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The QWERTY myth
- pmichaud 17y agotl;dr: it's a wordy but alright article about how the idea of an inferior product winning because it got a head start is a myth that has no actual evidence. QWERTY vs DVORAK is one example of this myth, but it's not central to the piece, actually.
- paulgb 17y agoMoreover, it seems to assume that being lucky is the same as being first. Providing examples of second-comers who were successful (VHS, DOS) is not a sufficient argument that luck doesn't matter in markets. Interesting read, though.
- Semiapies 17y agoMost claims of "luck" don't hold up when examined closely. There are rather few cases of some technology being superior in every conceivable way to its active competitor; usually, each has relative pros and cons. Beta wasn't superior in every way to VHS - at every point while they were still earnestly competing, VHS tapes had longer run times. Early Beta tapes only lasted one hour, not even letting you record an entire movie. (ETA: It was very popular to record on LP and SLP modes in VHS, further reducing quality to get extra recording time. Recording fidelity wasn't a winning factor.) Almost as bad, Sony waited a long time to license the format, turning away interested manufacturers who then produced VHS machines. End result? A (more) open format that was both more available and distinctly superior in an key aspect won out. Not exactly a roll of the dice.
- ComputerGuru 17y agoAt first, looking at the scrollbar I thought you may have been harsh in your judgement "It's not that long" I said. But then I realized how closely packed the paragraphs were, how many sentences each had, and just how small the font was, I thought, "He has a point." Then when I scrolled to the end for the heck of it and I saw the "1 2 3 4" links, I swore I'd come back and upvote you :)
- pavel_lishin 17y agoIncidentally, I'm now glad that I'm not weird for reading the comments first, and the story second. Or, at least, that I'm not alone.
- ComputerGuru 17y agoI always do... and if there are many comments then I'll open the link in another tab and flip between them. Seriously, the comments are why I check HN first and Techmeme/other news second. I think in another post it turned out that majority of HNers here do the same.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago[June 1996] Edit: this comment score has ranged up to three or four points and back down to zero. Is it not relevant to point out that an article was published 14 years ago?
- william-newman 17y agoIt depends on what point you think you're making. (And perhaps you should make that point explicitly, so that I don't need to guess it before criticizing it, but if I'm guessing wrong, I apologize in advance.) If you are arguing out that an article from 1996 not timely, your argument is "relevant" but not necessarily correct. Note that the thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062031 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062031 was on the front page when I first noticed this article. It contained a comment linking to the 1996 article. I don't know why the the 1996 article became a standalone thread instead of just a comment on the 1062031 thread, but it might be that someone who read the 1062031 comment found the 1996 article surprisingly worthwhile. IMO, the 1996 article (and even more the 1991ish "Fable of the Keys" academic journal article which preceded it) remain timely because both QWERTY-is-superior and QWERTY-demonstrates-market-failure stories are remarkably hardy perennials, presented as established fact without acknowledging the Liebowitz/Margolis counterargument. (E.g., _Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations_ by David Walsh (2006), carries approving blurbs from _The Financial Times_ and _The Economist_ on its cover, and should be easy to find in a library, maybe even a chain bookstore. "Paul David" and QWERTY appear in the index many times, but Liebowitz and Margolis do not.)
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoMy point is simply that the publication date provides some important context for the contents of the essay.
- j_baker 17y agoFor the record, here's the response to that article: http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html
- wglb 17y agoSo are there any reliable studies that show 1) the superiority of one over the other or 2) the superiority of one over the other for programming?
- Semiapies 17y agoLast time I checked, there weren't any studies showing the superiority of the Dvorak layout that Dvorak himself wasn't involved with. What's the story on the "KEYTIME" study alluded to in the response above?
- zefhous 17y agoI don't know of any recent studies, haven't really looked, but I've been typing in Dvorak for about two years and this is my take on it. 1. I don't think the superiority of one or the other is really the issue here. The issue is making the switch. Those studies are addressing whether it's worth it to switch. The bottom line is that Dvorak is more efficient in terms of movement. It's optimized for typing in English (other romance languages are quite similar) and QWERTY just isn't. 2. From personal experience, I think that the mappings of punctuation are superior in Dvorak. I especially like having the dash and underscore easily accessible (next to Return) for programming. I also find punctuation more natural overall in Dvorak.
- photomatt 17y agoI've been typing Dvorak over 10 years now and more than anything I appreciate the comfort. Even though I type all day long I've never had a typing-related hand problem.
