That is especially true of Dvorak, seeing as much of the 'original research' by Dvorak himself was conveniently lost. I agree most gains are 'marginal' but some are still larger gains than others. Personally, Dvorak did nothing for me - and most gains I see people making is because by learning a new keyboard layout they finally learned how to type which is where most of the benefits actually come from. It doesn't matter what layout you switch to, switching to any new layout and learning to type will improve your speed and comfort.
I knew how to type in QWERTY (140-150wpm) and switched to Dvorak where I quickly got up to speed (130-140wpm) but found very little improvement by any other measure. So I switched to Colemak, which I find far more comfortable than QWERTY and I'm capable of the same speed (140-150wpm).
My biggest problem with using Colemak is nobody else does and I'm not going to convince everyone to relearn how to type. So I use Colemak at home and QWERTY at work.
I have used Dvorak everywhere for about 15 years, including at work (with a hardware-switchable keyboard so others can drive too).
I was around 90wpm on qwerty when I switched and am similar on dvorak. The big advantage in my mind is not speed, but comfort. The times when I've had to type on a qwerty board all day, my wrists and hands ache at the end of the day. Whenever I use a coworker's computer I feel like I'm doing finger gymnastics.
Would you suggest I learn Colemak? How does it compare, comfort-wise, to dvorak?
among some other differences, colemak has better shortcut compatibility. a z x c v are on their qwerty position so "select all", undo, cut, copy, and paste are one-handed shortcuts for which many people have muscle memory.
if you are using dvorak, switching to colemak may not be worth it.
the bottom line is that any layout that is not qwerty will likely be an improvement. differences between alternative layouts are small compared to the differences with qwerty.
After 15 years I would say stick with Dvorak. I didn't stick with it longer than a few months, as I was experimenting with alternative layouts. I found Colemak worked better for me; more comfortable and I prefer rolling fingers over alternating hands.
I don't follow touch typing very strictly, for example my left index finger just typed the `y` in `strictly` because it requires less hand movement than moving my right hand from `l` to `y` since my left index was already on `t`.
If you have any blog posts or example of something you type, throw it in [0] this analyzer, which I find fairly accurate. You'll see that Colemak/Dvorak are nearly always on top. In your post, Dvorak wins with a slight edge over Colemak. In my post, Colemak wins with a slight edge over Dvorak. I find them to be pretty equal and it comes down to how you type.
keep in mind that normal keyboard activity is completely different than typing a piece of text from the first letter to the last letter in one go. being efficient with navigation, moving text around, and so on, is just as important, so invest in learning vim, emacs or any other editor that makes sense for you. unfortunately keyboard layout analysers do not capture those key presses, making the results very skewed.
This is libertarian propaganda. The authors literally don't believe markets can be wrong, hence popular examples of markets being wrong get attacked.
Now, maybe there's truth in it, maybe there's not. But let's be clear, this is not coming from an expert in human ergonomics, or in the history of technology, it's coming from people with an agenda to defend and this is rarely, if ever brought up when it is cited.
If libertarian sources can repeatedly doubt the science behind climate change, then the history of keyboard ergonomics is small beer by comparison.
Dvorak was the Commander that ran the army trails and wrote the report on 26 typist that showed any speed improvements. It is shown in 1956 that QWERTY was just as fast if not faster then Dvorak. This is science and not some libertarian attack on marketing????
Speed is the least significant reason to change keyboard layouts. You can get to 100 wpm typing with two fingers, evidenced on YouTube. Layout doesn't matter if you want to type fast. The main reason is comfort, which is harder to demonstrate but very obvious in my experience (as someone who switched to Dvorak 11 years ago but still regularly uses qwerty at libraries).
About four years ago I began experiencing some of the early symptoms of RSI, so I decided give Dvorak a try as an experiment. My personal experience is that it has increased typing comfort, my RSI symptoms went away, and my typing speed is about the same as before. Some people will pick it up faster than others, in my case it was a couple of months before I felt that the muscle memory had fully developed.
