I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that
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I agree that switching is a pain in the ass. It will make you essentially unable to type for about 2-4 weeks.
Ctrl-C/V/X is a valid concern. I fixed it by mapping mouse buttons to copy/paste, and also getting an Advantage2 Kinesis into which I've programming custom keybinding for Undo/Redo/Copy/Cut/Paste.
I can still touch type qwerty and often do at work on co-workers' keyboards. I'm pretty slow though, about 40wpm (100 on dvorak), and I usually have to look at the keyboard.
I also use qwerty on my phone - I tried dvorak and also found it to be a hindrance there. That makes sense, since dvorak is designed specifically for ten-fingered typing.
The primary benefit that the author of this post completely overlooked is comfort. It just feels... easy and comfortable, in a way that Qwerty doesn't even come close to. Whenever I am forced to type Qwerty I feel like I am doing finger calisthenics. It's tiring. My wrists never hurt after full days of typing, and I'm hopeful that the reduced motion and strain will help me avoid carpal tunnel or other hand/finger issues.
I plan to spend my entire career and much of my free time in front of a computer. Why on earth would I subject myself to anything less than the best interface system possible? That would be like a professional chef using the $20 knife block from the grocery store, or your doctor using WebMD to try and diagnose you.
I spent 10 years in Dvorak, Colemak and a variety of modified Colemak layouts before settling back on qwerty. I never noticed much difference in typing speed between it and dvorak (~104wpm) and I am still without RSI.
Using vim with dvorak is a real pain.
That is not my experience, at all.
Then again, I don't use Vim like notepad with "hjkl" instead of arrow keys... All the powerful movement and editing commands (b, w, $, 0, /foo, *, #, %, cw, dd, ^], ^t, cib, ., etc.) work just as well with dvorak as with qwerty.
It happens that "J" and "K" are next to each other and easily reachable, and that "H" and "L" still are 2 columns away and "h" is on the left, so using them in their new position it's not that bad.
I have never been that much faster on Dvorak because I keep stopping to think. Keyboard can't help that.
Beyond all that, Dvorak just feels good to use.
Although phones & other qwerty biased situations are a pain, I still think Dvorak was worth it.
I couldn't touch type QWERTY, and realized I needed to relearn touch typing from first principles and wasn't going to go through all that effort just to relearn QWERTY.
> Beyond all that, Dvorak just feels good to use.
I mention this a lot. Even if the extra efficiencies touted by Dvorak and Colemak are marginal at best (and the evidence goes both ways), the interesting part is that they still feel better / more "fun" to type. There are some words with interesting rolls in Colemak that are just "fun", as silly of a thing to be excited about as that can be. For instance, "start" in Colemak is two left-handed inward rolls on the homerow, like idly tapping your fingers against a desk.
A big thing that convinced me about Colemak in grad school, and help push me to make the switch, was that the typing tutor had none of that asdf;jkjk nonsense of touch typing in QWERTY, from the first four letters on the home row in the "strong positions", S T N E you are spelling full words and never typing nonsense (tents, Tennessee, …). Touch typing training is never "fun", but it is much easier to force yourself to relearn when it answers "when would I ever use this particular exercise" immediately out of the gate.
The keyboard itself is irrelevant. I'd recommend getting a keyboard without labels to free yourself from the idea that you need to look at them.
All of the time? I don't get this. There's no problem switching between Dvorak and Qwerty if you do it regularly. It's like switching between bicycling and snowboarding.. you just switch the context for your muscle memory. Although you'll probably have a bit higher error rate on the layout you use less
I totally don't get the trend of backlit gaming keyboards. Desktop keyboards aren't supposed to be looked at, period.
[0] Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate
We're talking: Linux workstation at work, company-issued MBP for remote work, my personal OpenBSD laptop, my Windows gaming desktop. The gaming desktop has its own host of issues and might as well be qwerty. And then I'm having to do things on other peoples' workstations constantly (and others mine) and I've only encountered two people in my whole career who use Dvorak.
My point is that typing speed is roughly equivalent and it doesn't reap any benefits with all of the time spend managing workstations and context switching between layouts.
It's not touch typing if you have to look at the keyboard.
> Whenever I am forced to type Qwerty I feel like I am doing finger calisthenics. It's tiring.
Maybe it is generally tiring to use a layout that you're not the most comfortable with.
> I plan to spend my entire career and much of my free time in front of a computer. Why on earth would I subject myself to anything less than the best interface system possible? That would be like a professional chef using the $20 knife block from the grocery store, or your doctor using WebMD to try and diagnose you.
That's an interesting perspective. Have you also made the best choice of interface for your editor, your operating system, your window manager and all the other tools you use on a daily basis? Do you have the best chair, the best desk, the best office environment etc? If not, can you be sure that you aren't a chef with a really good knife block but a dull set of knives, a terrible stove or a slow dishwasher?
