Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

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"Don't worry that you can't type much English with the home row (unless you're using another layout like dvorak)"

This is, in all seriousness, my recommendation for learning to touch type:

Step 1: Switch your layout to Dvorak (or any other sensible layout).

Step 2: Learn to use it.

There's no step 3. Touch typing is only hard because QWERTY is a terrible and stupid layout that encourages you to wander from the home row because too many common keys aren't on the home row.

If you solve that problem directly, there's no "learn to 'actually' touch type" step. In any sensible layout (of which Dvorak is merely one of many, really), you don't have to force yourself to touch type... it's just what your fingers will do on their own.

If your goal is to learn to type correctly, based on what I see of people fighting for years, I seriously think that "Learn Dvorak" is a faster, more effective way to get there than "Learn QWERTY + spend the rest of your life trying to force your brain to do something it quite rationally does not believe is optimal".

People can get emotional about this, so bear in mind whether or not QWERTY is the only "practical" layout to learn because it's the only pervasive one is separate from the question of whether it encourages your hands to wander from the home row. (Which is all-but-proved by the very fact we're having this discussion.)

I am also extremely aware of the expense of learning Dvorak or another layout, having done it myself. I still say it's easier that trying to force QWERTY touch typing, if you want to learn to touch type at all. If you're happy with wandering QWERTY syndrome... and I really have no great arguments about why that's bad... then carry on.

Step 3 is rebinding keys in nearly every program, especially those which are coordinated to be used with a left hand on the keyboard and right on the mouse.

I actually didn't rebind anything. I didn't even rebind vim. That was a bit of a struggle for awhile, but it's fine now. I guess I might do some rebinding for things like movement in games if I played them.

This really shouldn't be downvoted, it's basically the only thing keeping folks from switching. Talking as someone with a super-custom Dvorak vim layout, here-- you'll run into software that just won't work without switching to US.

In practice, the combined strategy of Dvorak+QWERTY command keys, application-specific layout settings, and a rarely-used keybind to swap manually makes this manageable on a day-to-day basis, but it's definitely not ideal. Blame the dumb legacy technology driving keyboards, if you're mad.

I've been using Dvorak for over 10 years. The only 'shortcut' I have is a couple of shell aliases: alias h=ls alias hh=ls -l

I prefer Emacs to Vim though, perhaps that's less affected since shortcut keys are influenced by meaning rather than position? (e.g., Ctrl+N, P, F, B for moving nextline, previousline, forward, backward).

Vim's the worst for this, since it has a mix of the two. hjkl is positional, but then iasdftweruvnp are all memonics, and I'd want to move those. (Insert, After, Substitute, Delete, Forwards, unTill, Word, End, Replace, Undo, Visual, Next, Paste).

Actually, I guess most of the keystrokes are placed by meaning, not position.

Yeah, it actually would not be a big deal except that after you move hjkl, you need to move dhtn, and then... I wound up with a couple of slightly different mnemonics, but not enough to be really confusing if I sit down at a strange terminal.

If you're stuck no the cursor movement keys being on the home row, then it's tough. My solution was to do no remapping and just learn the new locations for hjkl. It actually ends up being not that bad. In dvorak j and k are right next to each other in the left hand and work very similarly to how they work in qwerty. Also, h and l are typed with the index and pinky of the right hand respectively giving a pretty nice left/right mental picture. So I don't think it's bad at all. I also don't use hjkl all that much, preferring bigger movements like w/b, f/F, H/L, {/}, C-d/C-u, C-f/C-b, etc.

Switching back to qwerty in vim is pretty rough for me though. Enough of the mnemonics that I use on a regular basis get translated to muscle memory in my head that it's tough. I used to be able to switch back and forth easily when I was at a job that had me on qwerty keyboards regularly. But now that I'm not I've lost a lot of it.

> This really shouldn't be downvoted, it's basically the only thing keeping folks from switching.

The thing that keeps me from switching is I learned to touch type long before having access to keyboards that could be reconfigured.

While that may be less common now, I suspect lots of people still become proficient keyboarders long before learning how to change keyboard layouts, and at that point switching is a cost rather than a benefit.

Colemak was designed with the goal of keeping the ZXCV shortcut cluster in its QWERTY position. That takes care of the common Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo shortcuts, at least.

Yep, I completely agree with you. The other advantage non-qwerty layouts have is that you can't cheat by looking at the keys, which greatly serves to push you in the right direction.

Side note: After typing exclusively on dvorak for ~10 years now I actually think that it's not the best layout to maximize potential typing speed. (I've never gotten as fast with dvorak as I used to be with qwerty.) Dvorak focuses too much on single key locations and alternating hands. I think to get the maximum speed a layout needs to focus a lot more on runs, making sure the most common n-grams are typeable with out-to-in or in-to-out runs of adjacent fingers in the same hand. I've thought about working on this, but quite a bit of work would be needed to develop a new and more accurate cost model and find a layout that optimizes it--I've got too many other competing interests. But I'd love to see it done.

I have a similar experience to your side note, but I'll say that I wouldn't change from Dvorak for anything. It may or may not change RSI and it may or may not be good for speed, but it's very comfortable for my daily typing tasks so I'm hooked.

I'm somewhat convinced the only reason other layouts are easier to learn touch typing is because most keyboards are in qwerty. Learning to type well is still hard. In fact if you typed well already and decided to switch layouts I believe you'll have a much easier time than a newbie.

I learned Colemak earlier this year. After I reached my old qwerty speed I re-learned how to type in Qwerty. As such I can now type in both layouts at my original speed. Typing in qwerty is really not bad; good enough that I don't really recommend others to change layouts or learn another one. I am also convinced an opinion stating that qwerty is terrible coming from someone who still can't type in it well and naturally is somewhat biased.

I like dvorak and use it all the time, but I think there's another reason for the tendency of dvorak users to become proficient touch typists that doesn't have anything to do with any intrinsic property of dvorak. When you learn dvorak on a qwerty keyboard, there is less temptation to look at your fingers because all the keys are labeled wrong.

"When you learn dvorak on a qwerty keyboard, there is less temptation to look at your fingers because all the keys are labeled wrong."

A property plenty easy to achieve on any keyboard layout, with a little ingenuity (and possibly a butter knife).

haha, maybe! Anyway, when I learned dvorak, I used http://www.typingstudy.com which I think is the key for my fast speed. But maybe I'm mistaken :)

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