Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]
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Overall, I've been using dvorak for >10 years and I like it. Going back to Qwerty is like going back to sleeping on a twin mattress. It gets the job done, but once you've become accustomed to sleeping on a queen, it's hard to justify going back to a twin.
I found out while travelling, around 20 years ago, my (then current) SO would get frustrated with the keyboards in different languages (all over the EU). She gave up even trying to use a different keyboard and started asking me to type for her (it sucks, her being restrained like that).
I also found out that it takes me <60s to pick up the new layouts on those physical keyboards (again, European variants)
Regardless of the layout, she is always faster than me on virtual keyboards.
Numbers, amusingly, can mess me up.
How long did it take you to learn colemak? I guess if you still use it you find it better than qwerty?
It’s a struggle for maybe a month or two completely upending your muscle memory.. but retaining the locations of AZXCV from QWERTY did help a lot with transitioning. The hardest part for me was how S is moved one character over to where D is (took a while before I stopped making S related mistake..).
I think I practiced typing every day deliberately for a few months until I didn’t feel like I had to consciously think about it anymore and was up to ~80WPM again. No regrets here.. and it’s always amusing watch people use my computer at first
The lesson plan I was using followed home row order and I knew I was "home" in Colemak in the first lessons because even in the first four "main finger" home row keys you start by typing entire, real English words, some of which can be quite long such as Tennessee. (That was always a problem for me in grade school QWERTY lessons was how much home row exercises were garbage and nonsense words.) I feel like that also added to the feeling that learning Colemak was fast and just took then one dedicated long weekend.
I'd hesitate to say I notice much of any difference. It makes me a little happy to have made the change. But, in the same way that moving a mouse to my off hand makes me happy. And is something I do every so often.
I don’t know what the status is now, if all the OS have built in Colemak layouts but I don’t think they did at the time.
I got rid of RSI by using a Kinesis advantage keyboard for a year (with qwerty layout). This must have gotten rid of any bad habits I had, I focused hard on not bottoming out hard on the keys too.
After a year I switched to a topre keyboard and it hasn’t come back, it’s been over 10yrs.
Better: get an adjustable table and chair and ensure that they are correctly configured. Take regular breaks and do exercises. Get a keyboard that is split (to ensure that your wrists are not bent) and tented (to put our wrists at a more comfortable angle). Bonus points for column stagger. For me, switching to a Kinesis Advantage improved a lot to the point where I pretty much pain free.
(IANAD, but personal experience.)
I'm incredibly happy with my switch. I was getting RSI pain from awkward top-to-bottom row maneuvers with Qwerty. I still have some pain, but that's mostly from using the computer far too much.
Most of the challenge is not about learning the new layout, but getting your muscle memory to forget about the old way of doing things. If I were to do it again, I'd recommend a progressive layout change; switching a single set of keys at a time. It takes longer to switch, but reduces the upfront mental load.
Any ideas of how well this tends to work as a learning strategy?
And then swap hands.
Then keyboards behind the back.
Have I taken this joke too far? Or not far enough?
How long for me to transition from being quite fast at Qwerty to being happy enough with my Colemak speed? I'd guess roughly 2 to 4 weeks. As an independent software developer and entrepreneur at the time, it worked. I was mostly writing code, not having to write some heroic quantity of emails as a manager.
In addition to the "typing feels better" benefit, I found the very process of changing to be quite beneficial in two ways:
(1) I did more thinking in advance and more planning and therefore less unnecessary typing. This was very niiice. Please imagine Borat saying it for full effect.
(2) The cognitive challenge of switching my primary mode of interaction with computers had a much broader effect on how I appreciated learning and habits in general.
Conclusion: you have should switched yesterday from Qwerty to an APL keyboard. /s
For me the learning process was very similar to learning a foreign language. At first it was hard, but once I started to get fluency in dvorak, typing in qwerty was hard for a while...but then at some point my qwerty typing ability came back and switching between the two layouts is as easy as switching computer or human languages. (when you know them fluently).
To address your fear, yes, there will a period in the learning process where your fingers get confused switching back and forth but once you get past that it goes away and switching becomes second nature.
Initially looking down at the Qwerty labelled keyboard would totally mess me up, so I had try really hard not to look down
After about a month I could look down on occasion, realise the caps were no help and then continue on
Because I would switch back to Qwerty whenever anyone would come over to my PC, my brain then decided the presence of a person was a key to flip to Qwerty, which was annoying for a while, as whenever anyone would come near I'd lose the ability to type properly.
After the second month I would look down and I was sort of 'see' both characters at the same time: the actual keycap with my eyes and the Dvorak keys with my mind. Was very trippy and a bit difficult to properly explain.
After another month or so, that went away and then I can look at the Qwerty keys and I just sorta ignore them unless I made an effort to read them. My brain has learnt to not read them, if that makes sense. That's still the state now, many years later.
I can still type reasonably fast on Qwerty too if I need to, but it takes me a minute to adjust.
At home I have some blank keyboards I bought, partly to reduce confusion and partly because I think they look cool, but I really couldn't care less any more what the keyboards are labelled with as I rarely look at them.