Personally, I don't have the resources to research and apply the best choices in every possible area. I find that this is true for a lot of people. The POSIX tools I use on a daily basis certainly aren't ideal, neither is the programming language I currently work with. I still make small, incremental improvements to my workflow that I believe are more significant than a keyboard layout for some small tens of wpm improvement in typing speed.
That said, I rarely spend a whole day typing. Much more of my time is spent considering what to type, a process that is normally only briefly interrupted by bursts of actual typing.
I recommend using this, in my mind a way bigger improvement than just moving to dvorak itself. It's like having vim navigation everywhere, but better.
https://manybutfinite.com/post/home-row-computing/
Same. I type on my laptop pretty much all day, and am not even close to having an RSI. To me using QWERTY just seems irresponsible, like driving without a seatbelt or something. If you don't use a computer that much then I guess that's one thing, but if you actually use one on a daily basis for your job and are using QWERTY then that just seems like a huge and unnecessary risk for both yourself and your employer/startup.
The advantage of the kinesis in my opinion is it being a little more trustworthy off the shelf for my security paranoid industry. Getting a Kickstarter keyboard with an Arduino builtin might scare some folks although I'm not enough of a hardware guru to know if there is anything to actually worry about or not.
I really do wish they made a separable Advantage version. The ErgoDox seems as evidence that there is at least some market for such a thing.
I still miss dvorak, but for me it's not about typing speed as much as "hand movement". On a dvorak, most typing happens on the center row, on the stronger fingers, so I find it much more confortable to type. On a qwerty I feel like I'm constantly streching my hands around the keyboard while on a dvorak it's much more static.
https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html
Not to mention that for programmers it's even more complicated. Most of our symbols we use most of the time (e.g. { } ; -, _) have nothing to do with DVORAK vs QWERTY, and the distribution of most common letters isn't even the same as English (e.g. C and the use of i).
Add OS keyboard shortcuts (and things like Vim and Emacs special keys) to the mix, and it gets even more complicated soon.
Oh, and since this is not 1970 anymore, consider that computer users come from all other the world, and type in their native languages, where QWERTY vs DVORAK means even less.
That said, there are better researched layouts that DVORAK, with actual modern research behind them.
From what I've read the difference between from Qwerty to Dvorak is much bigger than from Dvorak to the more optimized layouts. They add marginal improvements. As you say yourself, no layout can be perfect in every context. So since Dvorak is built in to most OSs these days, it's a very good compromise.
Dvorak isn't meant to be a holy grail, just a nice comfort boost.
For professional programmers I can recommend getting the ErgoDox keyboard to optimize access to special characters.
It has some small advantages to Dvorak as a good "compromise" for programmers in that a lot of the major shortcut keys stay in the same place (the left-hand bunch of AZXCVB, especially), and almost all the punctuation (the big obvious move being ; moves up a key out of the home row).
(I also like that it has a better "wheel of fortune" score than Dvorak, not that it hugely matters, but all but L in RSTLNE are on the home row, and L is in one of the easiest reaches [up on the right, where QWERTY has U]. Not everyone believes that crowd-sourced wisdom of a decades old game show is useful efficiency data, but it's still an amusing thing to take into account.)
How about we solve the much easier problem of "typing much fewer words"?
We don't even have a good auto-complete story yet in most IDEs, even less so a general purpose predictor that puts whole worlds at our disposal as we type.
If auto-complete could reach the point where it was near perfect, then it should probably be able to write entire paragraphs or functions based on context and some minor cues. But that's not going to happen.
Where auto-complete becomes valuable is on limited keyboards, such as phones. Even there (on Android), I find it so sub-par that quite often the variant of the word I want is simply not offered to me until I have typed all but the last character. This is maddening.
swi<TAB>
switch <cursor> {
case <tab location>:
<tab location>
<tab location>
Actually, if I could say “switch on enum X” then have all cases generated, that would be a huge productivity gain.
[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippet...
I use mostly Python, Elixir, and Clojure (my unnaturally desperate love, which I don't use much). For those languages, the syntax is either less verbose (python/clojure) or less predictable (elixir).
If I were doing Java or C/C++, I would probably learn to love templates and expansions.
(Search for autocorrect in Settings and scroll down to hardware keyboard.)
It's interesting to try to use. I type faster than it is useful to me.
Any references? I'm curious.
https://deskthority.net/wiki/Alternative_keyboard_layouts
Also:
* https://www.maltron.com/lillian-malt-papers.html
* https://www.maltron.com/a-keyboard-to-increase-productivity-...
How do you figure? Alternating vowels and consonants is fairly universal.
