3 ms·

> Typing ‘HE’ forced the hand to make a very unnatural sideways twisting motion from the wrist and then back again. Really? On my keyboard, I can simultaneousl

> Typing ‘HE’ forced the hand to make a very unnatural sideways twisting motion from the wrist and then back again. Really? On my keyboard, I can simultaneously place my index finger on the Colemak position of H and my pinky on Shift without any movement of my wrist. I'm on a full-size keyboard with a tenkey and I have smallish hands. Personally, I've found that even on a qwerty keyboard the speed at which I type is usually not the bottleneck, especially when programming.

pklausler 10y ago
It's not about speed, it's about comfort, at least for me.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  I've only learned Dvorak because my wrists started to hurt. With QWERTY, I had a quite odd typing style that had evolved from 2-fingers hunt-and-peck but never got to proper 10-finger typing. This odd style wasn't slow, and I hadn't to look at the keyboard, but my hands used to float all across the keyboard in weird motions, and I suspected it had contributed to my wrist pains. I wasn't able to force myself to learn a proper QWERTY typing - the decades-old muscle memory was a seemingly impenetrable barrier for me. However, a completely different layout (Dvorak) did the trick - thanks to ABCD, after a 2 weeks of "aaaaaaargh I can't type anything, it's really really irritating" hell, I had learned to type acceptably fast, and what's important - with my hands remaining fairly stationary. I don't know if this was another layout, or just a pair of weeks of rest, or that was a pure coincidence, but the pains were gone (haven't had any severe since then) and I enjoy a proper typing style. There was some speed improvement, of course, but this isn't something I care about.
flogic 10y ago
Speed ties to "not awkward". Awkwardness is probably very important. Anytime something is awkward there is a decent chance it will trigger a mental interrupt. Personally, I've been cutting back on anything that adds mental load not related to the thing I'm actually trying to do.

pklausler 10y ago

It's not about speed, it's about comfort, at least for me.

drdaeman 10y ago
I've only learned Dvorak because my wrists started to hurt. With QWERTY, I had a quite odd typing style that had evolved from 2-fingers hunt-and-peck but never got to proper 10-finger typing. This odd style wasn't slow, and I hadn't to look at the keyboard, but my hands used to float all across the keyboard in weird motions, and I suspected it had contributed to my wrist pains. I wasn't able to force myself to learn a proper QWERTY typing - the decades-old muscle memory was a seemingly impenetrable barrier for me. However, a completely different layout (Dvorak) did the trick - thanks to ABCD, after a 2 weeks of "aaaaaaargh I can't type anything, it's really really irritating" hell, I had learned to type acceptably fast, and what's important - with my hands remaining fairly stationary. I don't know if this was another layout, or just a pair of weeks of rest, or that was a pure coincidence, but the pains were gone (haven't had any severe since then) and I enjoy a proper typing style. There was some speed improvement, of course, but this isn't something I care about.

flogic 10y ago

Speed ties to "not awkward". Awkwardness is probably very important. Anytime something is awkward there is a decent chance it will trigger a mental interrupt. Personally, I've been cutting back on anything that adds mental load not related to the thing I'm actually trying to do.