I use Vim using the original bindings, hjkl are not so badly placed: h and l are still left and right of each other.
I'm actually now debating setting up a stegography keyboard, partly for another amusing brain rewiring exercise, and just because I like geeky things.
My keyboard [0] has software that translates from Dvorak to qwerty. So plugging the keyboard into different machines means no change for me, since most do qwerty by default.
When I use laptop keyboard, I do switch to dvorak layout.
Also, I'll mention the most interesting bit for me personally with changing has been in-person software interviews. The interviewer (future boss) gave me quite a look when he saw me start hunt-and-pecking! I should have given him some warning but wasn't thinking about it until I sat down at the keyboard. Fortunately it led to a good conversation, and after taking the few seconds to switch keyboard formats on the test machine I was back to full speed (unnecessarily extra full speed to impress).
> it would be a real problem for other people if the keycaps didn't match...
If you're concerned about other people, use qwerty keycaps and just ignore for yourself. It's also possible to have blank keycaps. I have blanks because they were the only sculpted option at the time for the keyboard I wanted. Along with the ortholinear layout I get some weird looks sometimes, the keyboard is just a blank regular grid of buttons, doesn't really look quite normal.
[0] Ergodox-EZ (old style, not sold anymore) https://ergodox-ez.com/
Having QWERTY key caps is even sometimes still useful for hunt and peck when an app (often a game) uses the wrong system library for keyboard input and is accidentally hard-coded to QWERTY input.
If other people need to use my computer it is very easy to set up profiles that default still to QWERTY or to temporarily shift to QWERTY for their interaction. (The default Windows shortcut key to switch between installed layouts is Left CTRL+SHIFT. It's very easy to switch to/from QWERTY with that quick shortcut.)
I used that trainer keyboard for a summer, until my typing muscle memory was updated to dvorak.
Since then, I don't look at my keyboards while typing, so the fact that the keys are labeled for qwerty doesn't really matter.
Perhaps it would pay off to standardize... But like someone else said, the letters aren't the problem, it's all the symbols that you almost never use that become impossible if they aren't labeled.
Touch typing QWERTY is a constant uphill battle of using your willpower to force yourself to type correctly, despite the rest of your brain claiming it isn't the optimal way to type on that layout. I don't know that your brain is right, but I don't know that it is wrong either.
When you learn Dvorak or any other similar thing, you don't have to "learn" how to touch type. You just do it, because it's optimal already. You have to learn the layout, obviously, but once having done that you couldn't hardly fail to learn touch typing and "proper" typing technique if you tried. The same uphill gradient you're fighting when trying to learn "proper" typing technique with QWERTY is now a downhill gradient.
I'd actually recommend learning Dvorak over trying to force yourself to touch-type QWERTY properly. Of course, if you don't care about that, no big deal. I'm not sure how valuable that is as a goal on its own, and it's plainly obvious many people function as highly effective office workers of all sorts, programmers and otherwise, without learning to touch type.
I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique.
I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.
It was a loooong time ago but I remember it started with lots of simple repetition. We were all using IBM selectrics and the instructor would call out "J-J-J Space, K-K-K Space, L-L-L space, sem sem sem space" etc. in a pattern around the keyboard while and we were told to avoid looking at the keyboard at all times. Eventually we would start copying simple and then longer, more complicated text, again without ever looking at the keyboard.
Well, of course I did. I used a keyboard for many years before my formal middle school typing class and by then it was too late. My brain already knew better and typing exercises did no good because I already knew how to use the keyboard without looking.
I imagine this is the dominant case.
If you want to fix it, I recommend simply learning a sensible layout for touch typing.
You also would not have needed such a class if the keyboard was laid out in Dvorak for everybody. You wouldn't need formal training that largely only works if it is drilled into you before natural exposure to a keyboard, because your hands would just do the right thing automatically. The idea of needing a typing class would become entirely absurd; there would be no technique to teach anyone that they wouldn't simply pick up.
I type with only the three inner index fingers of each hand, because the keys on the manual typewriters were hard to press.
This limits my typing speed to 60wpm. If I used all four fingers, I could probably hit 90.
You have a lot of index fingers. Most people only have one per hand. ;)
Found the AI
(I now use Dvorak. Little effect on speed, but I do feel comfier.)
It’s possible that a relatively arbitrary keyboard layout would have worked for you too simply by forcing you to relearn how to type, then.
you seriously believe, without any doubt, that with a clearly labelled dvorak keyboard and no typing lessons you would not have learned to hunt-and-peck at increasingly higher speeds as you did with QWERTY, but instead put your fingers "on the home row" and used your pinkies? At a young age, we all learn the alphabet, and if the keyboard is not in alphabetic order, you are on a hunt for keys, and fingers in the home position will obscure too many key labels.
Sorry, but thinking about it for 30 seconds makes it hard for me to take your argument seriously.