The same goes for what the most popular 2-grams and 3-grams are, and conversely, the calculated stroke path (or how much do the typist's fingers have to 'travel', independently of the hand alternation rate), the use of the weakest fingers enforced by a given layout, etc.
This likely doesn't nullify all the benefits of Dvorak, or some other English-optimized layouts - but it certainly reduces them, while the adoption cost is still the same.
I made the admittedly-difficult switch to Dvorak and that went away almost immediately. My typing speed is on-par with what it was with QWERTY. I can type out conversational English in real time, and that's about my functional limit. I don't consider that a selling point, but for those of you with wrist pain I can wholeheartedly recommond Dvorak.
What I've found to be most important is to relax. Press the keys smoothly and deliberately, without tensing your fingers and trying to maintain a stiff posture. Use a softer keyboard if you can. Your comfort and speed will go up.
This. I dislike mechanical keyboards largely for this reason. Apple's "modern" laptop keyboards (pre-butterfly) are the best I've ever used. For me, they have the right amount of pressure required and key travel to be able to type very fast (>100wpm) at very low effort.
Using this worries me so much that I'm just planting a ticking time bomb of RSI. I a slight ache every time I use it because you have to hit the keys so hard to ensure they register and the stop is so abrupt as paper thin plastic smacks against the metal.
Previous gen feels so gentle compared to it, and this is coming from someone who likes tactile mech keyboards.
I've heard others similarly complaining that the key travel being too low is like the feeling of running barefoot on a hard surface, and I agree --- on a good keyboard the actuation travel has to be very low to not tire the fingers, and a small tactile bump there is not bad, but the total travel should be relatively long and "bouncy" at the end to cushion the momentum of the fingers.
All rubber-dome keyboards are not alike either; some are stiffer than others, and some have higher actuation travel --- contrary to common advice, you don't have to "bottom out" a rubber dome switch if the inner membrane-actuating protrusion is long and "squishy" enough. Once it touches the membrane the switch actuates, but there's still a cushioning end-stop effect as the protrusion continues to deform.
Typing speed is an overrated fad (and in the worst cases an e-penis length contest) as in most cases when writing stuff (be it fiction, reports, code) your throughput isn't limited by typing speed.
Avoiding injuries on the other hand is invaluable.
Even now, just getting into the thread makes my wrists tingle
This very much depends per switch. For example, Cherry MX Red require far less pressure than Cherry MX Blue. There's also the issue of noise (which is annoying for other people, and allows for a TEMPEST attack).
Optical switches, such as the Wooting (2) require also less travel.
Obviously, a post written in English has no good reason describing a Norwegian-specific alternative to QWERTY, but it still manages to ignore half of the population of English-speaking people by not taking into account using multiple languages on the same keyboard.
I'm slowly losing hope that someone will mention whether there are any accommodations in Dvorak for French accents, how it affects writing German or whether it is worth the effort to learn and switch to Dvorak for English while using the Estonian layout for other purposes.
Do you think it made your life better? Would you recommend it to others, not necessarily using Icelandic? Are you using compose combinations to enter non-English letters (there's 8 [0], a significant number)?
Thank you for speaking up, your experience is so rare I consider it invaluable.
[0] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Icelandic/Alphabet_and_Pronunc...
Some selected examples:
https://www.branah.com/korean https://www.branah.com/japanese https://www.branah.com/greek https://www.branah.com/hindi https://www.branah.com/tagalog https://www.branah.com/tamazight https://www.branah.com/sundanese https://www.branah.com/tibetan
I am not a speaker of many of the languages above. Thus, I think it would be great if native speakers share their input on the issues and what the optimal keyboard would look like in their mind.
In general, we are trying to shoehorn a language to an existing keyboard design and layout, that was designed for a totally different purpose and times. Perhaps, it is time we redesign the whole concept.
My understanding is that Japanese is usually typed with an IME, and not a kana keyboard. I press exactly the same keys on my keyboard to get "taiko" or "太鼓" -- and I find Dvorak easier. (Japanese is even better about alternating vowels and consonants than English!) Kotoeri supports Dvorak just fine, and I assume other IMEs do, too.
[1] bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil
I took the time to learn Dvorak (years ago), and I found it very much nicer for typing prose. However, I couldn't code with it (and I didn't try a code-focused version). Perhaps I should have tried different Dvorak variations to find one that was still better than QWERTY for writing while also being usable for coding.
I also tried a chorded keyboard (the BAT). With only a little practice I got to 60+ WPM (which isn't bad considering it's a one hand keyboard)... but it was just too laborious to code with since modifier keys and symbols took so much extra effort.
I'm still waiting for a neural interface... although if you give me a neural typing interface, then I'll want a neural visual interface so I'm not limited by monitors.
