3 ms·

Humans do not have fins, but Micheal Phelps can still cut through water. That elites can thrive is not a compelling argument when most people just want technolo

Humans do not have fins, but Micheal Phelps can still cut through water. That elites can thrive is not a compelling argument when most people just want technology to get out of the way. An alternative layout with commonly used symbols on the home row makes the QWERTY deficiencies immediately apparent. Significantly less effort required for writing prose when using something like DVORAK.

karmakaze 2y ago
I got into alternate keyboard layouts and developed my own (roughly an optimized NIRO). When I tried using it on my small Surface Go I found that my fingers would 'jam' typing letters close together, so I leave that in QWERTY so it happens much less.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  I can believe it. For a physical keyboard, I would much prefer a layout with a DVORAK-like home row, but probably not for mobile. The imprecision of touch and swiping text entry likely do markedly worse when high frequency characters are on top of each other.
  - paleotrope 2y ago
    I'm sure somebody has created a software keyboard where the more used characters are simply larger than the less used ones.
    - sadeshmukh 2y ago
      I believe software does that, in that characters are disambiguated in part based on previous characters, even without swipe typing. That means each character is mapped to a secondary keyboard layout where certain keys' "hitbox" are enlarged.
- batperson 2y ago
  I found the opposite when I went through a split keyboard phase and did Colemak-DH layout. As far as english goes I found that a lot of words had a smoother "flow" when it comes to finger location. In the end I went back to a regular qwerty because my WPM on split keyboards/colemak-DH was considerably worse even after many months of practice.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    My WPM also dropped, but I kept with it because (1) I actually do very little typing compared to thinking (and had to resort to online typing practice to build up muscle memory), (2) my hands are far more comfortable and don't experience cramps or pains anymore.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Yeah, there is a conflict between "use your very best fingers for everything" versus "spread the work across fingers so that it gets done sooner." I tend to favor the latter.
  - pests 2y ago
    Everyone has their own style I would assume. I've been on a PC for 25ish years now and I still type with 3 or 4 fingers almost all the time. I've tried to be more disciplined but I manage 100ish corrected WPM and it gets the job done, I never find that I'm limited by my typing speed.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      Yeah, I can do 100-120 but that would typically involve something unusual like retyping something I already see on screen. Creative tasks are typically limited by something else. Formal typing classes in middle-school were useless, but over the next summer some form of touch-typing arose anyway from arguing with people on forums and newsgroups. ("Home row? I dunno, I just put my hands wherever feels right.") I have no brain-scan science for this, but it feels like queuing up things into my touch-typing hands frees a different brain-circuit to think ahead a bit more, while at the same time their unfinished task keeps me from being distracted too far off-course. __________ > "Technicians? I somehow pictured you putting all this together with your own hands." > Yenaro spread his hands—pale, long-fingered, and thin—and stared at them as if surprised to find them on the ends of his wrists. "Of course not. Hands are to be hired. Design is the test of the intellect." > "I must disagree. In my experience, hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one's hands, one does not truly know." -- Ceteganda, by Lois McMaster Bujold
- jerf 2y ago
  We've had a few conversations on HN about how QWERTY may not be optimal for mobile swiping, but it's better than the layouts optimized for typing. Dvorak, with all the vowels on the left hand home row, would be terrible for swiping, what with all the English words just a vowel away from each other. As it is the UIO vowel complex is a frequent problem with swiping. I'd like to see U and O moved away from each other, in theory.
  - vonunov 2y ago
    Yes, normal Dvorak is not great for use on a smartphone, unless you usually type with both thumbs. For one thumb, especially swiping, I've found one-handed Dvorak for right hand to be a great fit. Works well for me on Multiling O Keyboard with vowel omission enabled.
kreyenborgi 2y ago
Pretty sure Micheal Phelps has fins though
perching_aix 2y ago
I really don't think people who type slowly do so because of QWERTY. Anecdotally, my dad basically isn't able to develop muscle memory for the key locations and will frequently revert to the "scan and then press with one finger" method. You could give him any layout and he would still type slowly. Pretty sure even an alphabetical order would trip him up, because it'd need to be broken into multiple rows, so he'd need muscle memory again. And while this is speculative, given how close typing speeds seem on a cursory search between layouts, this suggests to me that the vast majority of the performance comes not from the layout, but from touch typing and effective use of multiple hands and fingers at the same time. All layout agnostic skills. This is not to say that on an input method level, things cannot be further improved. I sometimes see stenography [0] related software and demonstrations on YouTube for example. It also isn't to say that there cannot be a benefit health wise (i.e. ergonomically) to alternative layouts. It's just that for speed I'm not convinced it affects much, and so I think it's the wrong thing to try and change. Especially considering that sometimes things that are suboptimal can be better by being the standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fumufumu 2y ago
  [dead]
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  I can average over 85wpm when typing English sentences in typing games. But outside that, I find I can’t really think meaningfully and simultaneously type that quickly for a sustained amount of time. Maybe very fast typing speeds are more useful to stenographers?
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    I would agree with something like that, that e.g. it's only useful when you have a set text ready that you want typed in. Personally I clock in around 110 wpm at my fastest (in English), and I'll only reach that in practice when I have intense disagreements with people over the internet (colleagues, friends or randoms). Outside of that, it's barely useful.
queuebert 2y ago
Dvorak is way more comfortable and is very fast for me, but its emphasis on alternating hands causes me to frequently invert pairs of letters when typing fast, probably because my left and right brain isn't perfectly coordinated. I have considered switching to Colemak, which is supposed to have less of that, but as a 100+ wpm typer of Dvorak it really is diminishing returns.
- anthropodie 2y ago
  > causes me to frequently invert pairs of letters when typing fast I am a Dvorak user and this happens to me too. I thought it happens when I'm stressed out.
- opan 2y ago
  Colemak has flaws of its own, bandaged over with "Mod-DH", but I'd say just skip it and go to Workman. It aims for 50/50 hand usage unlike other layouts, but it does not encourage the constant alteration like Dvorak. Common bigrams like "th" and "en" are easy to type with one hand, encouraging smooth finger-roll motions. It doesn't have Dvorak's `ls -l` problem. I personally went QWERTY -> Dvorak -> Workman. While I spent under 2 years with Dvorak, I have been using Workman for over 3 years now and think I'll likely stick with it. There are other crazy layouts like QGMLWB and Halmak, but I think their higher on-paper efficiency comes at the cost of other things, and Workman seemed like it struck the best balance to me. I had comfort/ergonomics in mind and was trying to get away from some hand pain which seemed to only switch hands going from QWERTY to Dvorak, but is now gone with Workman.
  - __mharrison__ 2y ago
    When I was deciding on a layout many moons ago, I looked at Colemak and Workman but decided on an offshore of those... Norman. It seems that keyboard layouts have evolved quite a bit since those days. I think we're I to adopt my split columnar ergonomic keyboard now I would just stick with qwerty. I think the keyboard helped me more than the layout.
    - 2y ago