- kaddar 17y agoI'm a bit irked by the conclusion here: "Apparently the typewriter example is of such importance to many writers because it can so easily persuade people that an interventionist technology policy is necessary. How else to explain its continued use in this literature? Since an interventionist technology policy is no more likely to benefit consumers than are the myriad other government interventions in the market, we should not be surprised that good examples are largely fictional." I don't see how you can infer that because the basis for an argument of government intervention by some writers is flawed, that government intervention is flawed. Regardless of whether or not government intervention is the right idea, it seems strange for a magazine based on reason to make the claim : "A → ~B" is true, But A is false, therefore B is true.
- Nwallins 17y agoI don't think Reason is saying that this example proves that gov't intervention is flawed. I think they take it as a premise that gov't intervention is generally flawed, and the conclusion here is that we have an example of champions of gov't intervention disingenuously promoting this phenomenon as an example of why gov't intervention is needed.
- jacobolus 17y agoThe problem is that I don’t personally know of any “big-government” proponents who use QWERTY as an example of how regulation is necessary (only that they say it proves that markets can have path-dependency, and inefficiencies, &c., which is true whether this example holds or not).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- randallsquared 17y ago"Since an interventionist technology policy is no more likely to benefit consumers than are the myriad other government interventions in the market[...]" This seems to imply that they're taking "government intervention is flawed" as a given for the argument, rather than a conclusion. This isn't surprising, since _Reason_ is pretty libertarian.
- franticromantic 17y agoI'm surprised the article doesn't mention (or refute if need be) one of the "tales" i have heard for why QWERTYUIOP is the top row: you can spell TYPEWRITER using these letters, which was a neat demonstration for potential buyers, back when the name for this new technology was up for grabs...
- metaguri 17y agoqwerty and dvorak are open standards. beta and vhs are licensable. windows and mac os are retail products. although all three pairs are "competitors" in a sense, i don't think it's reasonable at all to compare their adoption by the market.
- parbo 17y agoQWERTY was not designed to slow typists down. It was designed to maximize the typing speed without the types(?) getting stuck. This is not the fastest layout now, but was the fastest for mechanical typewriters.
- huherto 17y agoIs this the case of the metric system vs English system? IMHO, the metric system is superior, but it is too expensive to change in the US. Or driving on the left or driving on the right. In this case both are similar but it is desirable to have a worldwide standard.
- martin_valiente 17y agoIt wasn't too expensive to change in the rest of the world, though.
- cookiecaper 17y agoThe article seems to assume that social factors like product prevalence should have no bearing on the actual ultimate economic benefits of the dominant player, and that's silly, in my opinion. We've only seen it more and more often; something may be technically better, but there's more than technical consideration in choosing a product, and if the newer product can't overcome the social inertia associated with the old product, then it doesn't offer a net benefit. People choose PHP because there is an abundance of PHP programmers and businessmen want to stiff people on pay more than they want a good interpreter running their software. People choose Windows because the system is familiar and all of the software they know, often niche, rare, or unmaintained, works correctly on it. And so on. And then there are instances where the consumers don't really have much say, like Blu-ray v. HD-DVD. They were well about even until the one supergiant corporation (Sony) swooped in with extra incentives for the other supergiant corporations (movie sudios) to get them to choose Blu-ray over HD-DVD, even though HD-DVD is ultimately superior. So I sympathize with their intention to preserve faith in free markets, but their postulation that markets always make the right choice technically is silly. There are many other factors, including retraining costs, meddling by big players, etc., that can effect the ultimate dominance of a product.
- j_baker 17y agoI don't necessarily agree with the idea, but there is an economic theory that essentially states that the market is always right given that it has perfect information. You can agree or disagree with that theory, but I don't think what they're saying is necessarily absurd.
- zck 17y agoEven if you hold that theory, there's an implicit limit as t->infinity. Certainly if a new keyboard that's objectively better was introduced today, by tomorrow it wouldn't have >50% marketshare.
- joblessjunkie 17y agoI disagree that this article assumes that product prevalence has "no bearing at all". That would be silly. Rather, I think it merely demonstrates that product prevalence is not the only factor, and often not even the most important one. It dismisses the popular delusion that early success is all that is required to become an entrenched, inferior monopoly. When high profile figures with political influence fall prey to these delusions -- even in the face of contrary evidence -- it bears a detailed criticism.