As an aside, why why why do people use the international keyboard layout? There is no possible way that it is more efficient given that two of the most used keys - left shift and (right) return are reduced in size and pushed further out of reach from home position. Worse yet, their lost space is taken by less frequently used keys. I cannot fathom why that design has remained popular outside the US.
Like you said, you'd prefer to keep the keys you need close to the home row. So when a language has extra letters (compared to English), you preferably put those letters in the three letter rows, and carve them space as needed.
That's like saying "why do characters outside standard English exist?". I honestly don't understand what you're complaining about. People use international keyboard layouts because they want to write another language than English.
To hit return requires actually moving the right hand to reach return. How often is that tilda needed? That is a poor trade.
Moving the shift key away is even worse, because it's a modifier key. Now you cannot press shift with your left pinky finger while also reaching several of the left hand keys.
That is actually the original IBM PC XT layout from 1981: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_Model_F_XT.png
Then in 1984 USA moved to their own layout with the PC AT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_Model_F_AT.png
But the rest of the world stayed with the original.
That tilda is needed every time I need to access my home directory on Linux, and the backslash key is also a pipe key when you press shift - so I can use a pipe in command line using a single hand.
I actually come from a country with US keyboard by-default. Now, whenever possible - I switch to UK layout even on MacBooks. UK layout is actually wonderful for development.
I can obviously see though why one can ask why is it this way.
Every single command you type ends with return. Unless you are typing long paragraphs in a word processor with line wrapping, you will be hitting return once every 80 characters or less on average (much less in the case of commands). Do you really need to reference a unix home directory once every 80 characters you type?
I do care about their placement, however - since that's where my fingers are physically limited.
Also, being used to it, I find a large Enter key more convenient than a wide one.
Unless you are doing something really "interesting", you should be hitting return with your right pinky finger. And assuming your other fingers are on the home row, your pinky finger has an easier reach to the US return key (on the left edge) than it would the international return key on the row above.
Now, if you suggested expanding the return key to exist where the { key does, then I could agree that it was an improvement. { is immediately accessible to a right pinky finger, and arguably { is less often needed than return - even in programming.
This doesn't make much sense for the UK keyboard layout, where I agree that the US layout is a bit better from a common use perspective. It makes more sense when you start looking at other variations of the international layout, though. Live in the Baltics? You're going to use the Nordic layout that has several of the most commonly-used letters with diacritical marks. The physical layout (number of keys, position of keys, etc.) are all still the same, so not only is it easier to manufacture but all a touch-typist needs to do is alter the software layout to be able to use any keyboard they happen to stumble upon.
speaking as someone who switched from DE_DE to US_INT_W_DEAD_KEYS it was to actually programming easier.
i did not need special german keys (äöüß) often while coding so having programming relevant `[]{}'\"|` at their expense, while still being able to access language specific symbols via dead keys, was preferable.
international layout also gives me the ability to type specific other-language symbols like `Øçµ` or special typography like `…‽¿` way easier compared to german
For people who need more modifiers and accents, my experience is less relevant.
Actually, that's how the return key originally was on the PC/XT model F keyboard, except that it was only 1 unit wide on both rows. It actually changed in the opposite direction with the PC/AT, and largely only on the U.S. variants if memory serves. The non-U.S. variants retain the PC/XT's original double-row return key, and make it wider (and make the keys next to it narrower, down to 1 unit).
Which keys are these in my international layout and how often do I use them?
Just trying out a single sentence in QWERTY now the difference is stark to me. My fingers move so much. With Dvorak I find there is much much less finger movement.
It’s not painless, but I’d recommend it to anyone who types for 8+ hrs a day. It’s not a small optimizations imo.
I think the most relevant thing is that it might actually be worse for programming, both from the symbols and from qwerty-optimized hotkeys.
I use vim with most of the regular bindings which is designed as a combination of mnemonics (which are still fine) and qwerty layout (which obviously just end up in a random spot, though j and k happen to still be together but not in the home row).
* all keys are equally easy to reach when you hover your finger 10cm above the keyboard while searching for a key
* you are moving fingers, hands and arms much more and with much more variety than when touch-typing, the risk of repetitive strain injuries is therefore lower
* you are typing much, much slower. Switching to dvorak is like buying an expensive pair of hiking boots for your daily 1 minute walk to the kiosk.
Last but not least, I know much more people who use a dvorak-like layout (as do I) - they adapt it to their needs (e.g.: as a lisp programmer I don't care about curly or square brackets, when I have to hack on other languages, I adapt my layout to make required special characters more easily accessible)
I mean... that is what touch typing is and you can do it on a qwerty keyboard as well.
I find it fascinating that people change their keyboard layouts frequently.