karmakaze 2y ago

I got into alternate keyboard layouts and developed my own (roughly an optimized NIRO). When I tried using it on my small Surface Go I found that my fingers would 'jam' typing letters close together, so I leave that in QWERTY so it happens much less.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
I can believe it. For a physical keyboard, I would much prefer a layout with a DVORAK-like home row, but probably not for mobile. The imprecision of touch and swiping text entry likely do markedly worse when high frequency characters are on top of each other.
- paleotrope 2y ago
  I'm sure somebody has created a software keyboard where the more used characters are simply larger than the less used ones.
  - sadeshmukh 2y ago
    I believe software does that, in that characters are disambiguated in part based on previous characters, even without swipe typing. That means each character is mapped to a secondary keyboard layout where certain keys' "hitbox" are enlarged.
batperson 2y ago
I found the opposite when I went through a split keyboard phase and did Colemak-DH layout. As far as english goes I found that a lot of words had a smoother "flow" when it comes to finger location. In the end I went back to a regular qwerty because my WPM on split keyboards/colemak-DH was considerably worse even after many months of practice.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  My WPM also dropped, but I kept with it because (1) I actually do very little typing compared to thinking (and had to resort to online typing practice to build up muscle memory), (2) my hands are far more comfortable and don't experience cramps or pains anymore.
Terr_ 2y ago
Yeah, there is a conflict between "use your very best fingers for everything" versus "spread the work across fingers so that it gets done sooner." I tend to favor the latter.
- pests 2y ago
  Everyone has their own style I would assume. I've been on a PC for 25ish years now and I still type with 3 or 4 fingers almost all the time. I've tried to be more disciplined but I manage 100ish corrected WPM and it gets the job done, I never find that I'm limited by my typing speed.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Yeah, I can do 100-120 but that would typically involve something unusual like retyping something I already see on screen. Creative tasks are typically limited by something else. Formal typing classes in middle-school were useless, but over the next summer some form of touch-typing arose anyway from arguing with people on forums and newsgroups. ("Home row? I dunno, I just put my hands wherever feels right.") I have no brain-scan science for this, but it feels like queuing up things into my touch-typing hands frees a different brain-circuit to think ahead a bit more, while at the same time their unfinished task keeps me from being distracted too far off-course. __________ > "Technicians? I somehow pictured you putting all this together with your own hands." > Yenaro spread his hands—pale, long-fingered, and thin—and stared at them as if surprised to find them on the ends of his wrists. "Of course not. Hands are to be hired. Design is the test of the intellect." > "I must disagree. In my experience, hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one's hands, one does not truly know." -- Ceteganda, by Lois McMaster Bujold
jerf 2y ago
We've had a few conversations on HN about how QWERTY may not be optimal for mobile swiping, but it's better than the layouts optimized for typing. Dvorak, with all the vowels on the left hand home row, would be terrible for swiping, what with all the English words just a vowel away from each other. As it is the UIO vowel complex is a frequent problem with swiping. I'd like to see U and O moved away from each other, in theory.
- vonunov 2y ago
  Yes, normal Dvorak is not great for use on a smartphone, unless you usually type with both thumbs. For one thumb, especially swiping, I've found one-handed Dvorak for right hand to be a great fit. Works well for me on Multiling O Keyboard with vowel omission enabled.

