The Origin of QWERTY | Hacker News Reader

The Origin of QWERTY

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90 pointsfauria32 comments

What is interesting to me is that when adapting the keyboard to other languages, they often didn't attempt to change the layout for the keys used most in those languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#International_variants I guess this makes sense in terms of international standardization, but it also to me seems to be a good argument for "no one thought this through very hard before adapting it."

On a german keyboard Z and Y are switched, and all the punctuation character are all wrong. So much better to program with a US keyboard than a german one!

Haha, that does sound deeply annoying. But makes sense given German words. I really don't know which is better, to standardize or personalize...

It's kinda like adjusting the seat position in a car. If you could have each individual user's preferences saved somewhere and applied to every car/computer when you sit down to use it, then personalization wins.

Similarly some punctuation is moved on a Spanish keyboard, but often in Venezuela and Chile I ended up using an American keyboard with Spanish layout so I had to just know which keys were which because the letters printed on them were wrong. Fortunately at that time I was not doing a lot of programming because it was annoying.

Most cyrillic-writing countries have both a "typewriter" and "phonetic" keyboard variants. The typewriter one is a direct translation from the layout used on typewriters, which usually is well thought out. The phonetic one just assigns keys to their phonetic latin equivalents or when there's no equivalent, to a letter that kind of looks like it, or is just free. Since cyrillic has more letters than latin, you lose the `, [, and ] keys (at least in Bulgarian phonetic). All keyboards sold here have two letters on each key - one for the US layout and one for the typewriter layout. And still the majority of people prefer to just use the phonetic layout simply because it works with their existing muscle memory. For a while the most popular Windows 95 and XP program was FlexType - it let you type cyrillic letters using the phonetic layout back when Windows only had the typewriter layout available.

> Most cyrillic-writing countries have both a "typewriter" and "phonetic" keyboard variants.

No, only Bulgaria uses the (insane, IMO) 'phonetic cyrillic qwerty' keyboard layout.

Pretty interesting history, and a compelling theory. Although, I don't think we'll see the end of articles like these until someone digs up a direct reference. Here's a direct reference from 1875:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.goog...

Amazing what's online these days. Unfortunately Sholes doesn't explain the origin of QWERTY in that patent. Does any? How about a copy of Scientific American at the time, or other publications, books, or journals that now may be scanned and online?

The theory mentioned here is that QWERTY was influenced by telegraph and morse code. It's from this paper:

http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQ...

I don't see a direct reference there either.

I use QFMLWY which according to http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization is even better than Dvorak and Colemak. It helped me greatly reduce my wrist pain. Once you get used to it, you immediately feel how it requires much less effort than QWERTY. Drawbacks are that it replaces nearly all keys so takes some getting used to. I went cold turkey (ie. simply stopped using QWERTY) and it took me about a month. Another drawback is that I'm now slow to type on QWERTY and others can't use my computer unless they change the keyboard layout. So it's not suited very well for when you do a lot of pair programming, for example. I'm really happy with it though, since I mostly work on my own. If anyone wants to get started, I can send you instructions for how to configure each OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) for that layout.

I love how the last line of your reply reads like an advertisement from the 1800s: 'for useful information on configuration of this amazing keyboard layout for each OS (Windows, Mac, and Linux), reply by mail.'

That being said, Linux please.

There you go: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xipilk620vvmd7x/AAAzukU8JoZRARZ0T... :) I used it on Ubuntu

Some years ago I did the same and just learned Dvorak. But programming in C/C++ with it was really annoying, so I eventually went back.

I always wanted to make my own mixed typing+coding layout, but I never got around to it.

A long time ago, I ran an amateur experiment that applied an evolutionary algorithm to the problem of keyboard layout, using a simple function of finger motion across a corpus of English language text and source code. The best-performing evolved layouts all had the common vowels on the home row's left side and the common consonants on its right side. So I stuck with Dvorak for my own use, since it's easily available everywhere.

Hi! Why did you take it down?

http://www.klausler.com/evolved.html

I wrote about it in 2002

http://lumma.org/microwave/#2002.07.09

(I learned QWERTY in 1991, switched to Dvorak in 2001, and never looked back. Which is good because switching cold-turkey caused extinction of my QWERTY ability.)

I use Dvorak because default installations of most OSes carry it, including Linux, Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Android. I realize there are potentially better alternatives but it would then become a pain if you have to use someone else's machine.

I'm curious about using dvorak on smartphones, isn't QWERTY is more suitable for use on smartphones due to larger distance between most used characters? dvorak tends to clump them and would make more chance to mistake on smartphones, doesn't it? (i used qwerty and dvorak before on android, now using MessageEase fulltime and dvorak on computers)

I think the distance makes little difference on phones especially with 5-inch and larger screens where it's reasonably easy to peck accurately.

What's most important is that the phone layout matches what you use most frequently on computers. If you use Dvorak all the time on computers it's a lot more convenient for your memory if your phone layout matches that as well.

I would disagree. When typing Danish on a phone I started realizing how many different words differs by a single neighboring keystroke on qwerty in Danish and how this is actually a big cause of typos.

Qwerty really does shine on a smartphone, for English.

But that's because you can also touch-type in QWERTY, correct? For someone like me who only learned Dvorak and never learned QWERTY to begin with, it's a chore to hunt for all the letters.

If you're interested in exploring alternative layouts, I have some references here: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/keyboa...