For me, there seems to be plenty of mental complexity to contend with that adding n > 1 keyboard interfaces would overload my ability to work efficiently.
I’m also worried about having to set up something complex just to get to work.
What are your thoughts? I’m just curious how you think about these issues
Me too. I have trouble just switching between Mac layout and others.
Dvorak only rearranges the main layer. NEO introduces a bunch of useful ones.
Adopting an ergonomic keyboard layout doesn’t typically make you a faster typist, but it makes typing more pleasant.
Because Neo repurposes CAPS LOCK it is adviseable to have a ISO keyboard with 105 keys and not a ANSI keyboard without the second CAPS LOCK key. But I've also used Neo with ANSI keyboards in the past...
* Occasionally coworkers or friends will need to type on my keyboards and I grew tired of having to switch back and forth.
* Similarly, using someone else's computer would require me to type QWERTY anyway.
* I've been trying to reduce the amount of custom configuration I have to maintain and backup to the bare minimum.
* It didn't make a difference for me ergonomically. Typing for a long time still took a toll. I saw a much better improvement simply by occasionally changing my sitting position.
They already complain about me using a 60% board, so I can't imagine putting them through dvorak if they just quickly want to type something. :)
But also, I don't see a great advantage to dvorak. I type about 150WPM on qwerty / azerty and mainly use my keyboard (no mouse) so health concerns are taken care off by having a smaller board and no mouse usage. When I do use the mouse, I also have an ergonomic one.
So yeah.. I don't see the great upside but see potential downsides at work :)
You're a programmer, not a court reporter. You don't need +200 WPM. You need to think before/during/after writing each one of the characters you type. And more often than not, you actually spend +5min of 20 lines of code, so your +200 WPM ability doesn't matter at all.
There are also other ways I think faster typing speed can transform the way computers are used, for example being more comfortable in the cli, being more willing to write small simple throw-away code snippets, less reliance on tools like autocorrect and autocomplete, which in turn can give more freedom to experiment with more niche tools, and so on.
Typing is a cost, a waste. After spending an hour thinking, I don't want to be stalled out by delays typing. I need to rewrite my code several times to get that clean bugfree 100 lines for the day. I want to write documentation, not just code. I need to write emails and chats too.
Just like I spend 22hours a day not commuting but still want my commute to be twice as fast
Also I admit I'm not really thinking before each one of the characters I type. It's not uncommon for my thoughts to be forming in my head at a pace more or less consistent with my typing, or even exceeding it, especially as it's not necessarily coding, but eg. code reviews, comments and clarifications in tickets etc. I will go back and review what I wrote of course, but it still feels more convenient if I'm able to lay it out quickly to begin with. And all the saved time adds up, at the end of the day.
And I'm not an exception either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing#Hybrid
"The number of fingers does not determine typing speed... People using self-taught typing strategies were found to be as fast as trained typists... instead of the number of fingers, there are other factors that predict typing speed... fast typists... keep their hands fixed on one position, instead of moving them over the keyboard, and more consistently use the same finger to type a certain letter."
Would it be great to be able to type 100+ wpm? Sure. But if I have to dedicate all that time and effort, I'd much rather spend it on something else. Like learning a new technology or taking time off to pursue other interests. Besides, the amount of time I spend typing is a fraction of the amount of time I spend thinking. I honestly doubt that my 60+ wpm has held me back in any significant way.
I type 120 at max speed and I think that if I were to suddenly start typing more slowly tomorrow due to a freak thumb accident it would be a significant impediment to my ability to get stuff done. Most of what I do is typing on the computer (either coding, writing, or flying around in Emacs and organizing my life with org-mode). I'm a great note-taker in meetings because of my speed and because I can concentrate on the content of what people are saying instead of on the typing, which is fast and accurate without conscious effort. Moreover, slow typing would be extra friction between my brain and the computer, and there needs to be as little latency between these things as possible to get my thoughts and ideas out there unfettered.
Honestly, I think you should invest the time in learning to type properly. Yes, it does make a difference. Learn the finger placements and practice every day. Learn when each hand is appropriate for shift and space and practice it, alternating appropriately. Even minor stuff like that makes you a better typer.
What you mention is indeed the biggest advantage of touch typing: your hands are in a known position relative to the keyboard, so you don't have to look or think to type. How do you keep your hands in a fixed position if you only use 2-3 fingers?
They don't stay in a fixed position. They are constantly moving around the keyboard. I can still do this without having to think or look at the keyboard. I can understand why/how this would slow down my typing speed, but I can still maintain 60-70 wpm despite this.
> it's about comfort
My hands have never felt uncomfortable when they are moving about slightly. Why should they? I can walk for hours and feel totally relaxed - in fact, that actually feels better than standing still for 15 minutes.
Okay, then I don't understand the point of the quote, because it is a counterargument to your style of typing.