kreyenborgi 2y ago

Pretty sure Micheal Phelps has fins though

perching_aix 2y ago

I really don't think people who type slowly do so because of QWERTY. Anecdotally, my dad basically isn't able to develop muscle memory for the key locations and will frequently revert to the "scan and then press with one finger" method. You could give him any layout and he would still type slowly. Pretty sure even an alphabetical order would trip him up, because it'd need to be broken into multiple rows, so he'd need muscle memory again. And while this is speculative, given how close typing speeds seem on a cursory search between layouts, this suggests to me that the vast majority of the performance comes not from the layout, but from touch typing and effective use of multiple hands and fingers at the same time. All layout agnostic skills. This is not to say that on an input method level, things cannot be further improved. I sometimes see stenography [0] related software and demonstrations on YouTube for example. It also isn't to say that there cannot be a benefit health wise (i.e. ergonomically) to alternative layouts. It's just that for speed I'm not convinced it affects much, and so I think it's the wrong thing to try and change. Especially considering that sometimes things that are suboptimal can be better by being the standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fumufumu 2y ago
[dead]
BobbyTables2 2y ago
I can average over 85wpm when typing English sentences in typing games. But outside that, I find I can’t really think meaningfully and simultaneously type that quickly for a sustained amount of time. Maybe very fast typing speeds are more useful to stenographers?
- perching_aix 2y ago
  I would agree with something like that, that e.g. it's only useful when you have a set text ready that you want typed in. Personally I clock in around 110 wpm at my fastest (in English), and I'll only reach that in practice when I have intense disagreements with people over the internet (colleagues, friends or randoms). Outside of that, it's barely useful.

queuebert 2y ago

Dvorak is way more comfortable and is very fast for me, but its emphasis on alternating hands causes me to frequently invert pairs of letters when typing fast, probably because my left and right brain isn't perfectly coordinated. I have considered switching to Colemak, which is supposed to have less of that, but as a 100+ wpm typer of Dvorak it really is diminishing returns.

anthropodie 2y ago
> causes me to frequently invert pairs of letters when typing fast I am a Dvorak user and this happens to me too. I thought it happens when I'm stressed out.
opan 2y ago
Colemak has flaws of its own, bandaged over with "Mod-DH", but I'd say just skip it and go to Workman. It aims for 50/50 hand usage unlike other layouts, but it does not encourage the constant alteration like Dvorak. Common bigrams like "th" and "en" are easy to type with one hand, encouraging smooth finger-roll motions. It doesn't have Dvorak's `ls -l` problem. I personally went QWERTY -> Dvorak -> Workman. While I spent under 2 years with Dvorak, I have been using Workman for over 3 years now and think I'll likely stick with it. There are other crazy layouts like QGMLWB and Halmak, but I think their higher on-paper efficiency comes at the cost of other things, and Workman seemed like it struck the best balance to me. I had comfort/ergonomics in mind and was trying to get away from some hand pain which seemed to only switch hands going from QWERTY to Dvorak, but is now gone with Workman.
- __mharrison__ 2y ago
  When I was deciding on a layout many moons ago, I looked at Colemak and Workman but decided on an offshore of those... Norman. It seems that keyboard layouts have evolved quite a bit since those days. I think we're I to adopt my split columnar ergonomic keyboard now I would just stick with qwerty. I think the keyboard helped me more than the layout.
  - 2y ago