(as a total off-topic aside, back when Cambodian politics and Prince Sihanouk were in the news a lot, I thought "must be hunt-and-peck in German" every time I heard "FUNCINPEC" on the radio)
Not exactly beginner friendly though.
I think I'd take an entire year to be able to use that!
Maybe going the opposite way would be more effective, a mirror in front of you so you can see the keys with your peripheral vision without moving your eyes.
Similar to how you can always see your fingers when typing on a phone. I can type without actively staring at the keyboard on my phone pretty well, although that may because thumbs only is just fewer points to process than ten fingers, for those of us who have trouble paying attention to multiple points at once.
Yes.
Before I further argue with you, a simple question. I've learned Dvorak and been using it for years. Have you tried anything other than QWERTY for long enough to learn it? I am a hunt and peck QWERTY user and I touch type Dvorak. I've spent WAY more time formally trying to touch type QWERTY; I spent basically zero with Dvorak. (Obviously a lot of time to learn the layout. But I made zero extra effort to "touch type".)
What you believe to be a fundamental aspect of typing may be merely an accident of a keyboard layout that penalizes "proper" typing. To type "properly" with QWERTY takes work. To hunt and peck with Dvorak would take equal work, if not more. It is not natural with Dvorak. Why would your hands leave the home row? Only when the keys mean something other than letters entirely, like a WASD game.
the school I went to also tried to push some crappy "correct" way to type on everyone. The teacher was moderately embarrased when I was able to type significantly faster without looking at the keyboard, because apparantly typing fast is only possible if following some special method..
dvorak is probably better, I dont know, but I type fast enough on qwerty
That nicely demonstrates the poor Qwerty layout. The very first keys you learn are among the least used, especially semicolon. Adding the left hand (ASDF), we can then type 44 words from /usr/share/dict/words, like "salad", "salsa", "flasks", "falls" and "alfalfa".
For Dvorak, the instructor would be calling out "H-H-H Space, T-T-T Space, N-N-N Space, S-S-S space" — and then U-E-O-A on the left hand. We can already type 467 words! So the instructor would soon be calling out "Season, Tenant, Hushes, Taunts, Outset, Sunset, Assent".
The advent of computers also killed one of Dvorak's selling points, which was a lower error rate at speed. Errors on a typewriter were painful to correct and took up a lot of time, but by the 70s and 80s, even typewriters were capable of reasonably easy correction. By the time word processors kicked in, mistakes were nothing to deal with.
OMG no it does not, your argument is ridiculous. You have to learn all the fingers and then all the keys before you can touchtype, no matter what layout you are learning. You can't efficiently touchtype 20 letters of the alphabet then take your hands off to hunt and peck the rest on a dvorak or a qwerty.
What letter you are instructed to learn first is immaterial. (and in GP's example, since I was taught by the same system, you don't learn semicolon as your 3rd letter, he just threw that in; you learn to rhythmically intersperse pointers (index fingers) and thumbkins/space first, then you add in tall-men, interspersed, etc. then moving between rows.)
what you are trying to connect your argument to, unsucessfully, is the idea that index fingers are naturally the best typists (coordination, musculature), so "let's give them the most common letters to type", which dvorak does. But this also implies, btw, that your worst finger, pinky, will over time also get the least exercise, so the gulf between its skill and pointer's skill will grow, not shrink. (I'm not saying that's more than a 2nd order effect, just sayin, muscle memory, 10,000 hours...)
Being able to type many words from the "home" keys (AOEU HTNS) neatly demonstrates this.
It's a silly sentence, but that's what makes learning Dvorak so fun.
Same. It's like the one high school class I use every single day. Do they even offer typing in high school anymore?
I could type about 120-130 WPM back then and somehow, I was still required to take BOTH classes. I typically finished the work in the first ten minutes of class then studied or drew.
My family got a computer when I was about 5 and one of the first things I learned how to do was type. Having a personal computer in the late 80's still was pretty unusual. Ten years later, everyone had access to one either at home or in the school computer lab.
Eh, that's always easy to say, but I suspect it is not true.
I myself have tried several times, using several typing tutors, and I just couldn't do it. I can type without looking at the keyboard out of sheer habit, but the whole "put fingers on the home row" never clicked for me. It also, IMO, is very prone to RSI issues.
I still avoid looking at the keyboard because in my head i can't find the keys, but my fingers know where to go. :)
I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK
Not really. Most vim keybindings follow mnemonics (like `di"`). Dvorak still has 'jk' adjacent to each other; and `h` to the left of `l`.
There are several keyboard shortcuts which are nicer with QWERTY left-hand only: (Ctrl Z, X, C, V, S, F, W, ... T?, A).
For two-hands-on-keyboard, these are less of an issue than for keyboard+mouse workflows.
Having [a], [i], [y], [p], [x] all on the left hand is also awesome. It's a bummer that [d] is on the other hand, though I could reach it in a pinch with my left hand if I need to.
I don't need the fake QWERTY arrow keys, the real arrow keys work.
