3 ms·

The critical part is what you base your evaluation on. As written in the article, some think same-hand sequences are good, others think they are bad. Some consi

The critical part is what you base your evaluation on. As written in the article, some think same-hand sequences are good, others think they are bad. Some consider the home row the place to by, while others take a broader look at easy to reach places. If you change your evaluation criteria you might find Workman outperforms Dvorak, or the other way around. Personally, I can only say I'm happy with Workman after over a year.

pklausler 10y ago
The benefits of switching from the painful Sholes (QWERTY) layout to anything designed for comfort are huge. The benefits of switching between comfortable layouts are less than the cost of entry, at least for me.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >The benefits of switching from the painful Sholes (QWERTY) layout to anything designed for comfort are huge. Are there really? I find relevant studies lacking, not to mention this: https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html Also the whole DVORAK vs QWERTY thing presupposes we are all 20th century secretaries or novel writers and english at that, when in reality, we as programmers: 1) Have different patterns than people writing text in English (for us .,{}():- etc can be as common as A and E for example -- plus several common shortcuts. 2) Belong to different cultures, not all english. So, when we DO write text, studies rarely say how good an alternative layout is for typing German, French, Greek, Chinese, Russian, etc.
  - pklausler 10y ago
    I'm glad to see skepticism on this claim, and I don't have any good modern UX studies to point to. Anecdotally, I was going home with scary numbness on the backs of my hands and fingers at the ends of days of heavy shell interaction, despite touch-typing. Switching to Dvorak's layout cleared that problem up immediately and it hasn't returned in 24 years.
    - 1123581321 10y ago
      Same. Typing became physically painful. I had an opportunity to go cold turkey on Dvorak. I got to my old speed and the problem has not re-emerged since. I don't know if the ramp-up period was simply slow enough to let my hands get a break and heal. Regardless, I can recommend the process of switching from Qwerty to Dvorak as a cure.
  - Avshalom 10y ago
    Quite. as far as programming (hell even just prose the way I do it) swapping the various sigils into the tyughvbn cluster would save me more contortions than any rearrangement of letters.
    - covekeyboard 10y ago
      This is why my own custom keyboard remapped Alt to another "shift level". So, for example, Alt+s and Alt+d remap to ( and ) respectively on my keyboard. I have all the other special characters on there too. Strangely enough, pressing Alt feels easier to me than pressing shift, so I prefer typing special characters over capital letters.
  - Rovanion 10y ago
    Which is why I recommend putting common programming signs under a modifier key such as Alt-Gr, something like Svorak A5: http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png

pklausler 10y ago

The benefits of switching from the painful Sholes (QWERTY) layout to anything designed for comfort are huge. The benefits of switching between comfortable layouts are less than the cost of entry, at least for me.

coldtea 10y ago
>The benefits of switching from the painful Sholes (QWERTY) layout to anything designed for comfort are huge. Are there really? I find relevant studies lacking, not to mention this: https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html https://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html Also the whole DVORAK vs QWERTY thing presupposes we are all 20th century secretaries or novel writers and english at that, when in reality, we as programmers: 1) Have different patterns than people writing text in English (for us .,{}():- etc can be as common as A and E for example -- plus several common shortcuts. 2) Belong to different cultures, not all english. So, when we DO write text, studies rarely say how good an alternative layout is for typing German, French, Greek, Chinese, Russian, etc.
- pklausler 10y ago
  I'm glad to see skepticism on this claim, and I don't have any good modern UX studies to point to. Anecdotally, I was going home with scary numbness on the backs of my hands and fingers at the ends of days of heavy shell interaction, despite touch-typing. Switching to Dvorak's layout cleared that problem up immediately and it hasn't returned in 24 years.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    Same. Typing became physically painful. I had an opportunity to go cold turkey on Dvorak. I got to my old speed and the problem has not re-emerged since. I don't know if the ramp-up period was simply slow enough to let my hands get a break and heal. Regardless, I can recommend the process of switching from Qwerty to Dvorak as a cure.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  Quite. as far as programming (hell even just prose the way I do it) swapping the various sigils into the tyughvbn cluster would save me more contortions than any rearrangement of letters.
  - covekeyboard 10y ago
    This is why my own custom keyboard remapped Alt to another "shift level". So, for example, Alt+s and Alt+d remap to ( and ) respectively on my keyboard. I have all the other special characters on there too. Strangely enough, pressing Alt feels easier to me than pressing shift, so I prefer typing special characters over capital letters.
- Rovanion 10y ago
  Which is why I recommend putting common programming signs under a modifier key such as Alt-Gr, something like Svorak A5: http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png http://aoeu.info/s/dvorak/images/svorak-A5.png