> My hands have never felt uncomfortable when they are moving about slightly.
I used to peck, and now I don't, and I used to think that pecking was comfortable, and now I don't. The difference is night and day.
The quote is saying that even if someone pecks, their typing speed isn't necessarily impaired. I'm not claiming to be as advanced as other pecking-typists, but I can still achieve bursts of 80 wpm.
> I used to think that pecking was comfortable, and now I don't. The difference is night and day
My hands feel about as comfortable while typing, as they do while I'm lying down or doing nothing. I don't see how they can possibly feel any more comfortable than that.
Interesting, I'm a fairly fast typist (exact speed varies on test, but I'm in the 80-120 range) who uses mostly my pointer and middle fingers on each hand, and my hands move all over the keyboard as I'm typing, especially my right hand.
Read the Mind-Body Prescription, you might be surprised at what you learn. RSI is not something we should be afraid of in this day and age, with everything we know about the human organism.
In this acclaimed volume, Dr. Sarno reveals how many painful conditions-including most neck and back pain, migraine, repetitive stress injuries, whiplash, and tendonitises-are rooted in repressed emotions (book description from amazon)
Excuse me while i chuckle heartily
I haven't read Sarno's book but I've read the books by another prominent author in this genre, after battling stubborn health conditions for years without respite.
Addressing repressed emotions has been the thing that made the difference for me, without doubt.
Other things have been important too (diet, exercise, sleep, etc) - but none of that made a persistent difference without addressing the emotions, and none of those things were possible to adhere to consistently without also addressing emotional issues.
I know several people who have gone through a similar journey and all found that the emotional approach was the one that worked when others didn't.
And yep, we all know a lot about the placebo effect, thanks.
Nothing about his theories are "newage" or anti-scientific. Indeed, theories around pain must surely be less scientific if they rely on a dualistic notion of the mind and body being seperate entities.
Plenty of people visit mainstream doctors for pain conditions and are told that nothing can be done other than pain medication, which as we're now witnessing, can too often lead to addiction and death.
Whereas people who adopt the Sarno approach can and do achieve complete healing of the emotional and physical aspects of their illness.
If you actually have any expertise to add to the discussion please share it, otherwise, please step aside and allow grown adults to make their own judgements about what works for them.
Recall that this whole subthread began with your mockery of a method developed by a mainstream-qualified doctor that has helped thousands of people over many years.
The thing is, what you're arguing for is not even part of mainstream medical orthodoxy.
Mainstream medical literature linking chronic muscle-tension and pain to mental health is plentiful, along with the effectiveness of mainstream psychiatric treatments like CBT, and less-mainstream-accepted practices like mindfulness and meditation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526658/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3237294/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4914381/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3200134/
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/meditat...
And here's a specific study on Sarno's technique:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955480/
I'm the first to concede that none of these studies are a home run. Human physiology is vastly complex and the factors leading to chronic illness and pain will inevitably be hard to isolate and different from one person to another.
But the plentiful supply of both anecdotal and clinical evidence warrants far more open-minded consideration than you're allowing for with your contemptuous dismissals.
Currently, my speed with the latter is significantly higher (~60 WPM vs. ~90 WPM), but as DSK is my primry layout, that's possibly just due to the relative amount of time that I spend using them.
However, subjectively, using Dvorak feels nicer for me than QWERTY - temporarily using the latter feels like going back to a modeless editor after years of using a modal one (vim and emacs+evil).
Does anyone else get this feeling?
If you are interested in something not QWERTY, Dvorak is not the only game in town, and indeed many more modern alternatives (such as Colemak-DH) are supposed to be better by almost any metric. Of course that also means you are going deeper in to the niche, and there will be even less support out of the box for those.
If you are European programmer and want a quick easy ergonomics win, consider modifying your layout to put punctuation etc to more US aligned positions, or wherever they would be convenient. I do recommend following the US layout though. The punctuation crazyness in European layouts is one of my pet peeves.
Colemak is awesome, btw. My hands and wrists feel even more relaxed than they did when I first switched to “split keyboards”.
It can be frustrating in a way comparable to recovering from a stroke. Emails which normally take 2 min take 10+.
Eventually, it gets better, you start to gain speed and typing becomes normal again. I do like it, it definitely seems easier/efficient to touch type.
Using other computers is not weird, I can easily switch the layout if I plan on spending any significant time on them. The worst part is standard keyboard shortcuts sometimes lose their intuitiveness. Like scrolling with 'j' or 'k', on dvorak they are not close.
Overall, it is a fun challenge. If you commit you can become proficient in about a month, and it's more comfy to type in. But if you think it will be a 'lifechanging efficiency hack' you will be disappointed.
https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/keyboa...
