9 ms·

Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)

70 points by kens 1y ago

comrade1234 1y ago
Yeah but with QWERTY you can type out the word 'typewriter' using only the top row of the keyboard; so if you're a typewriter salesman QWERTY is the way to go. (Been using Dvorak for 25 years now. Doesn't matter what the physical keyboard layout is - currently I'm using a Swiss layout)
- lagniappe 1y ago
  There are no more typewriter salesmen.
  - anon84873628 1y ago
    I believe this was a reference to one of the origin myths discussed in the article.
- Terretta 1y ago
  > Yeah but This is in the article.
garaetjjte 1y ago
http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  This seems to be a more in-depth treatment of the advantages of QWERTY in the typewriter mechanics contemporary to its introduction.
fsiefken 1y ago
I feel the Dvorak layout has a bug. In both English and my native language, the letter 'I' occurs much more frequently than 'U', so I've switched the 'U' and 'I' keys. Does anyone know why this issue seems to have been overlooked by August Dvorak & William Dealey, or was it by design? Perhaps it's to make typing the relatively common English digraph 'ou' a comfortable inward roll, but for me, that doesn't outweigh stretching my left index finger all the time reaching for the I.
- opan 1y ago
  The Workman layout (much newer, to be fair) "solves" this. Right hand homerow is NEOI, with U on the top row and pressed by the middle finger. I've been using Workman for a few years and would recommend it. I used Dvorak for maybe 1.5-2 years before it.
- mechanicum 1y ago
  It’s common niggle but, as far as I know, nobody is sure of the precise rationale for placing every key, only the broad explanations of the layout that Dvorak published and promoted. The layout wasn’t based only on letter frequency but they attempted to account also for bigram frequency, frequency of repetition within words, frequency with which words are used, and with an objective of rhythmic alternation between hands. Consider also that it was developed in the 20s and 30s. Nowadays you could throw some moderately hefty compute at almost everything of note written in the English language and come back to an error-free analysis after lunch, but who knows how representative was the corpus they analysed, painstakingly and manually. It might have made perfect sense with their data set. Ultimately, the English language didn’t evolve to be easy to type, there will always be compromises somewhere, and the English of today isn’t the English of a century ago anyway. I imagine you’d get quite a different layout if you based it on Gen Z text messages or something. Personally, I can’t help but note that Dvorak’s first name was August.
antiquark 1y ago
In a tech support scenario, Dvorak is always troublesome. You sit down to type at someone's computer, and random characters start popping out.
- ghaff 1y ago
  In general, even if it may not be "optimal," significantly non-standard keyboards (yes, Mac isn't quite like Windows) is IMO more trouble than it's worth.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Back to the author's point: "good enough" is the bar, when we are talking about a choice that impacts millions of users. Changing "good enough" to "optimal" requires gigantic costs in retraining and redesign, and simply isn't worth it.
- opan 1y ago
  People make this argument a lot, but you should optimize for the most common situation before an edge case. I am usually at my own PC/keyboard and I greatly enjoy my weird keyboard and layout. I can't type qwerty as well as I used to, but I rarely have to. (If I had to do it more I'd probably retrain it to make switching back and forth less troublesome). It reminds me also of people who swear by using default settings in their editor or other programs so they can feel at home anywhere. Yeah, that's sort of a benefit, but I don't think it outweighs optimizing your workflow at your own machine. I had a friend who used a split keyboard, blank keycaps, and a very odd layout (QGMLWB or BEAKL2 I think) at work. IIRC he said he kept a second normal keyboard at his desk for when someone would come by to pair program. This is sorta the inverse of your scenario. I guess he'd need to carry his keyboard to someone else's desk, or just type slower.
  - anon84873628 1y ago
    The only time I have to use QWERTY is the occasional touch screen kiosk or something. And you're not exactly touch typing an essay in that scenario. Back in the in-person days when sharing a keyboard with a coworker was more common, you have the very handy switcher icon in the taskbar.
grim_io 1y ago
I've tried to switch to Dvorak, but after a year I was just tired of the universally shitty default keybinding experience. Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX. Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.
- opan 1y ago
  To give a contrasting viewpoint, I don't think you need to change your per-program keybinds. I've used vim with qwerty, dvorak, and Workman. I never rebound hjkl or anything else. The letters are in another spot, which you have to get used to... just like you're already doing to type words at all. Plus, in the case of vim you'll probably use stuff like e and w and search to get around faster a lot of the time anyway. As for games, I always rebind everything, or play with controller. It's a one-time thing per-game and then you're comfortable and can also use an in-game chat without trouble. Plus you can use this chance to switch to ESDF-style (the equivalent in your layout, so RSHT for me) controls from WASD controls so your fingers can be in the normal homerow position.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  I have a new keyboard with a physical switch on it to switch keyboard layouts / settings, wonder if I should give it a try sometime. But, same issue, I switch between typing, gaming and programming. Switching to dvorak would mean I would also need to remap all my applications.
