Why You Should Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout
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This reminds me of when I tried to switch to a Dvorak
keyboard. The trouble was, I don't use one computer. I
use all kinds of computers. I use other people's
computers. I use three computers fairly regularly at
home and three at work. I use computers in the test lab
at work. The trouble with customizing your environment
is that it just doesn't propagate, so it's not even
worth the trouble.
Which is my experience too. Dvorak would need to be at least 2-3 times faster than Qwerty to outweigh the disadvantages, a "possibly 10% faster" doesn't cut it.
If I need to use an unfamiliar computer, I can revert to hunt-and-peck Qwerty.
If I use that computer so often that hunt-and-peck significantly slows me down, I can afford to spend two minutes to switch the keymap to Dvorak.
[FWIW: I use Dvorak to prevent repetitive strain injury. "Time saving" is hardly an issue.]
I use Dvorak to prevent repetitive strain injury.
And even if there are studies, I suspect it will probably depend on the individual as well, as do a lot of health-issues.
* I used to have RSI badly.
* I read stuff on the internet about RSI.
* One of the suggestions was to use Dvorak.
* I started using Dvorak.
* I took some other mitigating actions like getting a
different chair, tilting my keyboard back
and taking more
typing breaks.
* I noted that touch typing Dvorak was much more
comfortable than touch tying Qwerty.
* I haven't had RSI for ten years.
Typing feels more natural and I can notice a huge difference to typing with qwerty (which I can still almost touch type).
Again, I can't really say anything definite about the cause and effect but I can recommend giving a better keyboard layout a try.
It's sometimes fun, though. I wrote this using dvorak.
* Most speed gains come from hunt-and-peck QWERTY typists learning true touch typing for the first time. If your first formal typing classes were in, say, high school, you never really un-learned your wretched habits. (On typists who were trained correctly from day one, QWERTY has always been just as fast as alternative layouts, hence its market success.)
* I find Dvorak really is vastly more comfortable. I have RSI problems. The working day is a constant battle against pain and fatigue. I can type longer without fatigue using Dvorak than QWERTY.
* The "switching" problem is real. It only took me about three days to learn Dvorak well enough to regain my original QWERTY typing speed. It took almost two years to be able to switch between Dvorak and QWERTY at will, without resorting to hunt and peck. These days, I can could easily switch mid-sentence.
* The keyboard shortcuts problem is pretty much bullshit. I found that my muscle memory moved with the letters. One-handed ctrl X/C/V only mattered when I was typing with the wrong hand. (e.g. typing on the left side of the keyboard with my right hand.) I can even use keyboard shortcuts correctly when switching between QWERTY/Dvorak.
1. It is not a standard ... I work on lots of workstations, including machines I do not own. Context switching between Dvorak and Qwerty is hard for me
2. It is optimized for English ... I also do lots of typing in my native language too, and there is a Dvorak layout optimized for my native language, but it has differences ... and context-switching is even harder because of the similarities.
In contrast, the Qwerty layout for my native language just replaces 5 symbol keys near Enter/Backspace with the needed diacritics. All other keys stay the same ... i.e. it's just an extension of the US layout.
3. Qwerty gives me plenty of confort. I'm only doing something like 80 WPM ... I don't need more than that and it's a confortable speed for my hands (if I'm going to get RSI from that, then Dvorak wouldn't be much of an improvement)
Any (remotely modern) workstation supports Dvorak. If you type for any substatial length of time, switching from Qwerty and back again when you're done will not be a time sink.
NB: This is not a reason to use Dvorak. It's just a counter to your argument that 1. is a reason not to use Dvorak!
The other replied "you are a programmer, you're supposed to spend 90% of the time thinking about what you do, why do you try to slightly improve the 10% spent writing it"?
Do dvorak users out there find themselves much more productive at the end of the day because of their typing speed?
Item 4 is why I use Dvorak.
"Dvorak is more comfortable and better for your health."
I changed to Dvorak to eliminate repetitive strain injury. I haven't spent a moment regretting it.
I narrowed it down to 2 causes:
1: My car has a manual transmission, and all that gear changing in my commute irritates the nerves.
2: Mousing. I spend a lot of time using the mouse to move all those damned windows around. I switched to using my left hand for the mouse. Now the only times my right wrist hurts are driving for extended periods in slow traffic, or using the touchpad on my laptop a lot (I still use my right hand by habit).
