4 ms·
I am one of the few people out there who has: started on Dvorak, switched to Colemak, switched to Qwerty, and then switched back to Dvorak. During each switch,
by teilo 10y ago
I am one of the few people out there who has: started on Dvorak, switched to Colemak, switched to Qwerty, and then switched back to Dvorak. During each switch, I stuck with it until I was >100WPM.
My results: Every time I switched, my speed and accuracy improved.
Here is my conclusion: As long as your layout is a reasonably useable layout (which all of the above are), it doesn't matter. If your speed increases, it has nothing to do with the layout. It is because by switching your layout, you are forcing your brain to re-train, and in the process are eliminating bad habits, and increasing your focus on speed and accuracy.
The ability of the brain to adapt far exceeds any intrinsic advantage of one keyboard over another. Ergo, the keyboard layout wars are meaningless.
The only advantage one layout may have over another is ergonomic - i.e., for those who are especially prone to RMI, the (slight) edge of one layout over another might make a difference. Even then, the difference is minimal enough that it may not matter.
- antisthenes 10y ago> Here is my conclusion: As long as your layout is a reasonably useable layout (which all of the above are), it doesn't matter. If your speed increases, it has nothing to do with the layout. It is because by switching your layout, you are forcing your brain to re-train, and in the process are eliminating bad habits, and increasing your focus on speed and accuracy. I think anyone with a bit of common sense will conclude the same thing. Because every time you switch you are specifically focusing on speed and accuracy improvements, but even if you never switched layouts and put in the same amount of time training your typing skills, you would have seen improvements over your baseline. Maybe not as much as when switching layouts, however. These issues are also not common. I don't have the hard numbers about how many people train their typing skills specifically, but my suspicion is that it is a astonishingly small fraction of people who use computers. The people who go so far as to switch layouts in pursuit of typing skill specifically are likely an even smaller subset.
- teilo 10y agoI agree. Those who insist that one (reasonable) layout is sufficiently better than another enough to bother switching are suffering from confirmation bias. As far as switching layouts in pursuit of an improvement, I imagine this depends upon the person. In my case, at least, the repeated switching forced a complete break. I could not easily fall into bad habits because I was exerting so much effort just in retraining my finger memory. In this regard it may be more of a brain hack.