5 ms·
"[T]he evidence in the standard history of Qwerty versus Dvorak is flawed and incomplete. [..] The most dramatic claims are traceable to Dvorak himself; and the
by donatj 9y ago
"[T]he evidence in the standard history of Qwerty versus Dvorak is flawed and incomplete. [..] The most dramatic claims are traceable to Dvorak himself; and the best-documented experiments, as well as recent ergonomic studies, suggest little or no advantage for the Dvorak keyboard."
It's an urban myth that Dvorak is any better than qwerty.
- rjzzleep 9y agoI thought the urban myth was about Dvorak being faster than qwerty. For english language Dvorak does increase center row usage vs. top and bottom row. And for programming there is programmers dvorak. The absolute worst keyboard layout i've seen for programming is the german layout. Using modeswitch/altgr(yeah i know it's not quite the same) is absolutely terrible.
- jackcouch1 9y agoI'm not sure if Dvorak is really faster, but I do think it keeps your fingers on the home row more. At this point the main reason I prefer Dvorak is that it lets me have more modifier keys on the left side of the keyboard (without moving to the number row).
- k__ 9y agoI program with the German layout, found it pretty okay.
- dx034 9y agoI found it ok until I switched to UK layout. It takes a while to get used to the layout for programming but it does speed up programming a lot for languages that use brackets excessively. Others (e.g. Python) don't really make a difference.
- nether 9y agoI don't think layout matters for speed unless we're talking top 1% of typists. Go on YouTube. Tons of people typing 100+ wpm with two fingers.
- Majora320 9y agoI type 60-70 WPM with 2-4 fingers lol
- shpx 9y agoI used to be around 80 wpm with qwerty, now I'm 65 on dvorak, but it's much more comfortable. It's hard to explain, but it feels satisfying to type. When I think about a word I'll sometimes think about what motions it takes to type it (on dvorak) and it just feels comfortable in my head. No regrets about the loss in typing speed. The worst part about using dvorak is that no software is (or ever will be) designed for dvorak. Vim and emacs still work great, most shortcuts are phonetic and jk are where cv are, so I don't really mind. I have been waiting for someone to sit down and redesign the keyboard layout for programming, and maybe this is it. I've been typing on Programmer Dvorak[0] for 3 over years. [0] https://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ https://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ it comes with most (all?) Linux systems `setxkbmap -layout us -variant dvp`
- jackcouch1 9y agoAwesome. Let me know what you think after you play with it. I'm totally open to making changes.
- unkown-unknowns 9y agoMy experience is similar to yours, except I am not looking for anything else. I switched to Dvorak 8 years ago and I haven't looked back since. My speed was lower and might still be but I don't care, typing is a delight and relative to the amount of time I spend on thinking and reasoning I think the overhead of any loss in typing speed is probably insignificant. Vim is the only keyboard control that matters to me anyway. (Though Vim is far from the only program I use.) I feel it's important to mention that much of my love for Dvorak comes from the grid layout keyboard I've been using for all these years (wore one out though but bought a couple more to replace it), and which remains my primary keyboard both at home and at work.
- todd8 9y agoI've experimented with grid layout; I like the Kinesis Advantsge. Would you mind sharing? Which brand works well for you?
- 9y ago
- melling 9y agoFor Dvorak, aren’t the frequently used keys (for English) under the fingers on the home row? You can measure travel distance of the fingers, for example, on a novel, etc http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main Xah Lee has a heat map: http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_dvorak_layout.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_dvorak_layout.html
- chillacy 9y agoI think the claim is that whatever limits typing speed is not key travel distance, but rather maybe coordination in your brain or some other factor. Anecdotally I would get tired typing qwerty way faster than I do typing dvorak, though some of this is just the fact that my form is much better in dvorak.
- sooheon 9y agoYeah hard to account for that confounding factor. The alt layout is most people's second, learned much more deliberately.
- s_kilk 9y agoThe heat map is interesting in that it shows clearly the reason I moved from Dvorak to Colemak after 5 years of the former: Dvorak has a distinct bias toward the right hand, and particularly the right pinky.
- etplayer 9y ago>It's an urban myth that Dvorak is any better than qwerty. I think you're wrong. The Carpal X keyboard layout optimizer consistently ranks Dvorak as better than QWERTY for "effort" (which takes into account things like finger travel distance and how good we are at using certain fingers). You can see the findings here: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?typing_effort http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?typing_effort Their conclusion was to determine which layout is the best - their own layout, which I use, called QGMLWB was determined to be the one which requires the least typing effort. I'd recommend people try it.
- etplayer 9y agoA quote supporting the advantages of Dvorak: >First, Dvorak is very good at keeping fingers on home row - 71% of keystrokes land there (compare this with 34% for QWERTY). This alone is worth the price of admission. Dvorak bottom row usage is very low at 9% (15% for QWERTY). Dvorak favours the right hand by 14% (QWERTY favours left by 15%). Dvorak has more uniform finger usage and makes greater use of the pinky (18% vs QWERTY's 10%). http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?dvorak http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?dvorak
- limeblack 9y agoWas not the fastest typer in the world a Dvorak user? http://rcranger.mysite.syr.edu/dvorak/ http://rcranger.mysite.syr.edu/dvorak/ Not exactly a study but it can't be ignored in my opinion. Disclosure I am a Dvorak user so I may be biased.
- lstyls 9y agoI get what you're saying, but max(f(x)) isn't a very good way to characterize a sampling distribution. It could be that for very few people, Dvorak is blazingly fast while for the vast majority of experienced typists there is zero (or negative) improvement. I have no idea if Dvorak is better or not, but this data point isn't convincing.
- microcolonel 9y ago> but max(f(x)) isn't a very good way to characterize a sampling distribution That depends greatly on what your goal is. I would appreciate it if max (or something close to it) was the most common for comparing frame rendering latency (inverse of frame rate) measurements. The large number of fast QWERTY typists could be due to the greater number of overall QWERTY typists, who knows.
- lstyls 9y agoThis is not relevant. Frame rendering latency matters because as an end user this effects performance in an obvious and measurable way. The thing you care about depends on the worst case, so it makes sense it that case. I don't type faster because a competitive typist hit a certain wpm.
- userbinator 9y agoWas not the fastest typer in the world a Dvorak user? 150 wpm for 50 min (37,500 key strokes) and attained a speed of 170 wpm using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) system. Her top speed was recorded at 212 wpm. No. http://seanwrona.com/typing.php http://seanwrona.com/typing.php 50 minute typing in English - 174 wpm (870 cpm) - 1st all time (this unofficially breaks Barbara Blackburn's Guinness world record of 150 wpm (750 cpm) over 50 minutes, but is perhaps less impressive because she used a typewriter while I used a computer keyboard). Caveat aside, his peak speed is over 250WPM. If you look at typeracer.com's scores, there are plenty of typists in the 150+ range. I'd also consider myself a fast typist, averaging 150-160 for general English text and have peaked at ~240wpm in short bursts. I use QWERTY exclusively, but on an extremely low-force keyboard.
- nomel 9y agoHow is this relevant to the article? And, you rarely hear of Dvorak typists that will say they switched for speed and stayed for the speed. It’s almost always that they switch for the myth of speed and claims of comfort, but stayed for the comfort.