Once in a while when I have to use a QWERTY keyboard, the difference in the amount of finger and hand movement is very apparent. As for typos, I certainly still make them, albeit different ones. Just a guess, but I'm guessing that they are probably similar or the same physical key combinations I had trouble with in qwerty.
I often wonder why the typical keyboard keys are staggered such that symmetry is not mirrored for each hand. The top row is shifted slightly to the left of the home row, which means your left hand fingers reaching outward travel a different distance than your right hand fingers reaching outward. Combined with letter placement, the left hand usually has a lot more to do than the right.
The bottom row is much more symmetrically positioned, and yet has the fewest letter keys.
the historical reason for staggering are the metal arms on mechanical typewriters, which obviously does not make any sense nowadays, but unfortunately the design stuck, as did the qwerty layout.
non-staggered keyboards, such as the kinesis advantage, better match the shape of the hand, sometimes even with vertical "staggering" instead of horizontal.
additionally, the thumbs are the strongest fingers but are only supposed to hit the (huge) space bar. this is the problem that alternative physical layouts like the ergodox and the kinesis advantage try to address.
also, split keyboards allow you to use wrist and arm angles that match your body instead of the keyboard.
different letter layouts like colemak (good, especially modern computers) and dvorak (also good, but designed in the pre-computer era) significantly reduce finger travel and improve on finger and hand alteration. for me personally, colemak works great to prevent strain.
What advantage would you have if you just changed it? Every computer you were about to use would have a different layout. QWERTY is good enough. Replacing all keyboards won't happen at same time, and every time you need to replace one keyboard, you'll go with one that is similar to your home/work/university/notebook/virtual ipad/cellphone keyboard, that are all... qwerty.
Change all keyboards that you use at once, and a new candidate is born. Change just one each time, and keep the same.
> Every computer you were about to use would have a different layout.
Absolutely, I tried a couple of different layouts for a while ( PLUM and Dvorak ) but what brought me back to QWERTY was the ubiquity of hardware.
Every time I'd sit down at a client's computer I'd spend a minute or two apologising for typing like a clumsy fool until I'd readapted to QWERTY. My custom keyboards were back at my desk...
Certainly the other layouts were more efficient and less demanding on the hands and fingers, but just weren't ubiquitous enough for someone that worked in multiple locations.
I type in Dvorak and the QWERTY cellphone keyboard hasn't been an issue for me because I rely on a different muscle memory for typing with thumbs then for touch typing on a hardware keyboard. Only my IBM Model M at home has been rearranged because the key-caps are removable. Both my work keyboard and laptop keyboard are still in QWERTY, but it isn't an issue because I touch type. But I agree, we use QWERTY because it's what is familiar.
I think that we should have redesigned our keyboard layouts when we switched to mobile. Keyboards are used very differently today. Swiping multiple letters is possible, people often type with one hand, etc. After using KeyBee for a while I really feel like QWERTY on a phone is very cumbersome. Swiping is less effective because the keys weren't laid out with n-grams in mind. Arranging them in squares wastes screen real estate.
I highly encourage you try it out for a week -- it is really much easier to learn than you'd expect. (No affiliation.)
Let's not forget that every idiom has their most used keys and so on, so even if another keyboard layout is "better", it doesn't mean it'll be faster worldwide.
When i was a young developer, i used to hear that using "Dvorak" was better for everything including software development but after 2 months with it, it became a PITA so i abandon the whole idea of changing keyboard layouts.
Dvorak is optimized for the English language, but my primary language isn't English. Qwerty is universal for languages with the Roman alphabet and I type with more than 120 words per minute, which is enough for me.
I also feel pain every time I end up in front of another computer just for having mapped my Caps Lock to a Ctrl. But that's just one key and having to switch to a completely different keyboard layout is just too painful.