"""""""""""" DVORAK FTW LOLZ! "
noremap d h
noremap h j
noremap t k
noremap n l
noremap k d
noremap l n
noremap j t
noremap ^Wd ^Wh
noremap ^Wh ^Wj
noremap ^Wt ^Wk
noremap ^Wn ^Wl
inoremap ^] ^[A
inoremap ð ^N
This is why I don't use vim; I had been touch-typing in Dvorak for years by the time I encountered it, and vim's layout felt like it would require a painful degree of brute memorization.
I think there's something to be said about starting with a clean slate on the keyboard layout so you don't have to unlearn old bad habits in the process. For me learning Dvorak had the double benefit of making me type 100% correctly with the new layout. I'm really not sure I would have been motivated to do that if I decided to stick with Qwerty. Getting two comfort improvements with one training period makes it more worthwhile
It's hard to think while typing so the less time I spend typing the more time I have for thinking. Having said that I'm a qwerty user - it took me a lot of time (may be 100 hours) to learn touch typing and I don't have time to repeat the same with dvorak.
Thing is, this speed is more than enough for a developer. What do you write? Code and some communication with your co workers. In both cases you need to think about it, except the rare cases where you churn out yet another for loop.
It's a constant source of stress. I'm only ever comfortable if I force myself to think slower.
I have some questions:
1. From a psychological point of view, have you explored ways of coping with this stress? What are your expectations? Do you know why you have the stress? Is about results? Is it about fluidity / flow / fluency? Something else?
2. This may be obvious, but I want to make sure I ask the question to make it really concrete: is one of your goals to transfer your thinking directly to the computer as quickly as possible?
3. Would you be willing to reframe your goal? Perhaps frame your goals as: "Accomplish my goals efficiently with a sense of flow, without rushing down a suboptimal path." You know some of these proverbs:
* "Running faster in the wrong direction won't get you anywhere."
* "Better to walk in the right direction than run in the wrong one."
* "Haste makes waste."
* "A fool at high speed is still a fool."
* "Don't mistake activity for achievement."
* "When you're headed in the wrong direction, progress means turning around."
4. It may be useful to think slower! This might help you let go of framing it as "forcing myself to think slower".
A. Maybe you would feel better if you could reframe this process as not simply thinking slower but also allocating some of your mental processing to summarization and translation and other valuable processing?
B. No knock against your brain, but how do you actually measure your thinking speed and error rate?
C. There are a lot of counterintuitive things happening in the brain when you dig into the neuroscience. Many experiments show that our conscious awareness lags our actual decision-making. Perhaps this can "problematize" your situation and make it interesting, rather than purely stressful. Thinking and typing may not be happening the way you think they are
D. I'd expect for you, a good typist, your brain fires motor control circuits to cause your fingers to type before you are consciously aware of it, if you are aware at all. Ever notice how switching keyboards increases your awareness? This seems to suggest that one's low-level typing awareness (i.e. how keys feel) dulls over time when using one particular keyboard.
E. I have not read this yet, but it seems relevant: "Hierarchical control of cognitive processes: The case for skilled typewriting." by Logan and Crump, 2011. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-04906-001
5. What technologies and/or methods have you considered?
6. Are you familiar with a steno machine (aka stenotype machine / shorthand machine / stenograph)? Might it work for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
7. Have you discussed this with others with similar goals? Have you read "Quest for a fully deterministic keyboard shorthand system" https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/comments/3ul9y3
Well, with coding that's certainly true. I can spend all day trying to come up with a dozen lines of code. Input speed is not the barrier there. But for writing English prose, at around 90 wpm, my fingers are often lagging behind what I want to say. People can reach short bursts when speaking as fast as 300 wpm. When I get such bursts of thought, it can be hard to hold on to the end of it while I'm still typing the beginning.
One nice advantage of mac os is the built-in Dvorak-Qwerty layout which retains Qwerty shortcuts. You need an AHK script to achieve the same result on Windows.
Also, as a gamer, I'm concerned about keyboard mappings in games if I switch from Qwerty- I heard bad things, although games really should have switched from a key encoding mapping to a key location mapping a long time ago.
Edit: Basically, the key mappings would automatically change WASD to WARS for Colemak.
[]{} are indeed further out, but instead we have -_=+ closer. Once we add in all the English I type, file-names, U_R_L?s, --command --flags, /directories/, I think, if anything, the rearrangement is an advantage.
if your code base is C, is dvorak going to help with all the [^A-Za-z]* punctuation characters? That's what slows me down.
These are in worse positions: [{ ]} ;: /?
And this doesn't move: \| `~ and the punctuation over the numbers.
[]{} is significantly worse, equally -_=+ is significantly better, as these keys are swapped. Making an effort to learn and touch-type these keys is pretty similar on either layout.
It's just a matter of learning it. If you really want to, you can customize a keyboard layout on any OS and arrange these keys how you see fit, but then you lose any compatibility advantage of sticking with plain Dvorak.
For the record, I mostly use python nowadays but it's still a big improvement over mashing shift all day.
[1] I still use Qwerty on non-Kinesis keyboards and this fact is enough for my muscle memory to eliminate any mental overhead of switching.