I recently switched to the programmer dvorak keyboard layout and haven't looked back since. I switched in December and purchased keyboard stickers from Amazon (http://amzn.com/B00IPGZC54). I also practiced on Keybr (http://www.keybr.com/) for about 2 hours a day until I had practiced 20 hours. Luckily I was on vacation so I didn't have to worry about how I would work. After my initial 20 hours of training I had already reached 30 words per minute which was suitable for getting back to work. I now type at a blistering 70 words per minute compared to the 50 words per minute I would reach on qwerty. In my personal opinion though, most of the speed comes from the practice I have done on Keybr rather than the switch in keyboard layout.

I always read glowing reports from switching to Dvorak, so here's my experience:

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard about 5 years ago. Previously, I typed 110 WPM on QWERTY, and while learning Dvorak my WPM rose quickly from 10 to 70 WPM, but remained there. I now type at about 80 WPM, but even with practice I have not been able to regain my previous speed. I can switch to Qwerty, but my WPM has gone down too -- it's about 80 WPM now.

I realized that I had been achieving 110 WPM because I had unconventional hand positions (I never learned to type "correctly", so it just developed). Learning and staying with the "correct" hand positions brought down my WPM. Previously, my hands flew around the keyboard, but now they're mostly stationary on the home row. The positive outcome of this is that I can now use non-traditional keyboards such as the Kinesis, where I cannot move my hands around while typing.

I don't regret going to Dvorak because of the great comfort it brings to my tired hands, but I do miss the speed from time to time.

Is there really a need for blistering-fast WPM? Outside of transcribing/typing up documents (and how many people really do that anymore?) is there any real point to it?

I don't know that I manage more than a sentence a minute - the limiting factor there isn't my typing speed, it's thinking through and editing what I'm going to say. Programming, it's probably on the order of 10-15 characters a line, and unless I'm doing mindless boilerplate, that line takes a minute or two to think through.

My experience is pretty similar to yours and copperx's. I'm no faster or slower but my hands have felt a ton better and I haven't had hardly any RSI issues since. Been typing in dvorak for about 15 years now. It was pretty painful for two weeks but I'm glad I switched.

Are you sure you've been using a good form? You should easily be able to get over 50WPM on qwerty if you use a reasonable form and have been doing it for a while. Taking a keyboarding class as an elective in high school brought me from maybe 50 or 60 to 120. I didn't follow the part about keeping your fingers over the home row at all times though - they'll generally hover in the middle of typing when not hitting a key.

I didn't much pay attention to form when I was using qwerty. When I started to learn a whole new layout I decided to do it right. I reckon that is the cause of most of my additional speed.

Your situation seems familiar to mine. I was never a comfortable typer using QWERTY, I would resort to hunt-and-peck after any hesitation or typo. I bought into the hype that DVORAK was more ergonomic and faster, so I gave it a try. I don't know if any of that is actually true nor does it really matter. The end result is that I am comfortable with DVORAK and I no reason to switch back. I can still type in QWERTY just as well (read: poorly) as I did before and I still use QWERTY for my mobile devices (sans physical keyboard).

I bought the stickers for my home only because if I left the layout in DVORAK (as I usually do), then my wife wouldn't be able to login. Or, at least, that was true when I made the switch. Now most lock screens have an easy way to switch layouts.

At work and with my personal laptop (that isn't shared), I do not use the stickers because it prevents me from looking at the keyboard. Plus, when I do look down and see the stickers, I see white-letters and blue-letters. It makes it more confusing which key I am about to press. I end up mixing up words between DVORAK and QWERTY regardless of layout.

My layout of choice is colemak. I used to have quite a bit of pain in my wrist and between my left ring and middle finger when using QWERTY. I gave up and switched cold-turkey to colemak ~7 years ago and haven't looked back since. Also, it is available almost on every system I use - PKL for windows, `setxkbmap us -variant colemak` on GNU/Linux. It is an excellent layout and if you have a slow month or two (like I did in my final year of college), try an alt layout. It is definitely worth it - speed is the last thing a programmer needs to worry about while typing if one can go > 50wpm.

Another Colemak user!

I had switched from QWERTY to Dvorak but it never felt quite "right" and my WPM had decreased from 130wpm~ to 110wpm~. After about 6 months of being comfortable with Dvorak I made the switch to Colemak - much better. After becoming accustomed, I type at 150wpm~ comfortably and also keep that speed on QWERTY layouts which I still use at work.

The largest benefit of re-learning how to type on a new keyboard is it can make you aware of bad habits you had before and you can unlearn them.

Increasing WPM wasn't necessarily my goal - as I was focused more on the comfort of typing. I don't necessarily attribute the comfort to Colemak, I think it is closer to "learning how to type properly leads to comfort".

I highly recommend learning Colemak or even Dvorak - then switching back to QWERTY before making a final judgement. I don't think Dvorak is in any way superior to QWERTY, in fact, I think it is worse. Few people know how to type properly [0] and I think they find Dvorak to be better only because learning a new keyboard allows them to relearn how to type, break existing bad habits, and focus more on their ability to type leading to improvements in their typing. They then attribute their improvements to Dvorak rather than them learning how to type.

Dvorak "for programmers" being an exception as it was designed around programming and makes sense for such purposes.

[0] I consider "typing properly" to be 120+wpm with errors being uncommon. The average being 40-60wpm tells me that most people simply never learned how to type. (Should go without saying, but my "120+wpm is proper" doesn't include those with disabilities that affect their ability to type.)

I, too, switched to colemak in my final year of graduate school, because I had bad form in Qwerty and a worrying amount of pain in my wrist. I've been very glad that I switched.

I find that while I love the variation of keyboard layouts and keyboard types, what really slows me down in the composition. I'm trying to say that for me the real bottleneck is having something to say rather the speed of getting it out.

I'm using NEO2, which is pretty solidly researched

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