Then there are the smart text editors, like Vim or Emacs, which have shortcuts optimized for Qwerty. Common shortcuts like `C-x C-f` or `C-x C-s` are no longer easy to type. So for each of those editors under your tool-belt, you have to reconfigure them. Yay, that's just what I want.
Basically Qwerty wins because it is ubiquitous and because the alternatives aren't good enough.
you mistake speed as the dominant factor and then you claim you are fast enough so switching is not worth it, while you should instead focus on comfort. you will only fully realise this after experiencing pain.
also, while vim hjkl navigation was designed for qwerty, emacs shortcuts are not.
Interesting link! I type Colemak and pretty much gave up on Vim after trying to remap so many keys. This project didn't exist back when I gave up on learning Vim.
that project did not exist since i switched to colemak only recently, and that made my evil-mode setup (vim editing on top of emacs) completely unusable for me, which is why i started this project.
Interestingly, QWERTY's efficiency is back on the upswing. That is, the common understanding is that QWERTY was developed—at least in part—to reduce jams resulting from adjacent keys being pressed in close succession. This was relevant on typewriters, but of course is not relevant on computers, which have no inked bits to jam.
As we shift to virtual keyboards, there is again a benefit to having distance between frequently-used keys. Predictive typing guesses are better when keys like A, E, and I are not close to each other, since there are many words where only the vowel differs (bit/bet/bat, nit/net/nat, etc.).
On a somewhat related note, I've been trying Swype recently. After a couple weeks, I'm still not more efficient than regular typing, but I could see how I might get there eventually. I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months.
QWERTY Myth. QWERTY was not in fact designed to protect the keys from jamming. In 1956 it was shown that QWERTY was as fast if not faster then Dvorak.
> The myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.
The Myth goes well with the Army report on the slowness of QWERTY.
> But then it turns out—something else the report forgot to mention—that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.
The claim is that QWERTY was designed to reduced jams. You dispute this, and link to an article showing that QWERTY is not slow. These are not the same thing.
QWERTY was designed to prevent jams. QWERTY was not designed to make typists slower.
I read it and will say this. QWERTY had competition including speed competitions and there were no vastly better technology then. Right now there is no study that shows QWERTY is substandard to other layouts in a measurable way.
> This was relevant on typewriters, but of course is not relevant on computers, which have no inked bits to jam.
You are saying that QWERTY is inferior to other potential layouts. You are concluding that since QWERTY was made for jams and we don't have jams we can have better layouts, but the other layouts have not shown to be of any measurable benefit.
What is the size of device that you are trying Swype on? In my experience, Swype-like keyboards are best on smaller screens. Also I greatly prefer Swype-like keyboards for any one-handed use. (It's a shame that Swype-like keyboards are only available from third-party developers — and thus crippled by Apple – in the next small screen phone)
This is a good point. I tried it for a while on an iPhone 6, but I didn't type faster and there were some bugs that frustrated me so I quit. I now have an iPhone 7 Plus, and for some reason I've had a hankering to try it again. Maybe it's because I can no longer use my phone one-handed, and it seems like a good idea to hold with one hand and swype with the other?
I can see how swype would have a comparative advantage on smaller devices, though I'm not sure I could swype well with the thumb of the hand that is holding the device. Do people swype with thumbs? Or just the index finger?
> I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months
I've been using a swype keyboard for so long I can barely remember hacking away with both thumbs, but the adjustment period for me was pretty quick. The key is to just trust the software to detect your swypes and then correct any errors after the fact (vs real-time). After a while both you and the keyboard's recognition ability will get better and your accuracy will improve. Special characters are a pain, but a pain you'll learn to live with given the potential efficiency gains.
"A" and "E" are not that close together, and software keyboards can fairly reliably tell the difference between these key presses. "I" and "O" are indeed adjacent, and this causes typos because these letters are frequently interchangeable in words. I rarely encounter an "I" that should have been a "U", and I don't think the keyboard ever mistakes a "O" for a "U" (or vice versa). I'd be interested to know if others have trouble with A/E or U/I, and if so with which words.