Switching to Dvorak might be the most obvious way to reduce RSI, but I don't think it is the one best thing you can do.
Another thing I'm doing to combat #2 above is trying to get as much of my programming done in Emacs as possible. I also have, "learn a decent window manager" on my list of things to do.
Once I can do all programming & code browsing/navigation in Emacs, and also use the keyboard to manage my windows... maybe Dvorak would help me.
When I was a heavy Emacs user, my left hand outer-side wrist is in constant pain because of always reaching the Control button.
With Caps Lock as control, and using the Alt key closest to the spacebar as Meta, the key-chords in Emacs are comfortable for me (I just spread out my left hand a little over home-row and I can reach them all w/o moving my hand).
I was a vim user long ago (I learned to program in vim) and constantly hitting esc bothered me more than Emacs Ctrl key gymnastics.
Writing code is not like taking dictation or even writing prose. In a split-second I can think up a sentence, one that's likely "good enough" to convey whatever point I'm trying to make. Further, there is almost no divergence between thinking of a sentence and its eventual form.
Perhaps I am dull-witted, but very often a split-second isn't sufficient to think about what function I need to write, much less also figure out what the implementation should be. I have to think far more deeply about what code I need to write, to the point that the time spent touching the keys is minimal; the situation becomes even more negligible the more terse the language. In terms of character length, an office secretary would be able to bang out a clojure library in a few minutes, one that took weeks to actually write.
P.S. I timed writing the above. 90% of the time was spent on thinking, editing, etc.; only 10% of the time accounted for actually banging out words.
I haven't seen significant increase in typing speed, but there could be ergonomic benefit from having to twist my hands less to hit the awkwardly placed keys.
Despite being happy with dvorak, I see no real reason to evangelize a keyboard layout. It's simply not that big a deal.
Edit: Technically, they're Command-Z,C,V on a Mac.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/18/210216
Is there something wrong with that article/research?
I tried learning Dvorak, but at the end of the day I've been using QWERTY for over 25 years, and I can type more than fast enough.
Besides, lots of people use other layouts anyway due to language differences requiring extra keys for letters. I do want to kill the person who decided that Shift-7 was a good place for the forward slash in most of those layouts, though!
If anybody has a strong, data-based counter-argument in favor of Dvorak, I'd like to hear it.
A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure [edit: does or] does not exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the inferiority [edit: or superiority] of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.
You should be aware the the Dvorak vs Qwerty debate is politically charged. If it turned out that Dvorak were superior, this would be evidence for market failure.
A lot of people want to demonstrate that market failure does exist, hence there are many more attempts to show the superiority of Dvorak than you would expect to see in a politically neutral context.
Disclaimer: I'm very happy with Dvorak, since it feels more comfortable to me than Qwerty and I have no doubt it helped me recover from repetitive strain injury. Other than that, I have no horse in this race.
Edit: also, why is tome (grandparent) being downvoted? He makes a good point.
I don't understand why anyone would see this as something that can never happened. The market is made up of people and people are often going to be ignorant about the details of what they're buying. Often they choose purchase price above all even though total cost of ownership is a lot more expensive for the "cheap" product. Then you have to add market hype, incorrect perception, on and on.
I don't believe in market failures, and I think Dvorak is superior and have been using it for a few years.
This doesn't contradict what you said, though, because, whether or not it would be a market failure, these people you mention certainly think it would be.
The article doesn't appear to mention typing distance or effort. Your fingers will move twice the distance in Qwerty than they would in Dvorak or Colemak. The home row is used twice as much in Qwerty, and whilst Dvorak and Colemak favour the right hand, Qwerty favours the left.
I shift between Qwerty and Dvorak keyboards regularly, and Dvorak is noticeably easier on the tendons.
Luckily, I am blessed with self-doubt, and was able to say to myself "Hey, self, stop being an idiot!", and switched back to QWERTY.
