Ask HN: Should I teach my kids to type with QWERTY or Dvorak?
While I'm not training my children to become programmers, it's a virtual certainty that any job/profession will require the use of a computer, and that means the ability to type. I keep reading that those who can type using the Dvorak layout are faster but have always thought "I'm too old to switch keyboard layouts at this point" -- but what about my kids who haven't even learned to type yet?
Are there downsides of learning something other than QWERTY and, if so, do the benefits outweigh the negatives?
86 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadCan you even say you know how to type if you have to look at the keys to do it?
But I'd say there is actually a level between non-typist and touch-typist where the person needs to be looking at the keyboard, but knows where each key is and reaches that direction without actually having to move their eyes. They're really close to being a touch-typist, but they still need their eyes to get their fingers on the buttons reliably.
I'd argue that Qwerty vs Dvorak relies on that intermediary step rather than actual "touch typing", but there isn't really a name for it.
Those people definitely know how to type. In fact, they know how to type _far_ better than many of the people in this world who don't work with a computer 7 days per week >=8 hours per day.
A day or two spent learning to type would pay itself back with dividends.
I put in the ground work for touch typing at school on the good old typewriters; it was certainly the best extra curriculum subject I've ever done.
They push the buttons and letters appear on screen. That's typing - everything else is optimisation :P
If you are going to use a keyboard often, then the time spent to learn a keyboard is well worth it. However if your day job doesn't require a keyboard those classes won't be helpful.
My 5yo can "type" by hunting and pecking, and he's actually getting good enough that he doesn't get frustrated trying to type simple words (he likes looking up words at the library computers). My 2yo, however, knows his letters, but I don't think he really understands how keyboards work.
Personally, I'd say that someone can type if they can use a keyboard productively and have some means of speeding up entry besides looking at every key until they find the one they want (most people know vaguely where there keys are, even if they can't touch type).
Living in Germany and being used to QWERTY it's really hard for me to use someone elses computer, because it will most likely be QWERTZ (German layout) and that alone annoys me to no end. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to be used to a completely different keyboard.
That's not the problem though; the annoying thing is when a PC is configured to only have the German layout available, so I constantly mix up Z and Y
Edit: Is that what GP Bjelkeman meant by "option key combos"?
How often do you type on someone else's computer? It is not comparable to the amount of time you use your own keyboard.
Programs like AutoHotkey can solve that issue when available.
I love Dvorak and using it has been a huge boon for me, but I'm also able to control my environment and always use the same computer.
So I say go with QWERTY.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/17/18223384/dvorak-qwerty-ke...
Above is a good article on the topic.
That said, if you can type comfortably in Qwerty, I suggest using it. Being able to type on any keyboard without having to hunt around for the keyboard layout switcher is nice.
I learned to type 37 years ago and type 160 WPM with 100% accuracy and have the www.typeracer.com profile to prove it.
About 15 years ago I started having RSI symptoms and ended up sleeping in braces every night because it got so bad. EMG studies showed significant damage to median and ulnar nerve conductivity. Someone on slashdot.org pointed me to the work of Dr. John Sarno. His theory is deceptively simple but if you take the time to truly understand and practice it, you won't have RSI issues any longer.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsR4wydiIBI
http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html
It has a single peer reviewed article that only shows modest reduction in pain symptoms with no control group. The protocol involves emotional support/emotional sharing/etc. The reason why those two links were chosen rather than Wikipedia was because Wikipedia largely debunked it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_myositis_syndrome#Cont...
There's no known physical mechanism wherein TMS could work, and oddly its proponents haven't released scans of impacted areas (back, wrist, etc) that show this "increased blood flow" and physical restoration for which their claim is based.
> Critics in mainstream medicine state that neither the theory of TMS nor the effectiveness of the treatment has been proven in a properly controlled clinical trial, citing the placebo effect and regression to the mean as possible explanations for its success.
I found Dvorak to be significantly worse than QWERTY in both speed and comfort, seeing as Dvorak is more heavily biased towards the right hand and I am left hand dominant (although mostly ambidextrous). I then gave Colemak a try and found it to be a bit more comfortable and eventually trained to reach my previous QWERTY speed of 165-170wpm. I use QWERTY at work but Colemak at home.
Note: by "mostly ambidextrous" I mean that most tasks I can use either arm/hand. I write with my right but throw and punch with my left.