> On a somewhat related note, I've been trying Swype recently. After a couple weeks, I'm still not more efficient than regular typing, but I could see how I might get there eventually. I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months.
Paradoxically, the most expeditious approach to efficiently employing the benefits of swiping keyboards is to overwhelmingly express yourself using a lengthened vocabulary, because the algorithm's computations become greatly facilitated and the necessity of manually selecting among equivalent possibilities is lessened.
I have switched to programmer's dvorak (dvp) for a year now. I have recorded the amount of typing vs speed. Right after the switch, the speed increase is logarithmic to amount of typing: I will need to practice twice the amount of typing to get a constant speed increase.
But now, I definitely feels much better than qwerty if typing English / code regularly. I no longer feel the strain on my fingers after long periods of typing. I also got a ~15% speed improvement, but that might just because I can touch type better. However there are several things that come up surprising me after the switch:
1. I forget all about qwerty. Every time I type on someone else's computer, I will have to look at the keyboard and picking letters one by one. It doesn't seem to get better over time.
2. Passwords are annoying to type even after I am generally comfortable with dvp after 3 months.
3. Shortcut keys are even more resilient to change. It takes very long to get comfortable with vim again (about 6 months), but now after a year of dvp I still have trouble Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v.
4. I spent a lot of time changing keyboard settings in games.
So for most of people who don't specifically focus on typing long paragraphs of english texts but press keys mostly as short cuts, I can see there is not sufficient reason to switch, if everything is designed around qwerty.
As someone that's periodically been interested in switching, I think you've given me the motivation to just stick with qwerty.
Not being able to type fast enough is never the bottleneck when I write code, and I think I'd like to still be able to use other people's keyboards without having to concentrate.
I use a dvorak layout, and I find it much more comfortable than qwerty. When I need to use someone else's machine for something nontrivial, I just change the OS setting temporarily. The overhead doesn't bother me, and the only thing I really miss are some custom keybindings (e.g. CAPS -> delete...).
I thought about remapping at the beginning. But with vim you almost need to remap the whole keyboard to get hjkl in the usual place ... so I didn't. The hjkl on dvorak is at jcvp on qwerty, they are not too uncomfortable.
but now I realize it might be a benefit: I don't use hjkl as much as before, but mostly rely on other ways to jump, so this disadvantage actually makes using vim a bit more efficient.
The position of the keys has little to do with one's efficiency in VIM. Autonomic memory is everything. I use hjkl in Dvorak just as efficiently as I did in Qwerty and Colemak.
I have heard reports of people being able to know both layouts. There is a section in the Colemak website regarding it. Although, you will have to re-learn qwerty after you learn another layout.
many consider it best to touch type your normal layout (colemak, qwerty) and to use hunt-and-peck when forced to use qwerty. it helps not messing up muscle memory for the normal layout, since hunt and peck is a conscious effort.
I learned to touch-type QWERTY in high school. 20 years later, I learned to touch-type Colemak, and eventually got up to the same speed. For a while, I couldn't really touch-type QWERTY. But gradually I regained the ability. It still helps for me to be looking at the keyboard, so that I have a different context to go with the different layout. But I am still using 10 fingers when typing QWERTY.
If you're thinking of switching to Dvorak, perhaps don't. I switched at the age of 20 and I don't think there was enough of a benefit to it. Too much muscle memory gets locked when you are young.
I believe the article contains a factual error about the qwerty keyboard not existing until Remington had bought the patent.
The earliest commercial Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer (one that you could actually buy) had a qwerty keyboard [1].
It has been said that Sholes used this arrangement because one can type the word "typewriter" without leaving the top row; I.e. for salesman demonstration purposes.
Edit: erm, the Wikipedia article also states that the typewriter "as presented to Remington" did have "." where "R" is in qwerty. I do believe that Sholes and Glidden were already selling typewriters with this change, however.
