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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

While I do agree that the physical layout of the keyboard has a larger impact (my hands love a split keyboard with tenting), QWERTY is objectively a bad layout and almost any alternative layout (dvorak, colemak, workman, etc) will give a huge benefit regardless of what measure you use (finger travel distance, rolls, hand alteration etc).

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If you look at alternative layouts in a vacuum and you base it on things like word frequency or character frequency, I'm certain you're right, but outside of the bubble and when you're interacting with software that all assumes that you're using qwerty and organizes its own keyboard interactions with that assumption, the advantages become much less clear.

In fact, trying to account for that is why colemak uses the zxcv keys where they are, if I'm not mistaken.

So I don't really agree with the notion that you get a huge benefit at all. You are potentially getting some ergonomic benefit in certain contexts (like typing out essays) while at the same time sacrificing ergonomics of keyboard shortcuts you may or may not be able to change and the mental overhead required to remap your muscle memory to fit it.

These tradeoffs are remarkably apparent to me as someone that uses a Kinesis board (and have used a variety of small, bespoke keyboards). There's a lot of tasks that simply aren't suitable for this keyboard, even if I remap the keys with QMK to try to better suit that context. If you need a key to be immediately accessible, having it placed inside a layer just isn't good enough.

With that being said, I'd encourage people to try these things out and see for themselves. I personally don't think they're all that useful, but there's dozens of others that I'm sure swear that using dvorak or workman or colemak or whatever alternative layout changed their life. Just don't expect miracles.

There's always tradeoffs of course.

How beneficial it will be depends on your use-case. I personally use Vim with an alternative layout for instance and have zero problems.

The standard ctrl-c/v/x/z is a consideration but it's perfectly fine to have then on another layer or under a combo.

I really do get a huge benefit, as +90% of my time I type inside Vim with the keyboard. Slightly less efficient shortcuts for rarely used programs just doesn't bother me.

For reference I use a 34 key keyboard using qmk.

Many people have tried alternative layouts and stick with them.

I have not seen many anecdotes where people get used to an alternative layout, and then revert to using QWERTY because they find QWERTY more comfortable to use.

I have seen people go back to QWERTY because the improvement was only marginal and not worth sacrificing a ubiquitous layout for.

(Disclaimer: I use Colemak-DH.)

Let's not kid ourselves: switching to a new layout takes a lot of effort, so many people quit and revert back to qwerty before they've gotten comfortable with the layout.

Other kinds of bias I'd be concerned about: because learning a new layout takes effort, probably there's emotional investment to avoid having to switch (for those who haven't learned another layout); or probably there's emotional investment for those who have learned, such that they'd be less likely to admit the effort is a waste.

If you're goal is ergonomics, the physical layout will get you 90% of the benefits. Ditching qwerty might get you that 10% but at a higher cost since almost all computing is built around qwerty.

I've been QWERTY-free since 2012. I do the layout in firmware so I don't need to change the mapping in the OS. And I use QMK and ZMK and I have a travel board that's bluetooth.

This concern might have been real back on OS/2 and MS-DOS. Not now.

Sure I was just thinking for most people. I just got a ZMK keyboard and I'm I've been practicing Coleman and qwerty. After less than an hour on Coleman, I was struggling on qwerty and had to wait for qwerty to switch back on my brain. Are you able to switch to qwerty with out issues if you need to?

I agree with you but I dread the day I need to change layout and train my brain and my muscle memory for another keyboard layout.

I'm past my 40s- I rather teach my kid to use Dvorak.

The QMK and ZMK projects let you do this in firmware. Programmable boards are going to stick around long after we're gone. At least until Elon sells his brain-to-USB HID.

I’m kinda of the opposite. I think alt-layouts are only a marginal improvement (you can get most of the benefit with a small number of changes), but I think it’s a fun brain teaser.

I first learned Colemak-DH and I am currently trying RSTHD and I am upto 32 WPM in a few days.

In my 40ies.

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