And what about comfort? My index finger is stronger than my pinky; id much rather move further with my index finger than my pinky..
I now use Colemak (https://colemak.com/) which doesn't have this issue and I'm quite happy with!
(keyboard-translate ?\C-c ?\C-n)
(keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-c) (keyboard-translate ?\C-x ?\C-t)
(keyboard-translate ?\C-t ?\C-x)
(global-set-key
(kbd "C-t")
(lambda ()
(interactive)
(run-with-timer
0.3 nil
(lambda ()
;; Assuming these are the default values
(setq visible-bell nil)
(setq ring-bell-function 'ignore)))
(setq visible-bell t)
(setq ring-bell-function nil)
(error "Don't press that button.")))
Moreover, the variant of Dvorak that I use is much more shell-friendly than any QWERTY layout.
While for the alphabet and for the punctuation signs that are used in natural languages I use a layout closer to the initial Dvorak layout from 1932 than to the modern Dvorak layout, for the other non-alphanumeric symbols I have made a few changes that I consider best for typing shell commands or other kinds of programs.
The pre-WWII Dvorak layout does not say anything about most non-alphanumeric symbols and there are no suitable standards for them (i.e. any standards than are based on rational criteria, not on preserving a random historical layout), so anyone who wants an optimal keyboard for programming or work with a command-line interface should design a custom layout for the non-alphanumeric symbols, according to taste and experience.
(I mean, to each their own, I use dvorak because other layouts hurt my hands, but I would presume there are better non-shell-friendly examples -- but interestingly, I couldn't readily find them since `mv` is also just the right hand, unlike its qwerty friend)
I have "alias hh='ls -l'" in my .zshrc.
In the end I use a Ergodox keyboard that switches the layout to QWERTY if you hold down the control key, works flawlessly and haven't had to deal with it since.
Dvorak was designed to have common characters on home keys and common character sequences alternate between each hand.
That's great on a keyboard with 4 fingers on each hand. On a touch screen, that's really bad! Characters close together complicate touchscreen recognition - is it "poet", "peet", or "pout"? And consecutive characters on opposite sides of the keyboard creates lots of movement for a single thumb.
Instead, Qwerty has common characters spread out across the keyboard, and many common character sequences close together (e.g. "-ed", "tion"). Which is exactly the pattern that is fast & accurate on a touchscreen.
> Often overlooked is that the main reason for switching to dvorak isn't speed for most users. The dvorak layout is layed out for minimal movement while maintaining a roughly even split between hands. This reduces strain on a typists hands and helps a great deal with comfort when typing for longer periods of time.
I may not type faster than if I had stuck with qwerty, but I definitely don't have the wrist problems I keep hearing coworkers complain about.
For reducing strain to access keys like shift/backspace/escape/tab, I think that's where "use keyboard with multiple thumbkeys" would have a benefit, yeah.
I've got a 42 key split board so I'm not a total noob to minimalist keyboard but struggle to see how 34 keys can be used effectively.
In reality it would be easy to go down to a single thumb key, making it 32 keys.
In short I have layers for numbers and symbols, I make heavy use of combos (pressing multiple keys at once) where I have modifiers, big keys like escape and enter and also the numbers and symbols (for typing singletons). I also have different functions for long press and I use capsword and numword (caps lock / layer that turns off intelligently).
Debunkers: It's not any faster!
Dvorak users: We know, and we don't care.
I'm starting to get some finger pain again, but that's almost entirely from overuse. QWERTY was crushing my hands. Far too many, weird twisting moves to hit consecutive keys between top and bottom rows.
And it also has the same problem to me as QWERTY, it makes numbers accessible while I don't care since most keyboards have a numpad (and to enter a number holding shift isn't hard) while for example it adds a significant amount of keystrokes to open and close a brace.
Thus the non-alphanumeric symbols, which are more frequent in programming languages, are available directly, while keeping shift pressed for the entire duration of a number is easy, so it is a minor disadvantage.
I also find useful to map the 3 pairs of ASCII brackets on 3 keys, so that the opening brackets are available directly and the closing brackets with shift. I need very seldom to type the closing brackets, as they are normally inserted automatically by most editors.
Also "s" "t" and "n" are fairly-to-very common in damn near every language (Latin-alphabet or otherwise) due to how phonetics works. (They're the default-voiced-ness for each manner of articulation at the most-default-ish - alveolar - place of articulation for consonant phonemes.) The other two - "h" and "d" - are less universal, but still better than "j" and "g".
If you have typing speed less than 50 WPM, you'll probably type faster by switching to Dvorak. If you type faster than that before switching, your typing speed will go down and not fully recover automatically unless you train it back up. I lost some speed that I never recovered. It wasn't worth the effort because I can still type fast enough.
A lot of people get hung up on the keybindings thing. zxcv for CUA cut-copy-paste make a nice little row on QWERTY, and hjkl for vi type movements, but as it turns out, it really doesn't matter. Those help you learn when muscle memory doesn't translate into intention without thinking. Once you learn them by muscle memory, it doesn't matter where the keys are. I just use programs with QWERTY shortcuts and press the key on Dvorak wherever it happens to land on the layout, and it works perfectly fine.