I switched to Dvorak because of wrist pain. It worked.
Of course, that result is confounded with slowing down to learn to type on a new keyboard. That said, I have not had the pain come back.
If you're interested it typing speed, look at plover: http://www.openstenoproject.org/
over 200 words per minute should be achievable. (I've only met users, never tried it myself. I was amazed at their speed.)
I used to get a numbness on the backs of my hands after a long day of coding. It scared me! Switched to Dvorak, the numbness vanished, and I've been happy with it ever since. This was back in '95 or so.
If you're happy with your QWERTY keyboard, good. Nobody's going to take it away from you. But I was glad to have an alternative.
P.S. Also back in the 90's, I ran a genetic programming experiment in which I tried to evolve a keyboard layout that minimized finger motion across a corpus of text. The best layouts all had the vowels on the home row under one hand and THNS on the home row under the other.
Similar for me too, I got tedonitis. I immediately switched to Colemak, fixed my hand posture, and I've been great ever since. As a side effect, I can type significantly faster too.
In the 5th grade, we had typing class, and we got to use both qwerty and dvorak. This was some time ago, but even then, we were told that qwerty was the present and the future, and dvorak was rare and on the way out. Basically, at a young age we are told what to use, and trained to use it - the rest is history.
I am one of the few people out there who has: started on Dvorak, switched to Colemak, switched to Qwerty, and then switched back to Dvorak. During each switch, I stuck with it until I was >100WPM.
My results: Every time I switched, my speed and accuracy improved.
Here is my conclusion: As long as your layout is a reasonably useable layout (which all of the above are), it doesn't matter. If your speed increases, it has nothing to do with the layout. It is because by switching your layout, you are forcing your brain to re-train, and in the process are eliminating bad habits, and increasing your focus on speed and accuracy.
The ability of the brain to adapt far exceeds any intrinsic advantage of one keyboard over another. Ergo, the keyboard layout wars are meaningless.
The only advantage one layout may have over another is ergonomic - i.e., for those who are especially prone to RMI, the (slight) edge of one layout over another might make a difference. Even then, the difference is minimal enough that it may not matter.
> Here is my conclusion: As long as your layout is a reasonably useable layout (which all of the above are), it doesn't matter. If your speed increases, it has nothing to do with the layout. It is because by switching your layout, you are forcing your brain to re-train, and in the process are eliminating bad habits, and increasing your focus on speed and accuracy.
I think anyone with a bit of common sense will conclude the same thing. Because every time you switch you are specifically focusing on speed and accuracy improvements, but even if you never switched layouts and put in the same amount of time training your typing skills, you would have seen improvements over your baseline. Maybe not as much as when switching layouts, however.
These issues are also not common. I don't have the hard numbers about how many people train their typing skills specifically, but my suspicion is that it is a astonishingly small fraction of people who use computers. The people who go so far as to switch layouts in pursuit of typing skill specifically are likely an even smaller subset.
I agree. Those who insist that one (reasonable) layout is sufficiently better than another enough to bother switching are suffering from confirmation bias.
As far as switching layouts in pursuit of an improvement, I imagine this depends upon the person. In my case, at least, the repeated switching forced a complete break. I could not easily fall into bad habits because I was exerting so much effort just in retraining my finger memory. In this regard it may be more of a brain hack.
I switched to Colemak years ago, and I still love it. It helped remove my tendonitis, and improved my typing speed.
The odd time I use another computer I hunt and peck. My phone is still qwerty too, but it seems to not matter at all, since its not touch typed.
When I first started learning Colemak, I simply used a regular qwerty keyboard, and ignored the labels on the keys. Now I love my mechanical keyboard with cherry mx blue switches, with a custom Colemak key-cap set.