Not in my case. I first learned to type properly on Qwerty.
> I found Dvorak to be significantly worse than QWERTY in both speed and comfort, seeing as Dvorak is more heavily biased towards the right hand and I am left hand dominant
I'm going to need to see some proof for that assertion. Just going off the top of my head, I'd say I type far more with my left hand than my right using Dvorak.
I'll take you at your word, but most people I see claim this have extremely poor typing habits. Similar to a self-taught musician who ingrained poor habits because they never had anyone around to correct them.
>I'm going to need to see some proof for that assertion. Just going off the top of my head, I'd say I type far more with my left hand than my right using Dvorak.
Sure thing. Summing the frequencies in the English language and applying it to the keyboard layouts gives:
Dvorak: Left 43.2%, Right 56.8%
QWERTY: Left 58.7%, Right 41.3%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency#Relative_freq...
I don't care much for the arguments of the ubiquity of Qwerty for multiple reasons:
1. They will be exposed to Qwerty on devices where touch-typing is meaningless, such as smartphones and tablets.
2. They will learn Qwerty eventually anyway, and they'll be proficient in both. Why set them off on the worse of the two options from the start?
3. I'm sure schools and other parts of society are moving away from shared workstations onto personal laptops, where they get to control keyboard settings.
4. If I had to choose between being doomed to RSI or encountering keyboard incompatibilities every now and then, I would not pick RSI lightly.
Learning Colemak was painful for a while, but worth it many, many times over in retrospect.
Is the situation with QWERTY really that dire?
I'm not sure having a keyboard layout completely interalized is ever really meaningless. For example, I typed this entire reply on my phone without looking at the keyboard once, based solely on knowledge of the positions of the different keys in relation to one another. Furthermore, even if I had been looking at the keyboard, having memorized the locations of everything in some part of my mind would definitely make it faster to type than if I had no idea where anything was. Besides, if someone were most familiar with a non-Qwerty layout, why wouldn't they just set their phone to that?
Right now they mostly use voice recognition and seem to be getting along pretty well...
But, yes, typing properly is probably a worthwhile skill to have. It's something I'm a bit sorry I never learned properly. (Also shorthand.)
And I don't think COBOL or BASIC will suddenly have a huge comeback.
More concretely speaking, do you think their teachers & future employers would be OK with them not knowing a computing skill that's become fundamental to modern life?
I think most important than the layout itself, is to learn how to touch type. Keeping your fingers on the home row. Using opposing control characters instead of using one hand to reach multiple keys, etc etc.
As a programmer I do not need 200 chars/minute. I believe that developed skills to use movement keys and key sequences, like arrow keys, Ctrl-arrows, Home, End, and others. For example, I struggle every time with a laptop keyboard, because Home/End/Delete are oddly placed and I miss them half of the times.
I learned Dvorak because I wanted to be part of an elite group (I mean, how many Dvorak typists are they?). I kept using it because my wrist pain went away. Perhaps that's because I relearned to type and thus fixed bad habits. I had pretty good form before learning Dvorak, so I like to think that the reduced finger travel is helping.
But how will your child feel when they're different than their friends and have to make special accommodations when using someone else's computer? That's a bit more important than any technical benefit IMO, and is why I'll teach my kids QWERTY.
> But how will your child feel when they're different than their friends and have to make special accommodations when using someone else's computer?
Accidently I wrote a wall of text answering to this. I'm sorry, it is one of my favorite topics: developmental psychology. The tl;dr version of it is: I wouldn't teach my child how to type at all.
Now the long version.
If children wanted to be different, than I would say them: it is all up to you, my children, if you need my blessing, you got it.
Look, a person get a desire to be different somewhere after 15 years old typically. Maybe some manage to develop to this point earlier, but I do not know about such a cases. Mostly they get to it after 15. Before that his difference from others would be either indifferent or annoying.
If you taught your child to use Dvorak while he was in a kindergarten, it would go as you planned up to a moment when you child hits puberty (~12yo). Before it the motivation of a child is built over her desire to be a good girl (or boy, gender doesn't matter). She was not interested in being like others or being different. After that the motivation is an approvement of her friends. It means that teen becomes obsessed of being like others, and her underdeveloped skills of using QWERTY might get on the way of it. What will follow? The same that follow everytime with every teen and her parent, teen will decide that her parent is crazy weird graybeard, that it is a shame to have such a parent, and the only way to deal with it is to hide parent and his weird habits from friends. It means to pretend that she prefer QWERTY, to use QWERTY always, and even to provoke parents by using QWERTY defiantly and by arguing that Dvorak is bad and causes pimples. If you allow her to provoke you, if you start argue, than you just prove her that she was right about your inability to accept new ideas.