I can still touch type QWERTY, but quite a bit slower than Dvorak.
Can attest vi movements can be learned on Dvorak. But have to admit it is not quite as nice, those movements were designed for qwerty.
Of course "j" and "k" are next to each other on Dvorak. "h" and "l" are also positioned at first and fourth fingers like qwerty... but on different rows and on different hand than "j/k". Which means Dvorak requires two-handed vi movements.
Maybe not a big deal, vi shortcuts mean moving all over the keyboard anyway. Just not quite as nice.
I feel like I'm one of the last generation of Dvorak typers, anyone who cares about typing ergonomics learning about alternate layouts is probably both better off and more likely to try e.g. colemak, or something newer or maybe even design their own.
https://github.com/osbert/dv-sim2
A former colleague of mine graciously contributed Colemak as an option as well.
Kjg; g; uodak! Ap;s ;ddm; pgvd a ;gmrpd ishd dluglde
After some time though, in my case around a year, you start reaching your previous speed (in my case qwerty). I didn't gain speed but I gained a lot of muscular comfort. Indeed, you frequently do some weird gestures typing on a qwerty due to the dispositions of the keys. It's much rarer on dvorak and I'm really glad for that.
It took me about three weeks to become proficient enough that typing stopped being frustrating. Those three weeks really sucked, that was the hardest part.
It took a couple years, but I'm solidly "bilingual" now and can switch between Colemak and Qwerty with no effort.
There is zero overlap in my brain with thumb typing on the phone and touch typing on a keyboard. I've kept qwerty on my pixel and it's never bothered or confused me once.
It's not really a win for me in terms of productivity, but being able to type 120wpm is fun :)
I have never looked back. My motivation was moving my finger less, speed was just a bonus.
If I could go back, I would've learned colemak for the keyboard shortcut reasons people have outlined in other comments, but I don't have it in me to learn another layout at this point.
I think it's the design goal of having a high chance of switching keyboard side each stroke that makes it so horrible.
Still I would never go back to using QWERTY on a real keyboard, using Dvorak is so much more comfortable.
> Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout for Swype (sangaline.com)
Can't believe that got only a hundred points and was posted only once in 2015. In my head this is an inspiring if not influential article. Glad it's still online at least.
Conclusion hint: it's not any of the established layouts that would be best for mobile!
This does come at a cost: hotkeys are usually a mess, especially if you have a second language layout (Cyrillic in my case), sometimes working differently dependent on layout, and hotkeys positions are typically optimised for QWERTY.
Interestingly, all Dvorak advantages on regular keyboard become severe disadvantages on smartphones: Dvorak is optimised for alternating hands while typing as much as possible, but when you type with one thumb, you constantly need to move your finger from one side of a keyboard to another. One could probably come with a screen keyboard layout optimized to type with one finger, but I'm yet to see such keyboard.
It helped when I tried to learn, but I abandoned because I felt like the effort wasn't worth it. I already type fast enough for my needs.
I ended up creating my own Dvorak and Cyrillic layouts, so that Cyrillic layout has hotkeys on their Dvorak positions (in most apps, but not all), and Dvorak layout has some keys like -,= on the same positions as ЙЦУКЕН Cyrillic layout.
Still, I didn't yet find a way to make this layout default for a system: macOS refuses to use one of these on lock screen to enter password, but that's a minor inconvenience.
But since I only exclusively type with two thumbs on my phone, Dvorak is noticeably faster than QWERTY.
https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php
I get about 30 words per minute with it.
TL;DR: it's more likely it was just the result of a series of progressive compromises, as keyboards moved from telegraph to typewriting.
I no longer have shooting pains up my arms. Whether that's a result of the ergonomics of Dvorak, or simply that I can touch type, is not something I'm qualified to answer, but what I can say is that:
- Dvorak is easy to learn
- only takes mild motivation to get good at
- is more comfortable
which leads to better typing habits that are good for you physically and make you a faster typist than hunt-and-peck, with less effort than learning to touch type on QWERTY.
Would I learn Dvorak these days over another layout like Colemak or whatever is the favorite today? Yes, I would, because it's a standard. I think we're at diminishing returns (for English) so it doesn't really matter: anything is better than QWERTY, even ABCDE...
1. I didn't practice QWERTY, so when I used someone else's computer, it was always an exercise in re-jogging my memory
2. Having to use one hand/finger to type (don't ask me why :)) on DVORAK was super slow because I had to map manually each key in my brain because I couldn't rely on the letters on the physical key caps
Ultimately I also wasn't typing that much, even as a programmer, so it didn't make a huge difference for me, but I do miss it sometimes.
I consider this as one of my best decisions and my only regret is that I have not tried to do this many years earlier, because I had wrongly feared that typing Dvorak on a keyboard with QWERTY inscriptions might be a hindrance.
As many other posters have already said, the advantage of Dvorak is seldom a greater speed (and I needed a couple of months to recover the previous typing speed). The big advantage of Dvorak is a much greater comfort while typing. I will never go back to QWERTY.