After learning to touch type in Australia as a high school student on QWERTY I was thrown for a loop when I arrived in France and found myself face to face with AZERTY. Didn’t take a long time to figure out and now, ten years later, a QWERTY keyboard has me staring at the keyboard and picking at keys like a hungry bird. The shift key for numbers? Totally natural. Shift key for the period? Also natural now.
If you like your keyboard, keep it - but the switch is always a pain.
66 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadhttps://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
I knew how to type in QWERTY (140-150wpm) and switched to Dvorak where I quickly got up to speed (130-140wpm) but found very little improvement by any other measure. So I switched to Colemak, which I find far more comfortable than QWERTY and I'm capable of the same speed (140-150wpm).
My biggest problem with using Colemak is nobody else does and I'm not going to convince everyone to relearn how to type. So I use Colemak at home and QWERTY at work.
I was around 90wpm on qwerty when I switched and am similar on dvorak. The big advantage in my mind is not speed, but comfort. The times when I've had to type on a qwerty board all day, my wrists and hands ache at the end of the day. Whenever I use a coworker's computer I feel like I'm doing finger gymnastics.
Would you suggest I learn Colemak? How does it compare, comfort-wise, to dvorak?
if you are using dvorak, switching to colemak may not be worth it.
the bottom line is that any layout that is not qwerty will likely be an improvement. differences between alternative layouts are small compared to the differences with qwerty.
I don't follow touch typing very strictly, for example my left index finger just typed the `y` in `strictly` because it requires less hand movement than moving my right hand from `l` to `y` since my left index was already on `t`.
If you have any blog posts or example of something you type, throw it in [0] this analyzer, which I find fairly accurate. You'll see that Colemak/Dvorak are nearly always on top. In your post, Dvorak wins with a slight edge over Colemak. In my post, Colemak wins with a slight edge over Dvorak. I find them to be pretty equal and it comes down to how you type.
[0] http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer
Now, maybe there's truth in it, maybe there's not. But let's be clear, this is not coming from an expert in human ergonomics, or in the history of technology, it's coming from people with an agenda to defend and this is rarely, if ever brought up when it is cited.
If libertarian sources can repeatedly doubt the science behind climate change, then the history of keyboard ergonomics is small beer by comparison.
http://dvorak.mwbrooks.com/dissent.html
http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
http://www.looknohands.me
https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler/what-to-do-when-typing-hurt...
https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/18/rsi-solution/
Most alternate keyboard layouts (e.g. Colemak, Dvorak, etc) require a lot less hand movement, which might prevent RSI.
http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/load/FFv3m625
Once in a while when I have to use a QWERTY keyboard, the difference in the amount of finger and hand movement is very apparent. As for typos, I certainly still make them, albeit different ones. Just a guess, but I'm guessing that they are probably similar or the same physical key combinations I had trouble with in qwerty.
The bottom row is much more symmetrically positioned, and yet has the fewest letter keys.
non-staggered keyboards, such as the kinesis advantage, better match the shape of the hand, sometimes even with vertical "staggering" instead of horizontal.
additionally, the thumbs are the strongest fingers but are only supposed to hit the (huge) space bar. this is the problem that alternative physical layouts like the ergodox and the kinesis advantage try to address.
also, split keyboards allow you to use wrist and arm angles that match your body instead of the keyboard.
different letter layouts like colemak (good, especially modern computers) and dvorak (also good, but designed in the pre-computer era) significantly reduce finger travel and improve on finger and hand alteration. for me personally, colemak works great to prevent strain.
On a personal note, I've found no issues bouncing back and forth between and Ergodox and regular, non-split, staggered keyboards.
[0] http://olkb.com/
What advantage would you have if you just changed it? Every computer you were about to use would have a different layout. QWERTY is good enough. Replacing all keyboards won't happen at same time, and every time you need to replace one keyboard, you'll go with one that is similar to your home/work/university/notebook/virtual ipad/cellphone keyboard, that are all... qwerty.
Change all keyboards that you use at once, and a new candidate is born. Change just one each time, and keep the same.
