relatively fluent. Learning workman might be an interesting weekend excursion, but I have no plans to use it for work until I'm fluent, if it is as fun to type on as colemak.
[+] [-] V-2|12 years ago|reply
What were my reasons of trying new keyboard layout?
- "The hipster thing" (so that one doesn't count).
- Curiosity. I wanted to find out what the fuss is about - whether the talk behind it isn't just that, a hipster thing itself
- I like to learn and I love the feel of improving, of being better than the day before
- It's very comfortable once you get used to it.
Adressing your objections:
"- I think it would take me a while to be as fast as on my current layout QWERT[ZY]."
1. The time will pass anyway.
2. I never typed faster than on QWERTY, but I'm not really a typist. I'm not a court reporter. My productivity is not directly proportional to my typing speed. It's the thinking that takes most of the time anyway. So I can sacrifice some of the speed for the sake of comfort.
"None of my friends and coworkers ever complained about keyboard layout and the urge to change
This I believe, but as Henry Ford remarked: "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." :)
"You may not have your new keyboard layout available at different workplaces."
That's obvious, but I, for one, don't change workplaces that often. And I only use two computers: one at home, one at work. Installing a preconfigured keyboard layout on a new machine takes a minute.
I mainly returned to QWERTY (I'm repeating myself again, but so be it) because English isn't my native language. All these alternative keyboard layouts are optimized for English. I use a QWERTZ mutation (PN-87 - rare and somewhat forgotten even in Poland) for typing in Polish. So sticking to QGLWMY could only ever make like 1/3 of my typing life better :) If I used no other language than English, I probably wouldn't have looked back.
[+] [-] mbrock|12 years ago|reply
You offer five cons, which _to_you_ outweigh the pros – which are so obvious it seems redundant to even mention them, but let's just say, to sum it up, ergonomics.
It's very well known that full-time IT work takes a heavy toll on your body. That's why reasonable people make sure to work with decent posture, to take frequent breaks, and to exercise. It's why decent companies make sure to provide high-quality tools to help their employees stay healthy and avoid injury.
And it's why some people are interested in improving the ergonomics of typing, which – as everyone knows – is fraught with the dangers of repetitive stress.
That doesn't mean that keyboard layout choice is the most important thing in IT ergonomics. But for some people, switching to Dvorak or Colemak or whatever else seems like a reasonable choice, and many of them, myself included, are very satisfied with it, even while working in a collaborative environment where others use QWERTY.
For you to call this "just a hipster thing" is embarrassingly dumb! Do you say the same about ergonomic keyboards, rollermice, and saddle chairs?
[+] [-] stinos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to3m|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarcusVorenus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deckiedan|12 years ago|reply
I'm only using it on my Microsoft Natural 4000 ergonomic keyboard, and still using a regular QWERTY bog-standard-dell keyboard at work, which means I can still type pretty effectively on colleagues' computers.
I quite like it. It does seem to make a lot of sense.
Switching back and forth between a normal QWERTY board and Workman-on-a-special-board takes at most one sentence of brain-mush, but then it's fine.
The thing which slows me down the most I think is programming in VIM. I'm not going to remap anything, as all the commands I think of as sentences (c)hange-(i)nside-(t)ag, (d)elete-(t)il, etc. And there's a lot of muscle memory to overcome. Also with sh commands.
Still, I do like it.
One of the reasons I decided to go for Workman rather than one of the alternatives is that the whole column-layout for physical keyboards seems like a better design in general, so one day, if I can afford it, I will try and get one.
I have been really struggling with RSI for a years now, so along with changing layout, I'm also trying to take more breaks, sit with a better posture, etc. It does seem to be helping.
After 2 months of very irregular typing on it, this also being my first time doing 'formal' touch typing, I'm around 50wpm typing normal prose, which still feels a bit slow to me, but I am improving.
[+] [-] RWeaver|12 years ago|reply
Has anyone ever tried determining a fitness function (travel distance, priority finger use, sequential characters on nearby fingers) and running random layouts through a genetic algorithm?
For sample data use english, romance languages, open source code, etc, for a good general purpose layout.
If you're going to relearn a layout it might as well be the optimum one.