After switching to Dvorak, even after only a few days and even if only significantly later I have reached and exceeded the previous typing speed, it already felt much easier to find by touch any key than it has ever felt on QWERTY, despite the fact that I have been using QWERTY since high school, for almost a half of century.
Now I enjoy typing and it feels effortlessly, which has never happened before.
So before trying Dvorak seriously, I was never concerned with the fact that the keyboard layout may be suboptimal. Only after the change the improvement has been obvious and I have realized that what I had been using previously had not been good enough.
Nevertheless, when someone wants to try another keyboard layout, an appropriate time must be chosen, when for a few days there is nothing that must be typed ASAP. During the first few days the drop in typing speed can be very large. The slow typing speed can be very frustrating and it is very difficult to resist the temptation of going back to the previous keyboard layout, for a normal typing speed.
The instructor noted that while folks often failed when testing on QWERTY, that he had never seen a formally trained Dvorak keyboard typist fail to type out, and that most were well above the average QWERTY speed.
I personally didn't maintaing typing on QWERTY, interestingly my brain still has the QWERTY mapping for tablets.
If you don't want as big a delay (several years for me from when my Qwerty speed dropped to when it recovered), I'd suggest going "all in" on Dvorak for 3-6 months and then integrate some Qwerty time in deliberately to recover and then maintain your Qwerty proficiency.
Each key glowing in conformance with your current keyboard layout of choice.
The last time I searched around for something like this, all I could find was some guy in Russia who had hacked up a positively brilliant-looking homebrew keyboard.
With the right software, you could even "improve" the layout on a daily basis based on the most used keys the previous day.
Ready for APL, music, IPA, Linear B, ...
I’ve been using Programmers Dvorak together with QWERTY for 10+ years. Whenever I need to use common shortcuts I switch layouts with a simple shortcut, and sometimes do this dance a few times if a few seconds subconsciously as needed.
Typing speed is unimportant, it’s the reduced strain that is the main benefit.
Edit: And want to clarify from reading other comments: I was a touch typist on QWERTY, had the recommended posture, and even used ergonomic keyboards. The pain happens in your knuckles and back of your hand, not wrists. Zero of that ten years later.
Personally, switching to a "columnar" keyboard (Moonlander keyboard) took me about that time, but afterwards I could switch between keyboards without too much confusion. (I don't type faster, but I feel less pain from typing)
Can't recommend to do anything but cold turkey (or at least 80% of the time or so), and most definitely you'll need more than a day. You can't conclude it's a bad layout from just one day of starting to learn it!
If I can recommend it at all, that is. If you regularly type on someone else's keyboard, it's already a no go. Yes, this is why we can't have nice things (it's objectively better than qwerty for pretty much any latin-script language that has vowels, yet we don't switch, and I'm basically recommending to maintain that status quo).
Is there anyone that became sufficiently proficient with Dvorak and regret it/wished they hadn't wasted their time?
I was an 80 wpm typist since 1993. On Dvorak I never got that fast even on a Model M, which I was wicked fast on using QWERTY. Eventually the laptop keyboards took over and my accuracy and comfort plummeted overall.
I think most problems could be solved by sitting properly and typing on a keyboard with good response like Cherry MX Brown or buckling spring keyboards, and not using a palm rest.
I didn't stay with it because of two things:
1. The fact I'd have to keep both in my muscle-memory due to swapping onto other people's machines
2. Vim keybindingsMy experience was that vim keybindings are tied to characters, not key codes (position).
Insert is 'i', not the key at position of 'i' in QUERTY.
Maybe I was doing it wrong, but Vim, for me, is all about the interface and muscle memory. Having keys move position due to the different keyboard layout was a deal-breaker.
My suspicion is that when I picked up using Dvorak with Vim, whatever association or motor-memory goes on gets some indirection added, so that 'letter and position' are not quite so tightly coupled.
Dvorak's actually pretty good for vim keybindings.
While 'hjkl' is positionally significant; Dvorak 'jk' are still adjacent and easy to reach in Dvorak, and 'h' is still to the left of 'l' on the same hand.
Other keybindings are better remembered by the letter itself rather than by the position on the keyboard (e.g. "di'" or "gg"), so these aren't that much of an issue.
I find it really easy to switch layouts though (either on linux with a `loadkeys dvorak`, or by quickly going to the menus).
QWERTY supposedly helps to reduce jams.
Dvorak was introduced at a time in which that was still a problem, before electric typewriters.
If Dvorak didn't actually produce its speed advantages on a classic, mechanical typewriter in which a semicircular gallery of arms concentrate their strikes on the same tiny location on the ink ribbon, typists trying Dvorak would have found that Dvorak's claims don't actually hold up.
Yes, I know you're not supposed to look at the keyboard as you type. And I don't. But I still don't like it. It sets off "this is dumb" alarm bells in my head.
And because it's impossible to replace every keyboard I own or use, or physically rearrange their keys from QWERTY to Dvorak/Colemak, i'm stuck with QWERTY.