Isn’t the idea that your fingers travel less so it’s healthier for your hands?
If you end up with RSI, you might find you’re using your nose for input:
I might not necessarily recommend it to anyone else unless you're bored or have a good reason to invest in typing more quickly, but I don't recall the adjustment being very painful aside from a week or two of slow typing at the end of the summer break before my sophomore year of high school.
The only real downside is that writing code on someone else's machine is a PITA. On the other hand, it's a good deterrent to others asking to borrow my laptop (no one ever does more than once).
It took a really long time before my spelling adapted to colemak, I think 2-3years.
One of the nice things about colemak is that cxv are in the same position as qwerty so cut/copy/paste work the same, and the only special key that's moved is the semicolon.
I would say that it is not worth it for most people to change. You could get a lot of the benefit of colemak, with none of the pain, by converting your caps lock key into a second backspace.
The benefits are that it is slightly more comfortable, and you'll have less people trying to use your computer. Also, prior to learning colemak, I had not been typing fully correctly, and learning it forced me to realize that I had been using the wrong fingers for certain keys.
The downsides are the pain of switching, and the likelihood that you'll actually forget how to touch type on QWERTY.
And unless you buy expensive new keyboards with native colemak support, then things like BIOS screens, virtual machines, and so on will likely switch back to QWERTY on you, without much warning.
But on the other hand, buying a quality keyboard is actually a solid investment, considering how much time people spend at the computer. Personally, I recommend a heavy mechanical tenkeyless board. Heavy so that it won't move around. Tenkeyless to save desk space and so you don't need to reach your arm far just to use the mouse. And mechanical because it is much nicer to type on.
I did try Dvorak before Colemak and really hated it. Not only was Ctrl+XCVZ a pain, I found that my left pinky got very strained because of the position of the L key which is a very common letter in the English language.
After learning Colemak, I tried practicing QWERTY occasionally to be "bi-keyboard" but I just could not do it. The more I practiced QWERTY, the worse I got with Colemak. So eventually I had to drop QWERTY. Now, whenever I use someone else's computer (usually just to do a small task), I have to hunt-and-peck and it makes me sad.
I program in dvorak (vim), but my typing is much faster on qwerty(80 wpm on dvorak and 100 wpm on qwerty).
I also need to type in korean from time to time.
Trying to fit this configuration onto any specific new machine has been a pain. I’ve used karabiner, ukulele and what not for mac, and autohotkey for pc. I forget what I used for linux, but that was also a pita.
So dvorak was useful in speeding up my qwerty, but tbh most of that time was not really for utility that I experience now, but rather for the enjoyment of honing my tools. (The work never ended up getting done :)
So take what you will, I just think thinking about things you take for granted and taking the time to reprogram your mind (and sadistically challenge yourself) is not such a horrible use of your time...!
Main issues during this brief encounter:
- there was not a really big difference in speed, even after the training period;
- nobody was able to use my computer, having half of the keys blank also helped;
- it was very hard to use normal QWERTY that happened to be... everywhere; every coworker had it; or laptop you had for taking random notes.
> Dvorak was different. It forced me to learn to type properly, and eventually I did.
That was for me the main benefits. When I started with bépo I couldn't look at my keyboard, and even if I thought at the time that I wasn't looking when typing, as soon as a tried a different layout I could see how often I was really doing it.
But bépo isn't great for english and programming, so I had to do some modifications to have a good way to access [], {}, (), <>, =, w, etc. And now I spent so much time using this layout that I don't see myself moving to anything else. It just feels natural, and very comfortable, and I only remember that I'm using something special when I try to use a coworker keyboard or play some games that require keyboard shortcuts (which isn't something I do that often).
Also, there is one really cool, fancy benefit: I have a very quick access to weird characters such as «» (french quotes), … ("..." character), — (long dash), ÷, ×, and a bunch of other weird accents, greek characters, symbols, etc :)
[0]: if you're curious, see https://gist.github.com/dgellow/5915994 to see an xkb version. Config commented in french.
PS: I also have macos and windows version of the layout if someone is interested.
I hate every laptop keyboard I've ever worked on. The least annoying beyond the early 2010's macbook keyboards before they reduced travel. Now they're a bit worse imho.
I'd have a horrible time switching, and have tried a number of alternates. Ergonomic options, etc. What made the rsi stuff better was a simple, mechanical keyboard and being able to register a click without always bottoming out.
The layout of different options is from bad to horrible. Especially arrow keys on some keyboards. Worst was one where the up arrow was left of the right shift key. Changing is hard and the difficulty cannot be understated.
Also I think it's worth mentioning that the QWERTY layout was likely designed for transcribing Morse code which explains some parts of its layout.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...
Here's an article covering the flimsy evidence: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/1999/04/01/t...