It is not necessarily would go by this scenario, but it is completely plausible scenario. If you are going to teach your child to some uncommon habits, then you need to take into a consideration that it could end badly. May I suggest an other way to do it? Don't teach your child to use Dvorak. Don't teach your child to use QWERTY. Let him to be a bad typist for the first 15 years of his life, it would do him no harm. Teach him instead to play a piano -- it gives him meta-skills that could help to learn any keyboard layout. Teach him to play a piano and wait patiently. Watch for him, you need a moment when your child stops being a jerk who believes that his friends are smarter and more experienced than his parents. It can happen at 15 years old, or 17 years old, or even 20 years old. Personal differences are great here.
After that you a free to convince your kid to learn Dvorak. It might be not so hard as it looks. After ~15 yo teens like to work on themselves to become better and stronger. So it is completely possible to convience him to learn Dvorak even without a manipulation.
Moreover, after all that was said, I believe that it is a bad idea to teach child to type. He will not need his skill for 10+ years at least. So why to bother? It is like to teach child to read at 3 years old, to be able to brag about how bright child is. No one is interested that for a 3 year old it is very hard to learn to read, it would be much easier at 5-6 years old. No one is interested that 3 years old have other skills to develop, skills that are easier to learn at 3 years old and maybe impossible to learn at 5 years old. No one is interested that to learn how to read child needs to read, but if he was taught to read at 3 years old, than he wouldn't use his skill for 2...
Dvorak is definitely superior to QWERTY comfort-wise (I used to get bad RSI with QWERTY, but that doesn't happen for Dvorak), and maybe speed-wise, though my speed in both is about the same. I can keep up a high rate of speed on Dvorak longer than QWERTY, though.
An an aside, I don't think you're ever too old to try something new. I learned Dvorak as an adult and it only took me a couple weeks before I was up to my QWERTY speed. Interestingly enough, after I learned Dvorak my speed with QWERTY actually increased, for whatever reason.
Which is to say, your children will be fine. Just let them practice, and they'll get more than fast enough.
Typing speed, beyond a basic level of competence, has pretty much nothing to do with programming skill. In fact, if your bottleneck is typing speed, you're likely better off stopping and spending some time thinking about how you might be doing things differently. (Not that we haven't all been there, but it should be a vanishingly small proportion of your overall time, hopefully.)
I have been using Dvorak almost exclusively for about 15 years now. It's not faster, that's a myth -- but it is much more easy on the fingers: depending on the nature of your prose, you'll save perhaps 30% finger movement. With Colemak, that number is less, but you gain a more comparable (to qwerty) shortcut-key layout.
Obviously, there are all sorts of adversities facing Dvorak typists: native hardware keyboard layouts, limits to the users ability to configure software keyboard layouts (for instance, you may be able to change it on your desktop -- but not on the lock screen!), and of course having to fall back to qwerty on other's devices.
Curiously, on a non-touch-typing device such as the touch screen of a tablet or mobile phone, I'm useless on Dvorak (perhaps exactly because Dvorak was designed for hand-alteration?), so there I'm by far more proficient with one hand on qwerty.
In the end, I think I will settle for showing them both layouts in use at their home, and let them decide which to use. However, @kqr makes a number of very good points, not least the RSI one.
There's also quite a lot of knowledge tucked away in this post: https://blog.hanschen.org/2010/01/30/dvorak-two-years-later-...
Thanks for the clarification
On a more serious note,
> having to fall back to qwerty on other's devices
This alone effectively nullifies my will to learn Dvorak
This is false. There a plenty of statistics showing that Dvorak is faster (albeit it's true that the main benefits is around finger movement)
> native hardware keyboard layouts
Never been a problem: you don't need (or want) to look at the keys anyways.
> limits to the users ability to configure software keyboard layouts
Also not a problem: you cannot touch-type on a phone and also you type with thumbs.
As I recall there is one exception: if you are just copying something without having to think about it dvorak is faster. This isn't a common job, but it does exist.