While DVORAK may only be a 5% improvement over QWERTY, a steno keyboard is vastly superior in typing speed and ergonomics, as it's used by courtroom stenographers keeping up with recording speech. (And if you learn on a proper steno keyboard, your muscle memory won't get all confused because the keys are entirely different.)
Now I use a mix of Dvorak some of the time and QWERTY some of the time.
I have a Dvorak layout for the ErgoDox EZ Shine keyboard, link to repo below. There’s a PDF linked from the reademe in the repo showing what my Dvorak layout looks like.
Split keyboard (especially with ortholinear, column staggered layout) will give you much more benefit than any alternative layout - and will be much easier to switch too.
To this day, I think it's one of the best decisions I've ever made - it resulted in much more relaxed typing, and forever broke a bad habit of looking at keys while typing.
How long did it take to reach that conclusion? Probably about a month. After achieving decent speeds on Colemak, going back to Qwerty just felt painful - even when I was going faster, it felt so much more stressful.
I'd also be curious to know if folks would recommend this for kids, especially those who have not yet mastered touch-typing on QWERTY.
No, i just printed out the new layout and stuck it near the monitor. Eventually I moved to blank keycaps.
> easy to set up on an iPhone?
Why would I care about that? Phones are for thumbs, and thumbs have their own muscle memory. Besides, the strength of layouts like Colemak is typically in leveraging the home-row, which is really not a thing on phones, so there is no point. It would make more sense to investigate those fancy swipey versions (or make new layouts that leverage "home columns"?).
> What about when you have to use a QWERTY keyboard
I just go a bit slower. Which is fine, considering it's such a rare experience...
Can I ask if you code much? Unlike most HNers, I don't, so I'm interested in its usefulness for writing emails and such, not the special chars used mostly for coding.
Thanks for the feedback!
And yeah, i only use Colemak on laptops/desktops. I don't use external keyboards with phones and tablets, so it's all done with two thumbs, which have their own muscle memory.
Some people use our tools for speed reading; others use it as an assistive technology for reading, or for helping kids learn to read.
1) Every video game I've ever played has had key bindings with Qwerty (or a controller) in mind. I would estimate that roughly 60%-ish of those games permit for some level of keyboard remapping. When remapping is possible, there will be bewildering exceptions for certain actions. When it's not possible, they are impossible to play.
Yes, I am aware you can switch between different layouts through the OS easily enough, but after I had gotten used to a letter being in a specific spot for Dvorak, and then being prompted to press it in a Qwerty layout, I found myself mis-typing extremely frequently for button prompts. It also became a chore to switch between them if I was in the middle of playing, then wanted type out a quick message in instant messenger.
2) Random bugs. I had noticed that for whatever reason, some programs just seemed to have some kind of issue with Dvorak layouts. I can't think of any specifics, it's been at least a decade since then, but it was something bizarre like: program recognizes that I was using a Dvorak layout except if I was using a keyboard shortcut.
3) It was weird that my cellphone was in a Qwerty layout but my computer wasn't. I seem to recall having a lot of issues trying to get Dvorak to work as the default layout.
4) I shared the computer with another family member. They complained that they had to learn the new layout. I convinced them it would improve their typing speed and they agreed. Eventually, they also started going to the library to do some research, which of course had a Qwerty layout. This caused an incredible amount of grief for them. Ultimately, this is the reason I switched back.
5) I seem to remember programming in general just being more uncomfortable in Dvorak. I think the punctuation I needed was in the upper left(?) which put a lot of extra strain on my left pinky.
I liked Dvorak quite a bit, but it just felt impractical. The world I live in just feels like it's setup for Qwerty, inefficient as that layout may be. I see it like if someone chose to become left-handed. You could do it, but if an much more popular method exists, and there is extra effort in going with the less popular one, for what amounts to the same outcome, why go through the struggle?
If things were to suddenly switch tomorrow, I'd gladly switch back, I just don't see much point in fighting for such a thing when we have a solution that is close enough.
TL;DR It's great, but if you're interested you should use Colemak. Once you switch you won't go back.
Qwerty is fast enough...
> You might hear comments from time to time about studies showing Dvorak is "no better than QWERTY," or words to that effect. All such comments that I've heard seem to echo an article, "The Fable of the Keys," by S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, published in the Journal of Law & Economics, vol. XXXIII (April 1990).
> Note the word "economics." Liebowitz and Margolis are economists opposed to an "excessive inertia" theory, for which QWERTY is often cited as an example. Rather than try to prove their point with a generally valid argument, they simply attack Dvorak as a dubious replacement for QWERTY. As the article's last footnote explains, there are a number of other possible reasons for Dvorak's failure to replace QWERTY, besides a perceived lack of value. The article ignores those reasons, however, and perpetrates that false perception in a nicely self-fulfilling way.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050204023432/http://www.mwbroo...
Economists call "excessive inertia" "path dependence".
The authors of "The Fable of the Keys" have frequently argued against the existence of path dependence. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/path-dependence/