Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

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Probably the best thing about Dvorak (and similar layouts) is that if you want to do proper touch typing, it is quite possibly easier to learn Dvorak than to learn how to touch type QWERTY.

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.

> QWERTY users naturally wander around and have their hands leave the home row and I'm not entirely convinced it's actually wrong.

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.

"I think you are learning it wrong."

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 also took junior high typing in the 1980s, but we used manual typewriters. There were two IBM Selectrics in the back of the class that were used by lucky students for the day.

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.

> I type with only the three inner index fingers of each hand

You have a lot of index fingers. Most people only have one per hand. ;)

I was also stuck at like 50wpm and I knew it was because of using the wrong fingers for the wrong keys. Someone recommended typing.com's complete beginner lesson where they literally just walk you through which fingers to use with which keys and after completing that and 2 days of practise my speed jumped by 10wpm. Highly recommend.

I never learned to type formally and also use a limited amount of fingers. On my left hand I use my thumb+middle+index finger for everything except zaq and modifiers which I use my ring finger, and on my right hand I only use my middle and index finger for everything except for backspace/delete which I use my ring finger for. Still manage to hit 100WPM.

I had a similar beginning but using all the fingers, so I have to ask: was there something wrong with those manual typewriters, or did you just find manual typewriter keys in general hard to press?

> the three inner index fingers of each hand

Found the AI

There's no shortage of good typing-tutor software. I learned from such a program on a home computer in the early 80s, no class needed.

(I now use Dvorak. Little effect on speed, but I do feel comfier.)

> 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.

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 also would not have needed such a class if the keyboard was laid out in Dvorak for everybody

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)

Labelling the keys on the keys was the mistake. The labels should have been written on a cardboard yo put between your keyboard and your screen.

Not exactly beginner friendly though.

This thread is an amazing case study in the wide range of natural ability people have at using their hands.

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.

"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?"

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.

why would you even need to "learn", it comes naturally?

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

> the instructor would call out "J-J-J Space, K-K-K Space, L-L-L space, sem sem sem space"

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".

This is a good point, but what you're actually doing with exercises like this is training muscle memory. It doesn't matter if you're learning Dvorak, QWERTY or how to chisel letters into a block of marble.

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.

> That nicely demonstrates the poor Qwerty layout. The very first keys you learn are among the least used, especially semicolon

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...)

Dvorak minimises finger movement, also described elsewhere in this discussion as being comfortable and so on.

Being able to type many words from the "home" keys (AOEU HTNS) neatly demonstrates this.

He is talking about the fact that you can type so many words without even moving your hands. Dvorjak reduced the amount you move your hands and fingers to type. That reduces strain. That is the benefit of Dvorjak.

While what you're saying is true, you can only type around 800 English words on the home row using QWERTY. You can type thousands using Dvorak, so mastering the Dvorak home row would gain you more than mastering the QWERTY home row. Dvorak is simply a better-thought-out layout.

None hunt out the one ton nun.

It's a silly sentence, but that's what makes learning Dvorak so fun.

> 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.

Same. It's like the one high school class I use every single day. Do they even offer typing in high school anymore?

I graduated in 1999 and had to take two typing classes, one in 7th grade and one in 11th grade. Both were mostly wastes of time because I had already learned how to type.

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.

Probably goes under the name of "computer applications", but I sure hope so. I'm not a great typist by any means, but I did manage to get out of typing class by taking a little-advertised test. If you could manage 35 WPM, you didn't have to take it.

> I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique.

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.

Alas, I learned to type as a kid in the 60's

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'm not 100% sure you're right, but I'm one who did not touch type QWERTY properly. It could be because of the reasons you stated, or because I learned to type on a keyboard myself, not even knowing I should be using touch type. And I found that learning touch typing together with Dvora was great, like you say. It felt very natural with Dvorak, but I don't think the touch typing I learned made me touch type Qwerty properly.

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

This sounds very alluring but having to deal with setting up VIM in every environment or going to a new environment with VIM not set up sounds so painful.

I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK

> 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.

Interestingly enough, the two vim bindings you probably use most, up/down (j/k) are actually positioned right next to each other on a dvorak keyboard. The rest take a bit of getting used to. You'd be surprised how natural vim feels on a dvorak keyboard.

I use Vim and Dvorak. It only took a couple of weeks to get used to. Never felt a need to customise Vim to change any keybindings strong enough to do so. And am happy I didn’t. For all these years I’ve been using them both together with just the default key bindings.

Both vi-style and emacs-style key bindings work well under Dvorak without alteration. (Why are people capitalizing it? It's not an acronym, it's a name.)

I use VIM on Dvorak, having [shift], [:;], [q] next to each other is awesome.

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.

The "fake" arrow keys are nice so you don't have to move your hands. They are pretty decently placed in dvorak though, so it's no issue.

My vimrc has a specific section just for handling this:

    """""""""""" 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

That's all I use for handling dvorak. This has been in my config since I switched to git from hg in 2007, dunno how long before that.

> I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK

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 know maybe 0.5 percent of what vim (neovim these days) can do and between that and a sane config my text editing skills have gotten at least 4 times better compared to a regular text editor. You can just learn the things that matter to you plus how to save and exit.

It's been years since I last used Vim (happy Emacs user now), but I don't see much of an issue, j and k are still next to each other and for moving in a line f, F, t, and T are nicer. Also solidus, of course.

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