Is there a place for better keyboard layouts? Maybe. Show me properly controlled studies and I'll take it seriously.
Turkish F keyboard is essentially a highly used Dvorak used equivalent and coincidentally Turkey often wins some of the most typing competions. This is not scientific evidence so to speak but our best bet to understand this is to analyze Turkish F keyboard.
I have learned to touchtype qwerty at school and then regularly trained it for couple of years without much improvement at around 60wpm (yeah, I'm not very agile). Then one day I red a book (I believe it was Bill Gates "Business at the speed of thought") and decided to switch to Dvorak and use same methods I used to learn it at school. It took me a weekend and Monday but on Tuesday I was able to type Dvorak and couple of weeks later I plateaued at around 80wpm.
What I like about Dvorak layout is not that I can type faster but the feeling.
I'm not sure I would recommend it unless you convert sometime during your high school or student years. I converted in the last year of high school. I have a colleague that converted just a year ago though, so it is possible after starting work as well
I mainly use QWERTY now because it’s convenient, but can easily switch back and forth.
Then I tried Colemak and all was good in the world.
Btw. I use a layout based on the Dvorak-⌘qwerty on Mac, which reverts the layout to QWERTY when the command button is pressed. That makes the keyboard shortcuts work better. On the other hand, it messes up some non-native apps, especially Java-based ones.
It has symbols instead of numbers. And it's just perfect for writing both code and regular text.
If you are a programmer and want to learn to touch type - that would be the best thing to learn.
The thing with Dvorak is that putting all the vowels on the homerow for one hand actually turns out to be a bad idea. It's a classic example of a technical person trying to optimize something and actually making the thing worse. In Dvorak, one hand is flying all around the keyboard and making a wide variety of motions while the other is stuck in place, stiff as a board, typing at the homerow like a machine. You really can feel the difference after a day of typing like this -- the consonant hand feeling healthy with the vowel hand feeling cramped. If RSI were a real phenomenon then learning Dvorak would surely make it worse, but fortunately RSI is psychological so Dvorak and the expectation effect actually make it better usually.
QWERTY turns out to be a pretty good layout because of the mostly random location of the keys. It's actually a good thing. You want your hands to be moving, not staying in one place or they'll stiff up. Learning alternate layouts has negative net benefits and the worst thing is that because of human psychology, people who undertake the difficult (but useless) endeavor of switching layouts can't look at the results objectively.
I don't generally recommend it to people, but I don't regret switching. It's never been a problem, other than discouraging me from learning Vim.
I learned to touch-type while learning Dvorak, and I can't type in QWERTY anymore, so I can't really tell how much of the benefits can be attributed to Dvorak vs touch-typing.
In macOS, you can use the “Dvorak-QWERTY” layout to solve this.
https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/
Personally I'm excited to try out Colemak and it's already supported on macOS by default too.
I switched back to qwerty for the ubiquity. Despite having no grand design behind it, qwerty gets many things right by accident. Many common letter combos bang out nicely under qwerty too.
Some takeways:
- the keyboard layout doesn't matter that much, what matters most is touch typing vs not touch typing
- I still cannot touch type with azerty. The touch typing skill does not transfer to the other layout surprisingly. On mobile I use qwerty, but I don't type that much on mobile.
- On OSx, I use this horror of a script: https://github.com/pinouchon/keybest/blob/master/rewrite_c/a.... It works fine, except that some password inputs use the mapping, some don't, which is slightly annoying. On ubuntu, I use XKB. I made it work through days of digging the documentation, XKB is the most confusing thing ever.
- The QGMLWY mapping preserves ctrl-x, c, v, z so cutting and pasting is not an issue
- I re-learned ctrl+letter and cmd+letter hotkeys. I like them better with the new layout.
- I created a custom layer called 'gamma' for coding with the modifier on the 'm' key: with the following layers: "top: #[({<>})]^ middle: ;=:"'/_-! bottom: ~?$\&+*.,". For coding this is invaluable. For example, to type underscore, my fingers don't move, it's just simultaneous pinky+index while staying in home-row position. On traditional layouts or not-so traditional layouts (qwerty, dvorak, colemak), modifiers are all over the place and don't take into account special character frequency.
- I also have a 'alpha' layer for movement that I do use. I moved the shift and tab keys. I also tried moving backspace and enter keys but ended up keeping their original positions.
- One added benefit with messing so much with the keyboard is that when I need a new hotkey or a special mapping for a game (where the default bindings are stupid), I can jump to my script and create a special mapping for that game.
- One big downside is that whenever I switch OS, I have to redo my keyboard setup otherwise I cannot use the keyboard
- Like others have mentioned, a neural interface would be better
For macOS you can use Ukulele to create your own layout.
https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id...