To answer some of the questions in the comments
1) My peak speed for the Dvorak was at 100wpm compared to around 70wpm in QWERTY (I am intentionally slowing my typing speed now)
2) It took me 4 months to convert and get back to the speed I got using QWERTY. During that period, I switched between QWERTY and DVORAK a lot. The program DVAssist made it easy to switch it using a simple function key
3) For those who have problems using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, you can use Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins respectively. I find it much easier
4) If you need to use Dvorak on another computer, I have created an on the fly javascript program to do that on http://www.electronizer.com/dvorak.html (Note : It only works on IE)
I personally find the Dvorak keyboard more comfortable to type with. I have an RSI problem which I thought was due to the QWERTY, however, after getting to my peak speed in Dvorak, the problem started coming back, thus I am actually trying to slow my speed (I am contemplating being a 2 finger typist instead).
I reckon the problem with RSI and keyboard is not due to the keyboard layout, but more in the positioning of the keyboard when typing. To elaborate, I noticed people tend to centre their keyboards and align it to their body, this has the problem where the right hand has to over extend to type because of the numeric keypad placed on the right side of the keyboard. Couple this with the fact that the mouse is on the right hand side on most people's keyboard, this makes the right hand move more. An observation I noted was that people tend to move the wrist and not the entire hand.
To combat RSI, I have adopted the following
1) Align the keyboard "G" to align with the centre of my body (or the centreline as Wing Chun practitioner calls it). This enables both hands to extend to the same length.
2) Move the elbow and less of the wrist (whole forearm movement, another of Wing Chun's principle of using the whole arm)
3) Use the mouse with the left hand (easier done for me as I am a left hander) and the number pad with the right hand
My motivation for switching to Dvorak was to combat RSI and to prove that I can change a habit of 20 years.
If you are a 2 finger typist, I don't recommend switching to Dvorak. If you are switching for RSI, my experience is that it doesn't work. If you switch to Dvorak, you might miss out on a cool technology for mobile phones called Swype. Unless of course they have Dvorak support in the future.
1. It changes fewer keys so it's fas easier to learn. I picked it up in a few hours.
2. It changes fewer keys so I switch between Colemak and Qwerty regularly.
3. It was designed after computers were invented. It keeps programming code in mind. It also used computers to design the optimal layout to maximize "finger-rolls" (really fast typing).
And I doubt there is a better layout for programming than programmers dvorak.
While I certainly can remap some keys in Vim, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea in the long run. Some keys, such as h,j,k and l are no-brainers - those should be remapped. But what about w, b and e? When I'm using those keys it's all muscle memory, but should I really change w to y (word to yank)?
Do I want to spend my time learning a new keyboard layout AND relearning how to use Vim? Ultimately I've decided that Qwerty is good enough for me. I don't have RSI and I can type at a max speed of over 90 wpm (I probably average in the 70s for "real world" typing).
Some keys, such as h,j,k and l are no-brainers - those should be remapped.
Not really. J and K remain side-by-side if you switch. H and L is also largely the same: instead of reaching over for H on QWERTY, you reach up for L on Dvorak; the left-to-right order of H and L is still correct, too. It even unintentionally falls into the Dvorak Way, since up/down is under the left hand, while left/right is under the right.
The main reason i switched to dvorak was that i wanted a typematrix keyboard and if i was relearning where the enter key etc is, i could as well switch to dvorak.
It took about three months to be as fast as qwerty.
It's only with the introduction of the iPad that you can even type with all your fingers anyway, and even then only in perfect conditions. Dvorak makes as little sense as Qwerty for one finger pecking on a tiny phone, it's just that people are used to using Qwerty in situations when it's non-optimal (i.e. anything but mechanical typewriters that are susceptible to bar jams if two nearby keys are hit quickly in succession).
Where's the one handed Dvorak keyboard for Android, or a chording keyboard that uses multitouch? I don't want Dvorak, I want the same kind of ingenuity and applied science as Dvorak used to create new solutions.
http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
Was anyone able to find an online copy of the studies from Western Electric or Oregon State University that the article referenced?
If Dvorak really makes travel time for your fingers shorter, wouldn't that also make it harder for a predictive systems to cope with human's error?
(This is not a rhetorical or provocative question, but a serious question.)
I see no reason that shorter travel time would impact it though.
To each their own, though.
"What's the avg. switch time?"
When can I get back to my speed of QWERTY, 3 days, 1 month?
Initially my Qwerty skill dropped way off, but two months later I was able to switch between the two formats with little effort.
Give me a dvorak, but favored for left-handed typers, and I could see it improving my speed. Until then, I can break easily 120wpm in qwerty--I'm not too concerned.