Absolutely, I tried a couple of different layouts for a while ( PLUM and Dvorak ) but what brought me back to QWERTY was the ubiquity of hardware.
Every time I'd sit down at a client's computer I'd spend a minute or two apologising for typing like a clumsy fool until I'd readapted to QWERTY. My custom keyboards were back at my desk...
Certainly the other layouts were more efficient and less demanding on the hands and fingers, but just weren't ubiquitous enough for someone that worked in multiple locations.
I highly encourage you try it out for a week -- it is really much easier to learn than you'd expect. (No affiliation.)
http://keybee.it
I also feel pain every time I end up in front of another computer just for having mapped my Caps Lock to a Ctrl. But that's just one key and having to switch to a completely different keyboard layout is just too painful.
Then there are the smart text editors, like Vim or Emacs, which have shortcuts optimized for Qwerty. Common shortcuts like `C-x C-f` or `C-x C-s` are no longer easy to type. So for each of those editors under your tool-belt, you have to reconfigure them. Yay, that's just what I want.
Basically Qwerty wins because it is ubiquitous and because the alternatives aren't good enough.
also, while vim hjkl navigation was designed for qwerty, emacs shortcuts are not.
(for a vim + colemak alternative see the rationale for the layout i use: https://github.com/wbolster/evil-colemak-basics#design-ratio... )
for a similar vim-based implementation (which served as inspiration for my remappings), see https://github.com/ohjames/colemak
As we shift to virtual keyboards, there is again a benefit to having distance between frequently-used keys. Predictive typing guesses are better when keys like A, E, and I are not close to each other, since there are many words where only the vowel differs (bit/bet/bat, nit/net/nat, etc.).
On a somewhat related note, I've been trying Swype recently. After a couple weeks, I'm still not more efficient than regular typing, but I could see how I might get there eventually. I'd be curious to know what others have found the learning curve to be—how long it takes to "break even" and whether efficiency continues to improve for months.
> The myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.
http://www.economist.com/node/196071
The Myth goes well with the Army report on the slowness of QWERTY.
> But then it turns out—something else the report forgot to mention—that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.
QWERTY was designed to prevent jams. QWERTY was not designed to make typists slower.
> This was relevant on typewriters, but of course is not relevant on computers, which have no inked bits to jam.
You are saying that QWERTY is inferior to other potential layouts. You are concluding that since QWERTY was made for jams and we don't have jams we can have better layouts, but the other layouts have not shown to be of any measurable benefit.
I can see how swype would have a comparative advantage on smaller devices, though I'm not sure I could swype well with the thumb of the hand that is holding the device. Do people swype with thumbs? Or just the index finger?
You could try two-fingered swyping on the 7 plus. That is a steeper learning curve but faster top speeds:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nintype/id796959534?mt=8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DS9Gyf2LM
I've been using a swype keyboard for so long I can barely remember hacking away with both thumbs, but the adjustment period for me was pretty quick. The key is to just trust the software to detect your swypes and then correct any errors after the fact (vs real-time). After a while both you and the keyboard's recognition ability will get better and your accuracy will improve. Special characters are a pain, but a pain you'll learn to live with given the potential efficiency gains.
Paradoxically, the most expeditious approach to efficiently employing the benefits of swiping keyboards is to overwhelmingly express yourself using a lengthened vocabulary, because the algorithm's computations become greatly facilitated and the necessity of manually selecting among equivalent possibilities is lessened.
But now, I definitely feels much better than qwerty if typing English / code regularly. I no longer feel the strain on my fingers after long periods of typing. I also got a ~15% speed improvement, but that might just because I can touch type better. However there are several things that come up surprising me after the switch:
1. I forget all about qwerty. Every time I type on someone else's computer, I will have to look at the keyboard and picking letters one by one. It doesn't seem to get better over time.