1. every keyboard in the wild they encounter will be qwerty
2. probably a matter of time before keyboard is fully optional/non existent.
This will give them zero "advantage" in the real world.
http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main
Over a lifetime this might lead to RSI.
Perhaps without realising it, the question you're asking is, "Should I teach my kids the thing that will help them in society as it exists or should I teach them a potentially superior but less applicable alternative?"
The tech crowd sometimes misses the network effects of common solutions that might not be "the best" (and I'm really really skeptical that Dvorak is better)
If people writing qwerty couldn't understand people who wrote dvorak, I would understand your argument, but languages are so much more different than a keyboard layout.
But in the end, both keyboard layouts end up being able to write exactly the same words, the only difference is the speed (as I understand, only once tried using dvorak so I don't really know)
And ergonomics.
The analogy isn't that a qwerty typist can't understand a dvorak typist, but that when our society uses a certain standard, using something else that's only marginally better might be more trouble than it's worth. Would you want your kid to be unable to use the keyboards at school, or the library, or what comes stock on laptops, or (directly addressing OP) the workplace? Sure, many jobs require computer use, but unless it's an office, they're likely shared computers.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
QWERTY is the default layout (in English speaking countries and as QWERTY was mentioned, I assume OP is in an English speaking country). QWERTY is on the computers in schools, on the computers available to buy in stores, on the computers in offices.
Teaching kids Dvorak is putting them at a disadvantage in life, just as teaching them Esperato, Inrterlingua, Lojban, or similar artificial languages instead of English might seem intellectually appealing but would set them up for a life of difficulty.
If I never seen a qwerty keyboard before and only used dvorak, I could probably type with it, it would only be a bit slower than usual. Same when I see someone with a dvorak keyboard. Although the layout is very different, I could still use it, but it slows me down a lot.
However, if someone only speaks/understands Esperanto meets someone who only speaks English, it will be way harder for them to understand each other, harder than trying to understand another keyboard layout.
I get that using a Dvorak keyboard isn't a total barrier to communication but it is non-standard in our society and so possible advantages would be outweighed by the children having to adjust when they encounter the world at large.
I first learned QWERTY without any training, I needed to type for school and I wasn’t gonna hunt and peck. Then I decided to try out Dvorak for comfort and never looked back. (Though the experience was painful to switch over after years of QWERTY)
I can still type QWERTY, in fact that’s what I use on my tablet with my thumbs, it’s a great layout for thumb typing, rarely do I find my fingers reaching over one another and I can type without looking at my screen.
That said, for physical tacticile button pressing, I much prefer Dvorak, even without labels (typing on a MacBook keyboard for example, I ignore the QWERTY printed layout) I don’t have difficulty. It’s all about the physical sensation and which mode or language or whatever gets invoked in my head.
I cannot type QWERTY effectively on MacBook keyboards or on most mechanical ones now, because of how they feel and what I use that feel for. But if it’s a cheapo Logitech or dell keyboard that you find at public locations and at work, there is barely a moment of conflict.
It's not about speed, at least for me, but reducing stress on fingers and prevent inflammation and RSI.
Touch-typing comes easier with Dvorak. Even better if you use a Dvorak layout on a querty keyboard: there's no point in looking at the keys and this is also good for back/neck posture.
Please ignore all the people who insist on using qwerty without having had at least a year of Dvorak use experience.
> I wouldn’t actively try to teach them anything, but let them learn on their own.
Not to dole out parenting advice, but not influencing your kid concerning a fundamental skill like typing is 1) a mistake, & 2) unavoidable once they start asking questions.
Off-topic: I'm kinda worried our kids might not know or use pens correctly if we keep pushing keyboard use.
Whatever age you are, it will be hard. It will be very uncomfortable at first. But that's kind of great. You get to teach your brain something new. Keep pushing that neuroplasticity.
When you are old(er) it's really hard to learn something truly new. Learning most things is just connecting a few existing patterns. You'll get some dopamine and you will be really proud that you've done that.
You can also rationalize that it will pay off on the long run, but let's be real, if you are an advanced programmer you likely spend more time thinking than typing. It can be a more pleasurable experience to type though.
Take the challenge and teach yourself Dvorak (or Colemak, doesn't matter). Even if you are a proficient typer it's also a chance to do some refactoring of the skill.
When your children go to school, do you think using Dvorak will make it easier or harder to use school computers?