2. Passwords are annoying to type even after I am generally comfortable with dvp after 3 months.
3. Shortcut keys are even more resilient to change. It takes very long to get comfortable with vim again (about 6 months), but now after a year of dvp I still have trouble Ctrl+c and Ctrl+v.
4. I spent a lot of time changing keyboard settings in games.
So for most of people who don't specifically focus on typing long paragraphs of english texts but press keys mostly as short cuts, I can see there is not sufficient reason to switch, if everything is designed around qwerty.
Not being able to type fast enough is never the bottleneck when I write code, and I think I'd like to still be able to use other people's keyboards without having to concentrate.
but now I realize it might be a benefit: I don't use hjkl as much as before, but mostly rely on other ways to jump, so this disadvantage actually makes using vim a bit more efficient.
Do you find it possible to natively know both layouts or does one hamstring the other?
The earliest commercial Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer (one that you could actually buy) had a qwerty keyboard [1].
It has been said that Sholes used this arrangement because one can type the word "typewriter" without leaving the top row; I.e. for salesman demonstration purposes.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewrite...
Edit: erm, the Wikipedia article also states that the typewriter "as presented to Remington" did have "." where "R" is in qwerty. I do believe that Sholes and Glidden were already selling typewriters with this change, however.
If you're interested it typing speed, look at plover: http://www.openstenoproject.org/ over 200 words per minute should be achievable. (I've only met users, never tried it myself. I was amazed at their speed.)
I've never found speed to be my issue, YMMV.
If you're happy with your QWERTY keyboard, good. Nobody's going to take it away from you. But I was glad to have an alternative.
P.S. Also back in the 90's, I ran a genetic programming experiment in which I tried to evolve a keyboard layout that minimized finger motion across a corpus of text. The best layouts all had the vowels on the home row under one hand and THNS on the home row under the other.
The same reason stoplights are red: inertia.
In the 5th grade, we had typing class, and we got to use both qwerty and dvorak. This was some time ago, but even then, we were told that qwerty was the present and the future, and dvorak was rare and on the way out. Basically, at a young age we are told what to use, and trained to use it - the rest is history.
No?
Ok. Long live QWERTY.
My results: Every time I switched, my speed and accuracy improved.
Here is my conclusion: As long as your layout is a reasonably useable layout (which all of the above are), it doesn't matter. If your speed increases, it has nothing to do with the layout. It is because by switching your layout, you are forcing your brain to re-train, and in the process are eliminating bad habits, and increasing your focus on speed and accuracy.
The ability of the brain to adapt far exceeds any intrinsic advantage of one keyboard over another. Ergo, the keyboard layout wars are meaningless.
The only advantage one layout may have over another is ergonomic - i.e., for those who are especially prone to RMI, the (slight) edge of one layout over another might make a difference. Even then, the difference is minimal enough that it may not matter.
I think anyone with a bit of common sense will conclude the same thing. Because every time you switch you are specifically focusing on speed and accuracy improvements, but even if you never switched layouts and put in the same amount of time training your typing skills, you would have seen improvements over your baseline. Maybe not as much as when switching layouts, however.
These issues are also not common. I don't have the hard numbers about how many people train their typing skills specifically, but my suspicion is that it is a astonishingly small fraction of people who use computers. The people who go so far as to switch layouts in pursuit of typing skill specifically are likely an even smaller subset.
As far as switching layouts in pursuit of an improvement, I imagine this depends upon the person. In my case, at least, the repeated switching forced a complete break. I could not easily fall into bad habits because I was exerting so much effort just in retraining my finger memory. In this regard it may be more of a brain hack.
The odd time I use another computer I hunt and peck. My phone is still qwerty too, but it seems to not matter at all, since its not touch typed.
When I first started learning Colemak, I simply used a regular qwerty keyboard, and ignored the labels on the keys. Now I love my mechanical keyboard with cherry mx blue switches, with a custom Colemak key-cap set.
If you like your keyboard, keep it - but the switch is always a pain.