- pmarreck 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45102335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45102335 On Colemak, WASD becomes WARS. What’s not to like? :)
- tom_ 1y ago
  The only particularly bad case I've found is v/w/z being right next to one another, which can be annoying. Still, I think I've won out overall. I spend a lot more time typing text than I do invoking keyboard shortcuts. Regarding games, switching keyboard layouts in Windows 10/11 is thankfully super easy. (And some games do get it right, and the bindings go by physical position, so they just fall into place - though personally I've never liked this, because I don't really know where any of the Dvorak keys are individually, for non-text purposes. I'd rather switch to QWERTY and then I can look at the labels on the keys to figure out where to put my fingers.)
alpaca128 1y ago
The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others. These things are more significant than qwerty vs dvorak. Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.
- k__ 1y ago
  "The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text." To be fair, that single key is used rather excessively compared to the rest.
  - alpaca128 1y ago
    That key makes up about 15% in English text, and it could be covered by 10% of fingers but instead it's 20%. Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. Altough I haven't looked at actual keypress stats and how those are distributed across fingers. Might be interesting to look into. On my keyboard I cover six keys with my two thumbs. It eliminates almost all hand movement and guess what, I feel a difference in my pinky fingers but not in the thumbs. I'm not saying every keyboard should be like this, but I think on a large scale you can probably improve wirst and hand health in the population by making a few small tweaks in how keys are arranged.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      > Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal. Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically. I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.
pmarreck 1y ago
Decided to try Colemak-DH after reading this article and googling: https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-changing-my-keyboard-layout-1e21b97f8cba https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-cha... The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.
- gwd 1y ago
  So did you actually get any faster? I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors. On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience. What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?
  - 1123581321 1y ago
    I type Dvorak around my old qwerty speed. It’s probably not possible to be faster. For really fast qwerty typists, the brain has multiple fingers with the right hand contortions in motion, hitting keys in order, just in time. Dvorak eliminated hand pain by reducing motion, but it didn’t give my brain the ability to orchestrate my fingers with tighter timing.
    - horacemorace 1y ago
      The less-movement thing is also why I switched. Wrist pain instantly gone and never returned. Qwerty is torturous.
  - angiolillo 1y ago
vintermann 1y ago
I don't have a particular beef in the great Dvorak vs. QWERTY debate. But I really wish I had a brain which could do things like acquire muscle memory fluency in one keyboard layout without losing it in another. Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... I feel like I'm not using that much of my regular qwerty muscle memory, and what's optimal for a swiping keyboard is probably quite different from what's optimal for a typing keyboard.
- angiolillo 1y ago
  > I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... Perhaps, but as someone who has been proficient in QWERTY, Dvorak, and Colemak, and who now uses Colemak-DH I can say that I leave my phone and small tablet keyboards on QWERTY. The separation of common letters in QWERTY forces your finger to move farther when swiping, but that provides a bit more distinguishing information for identifying words. When I tried swiping with Colemak and Dvorak my finger basically scrubbed back and forth across the home row and words were often mis-identified. There are slightly improved swiping input methods like 8pen, Typewise, Hero, etc but if you are entering enough text to be able to amortize their learning costs you might be better off getting a portable Bluetooth keyboard or just using voice dictation.
  - anon84873628 1y ago
    Same here. I adopted Dvorak as a youth, so when I got my first smartphone I put the keyboard in Dvorak. That only lasted a few days for two reasons: 1) What you said about the mistakes. It is so much easier to fat finger in a way that makes autocorrect clueless. 2) The muscle memory doesn't translate at all anyway. Obvious in retrospect, but typing with your thumbs is a completely unrelated skill to touch typing. Turns out both live separately and equally in my brain.
    - stevage 1y ago
      Huh, I do use Dvorak on my phone. I have a weird phone typing style with my left thumb and my right index finger. My biggest issue is how often I hit '.' instead of 'p' for some reason.
IAmBroom 1y ago
According to this article, "a 1936 book called Typewriting Behavior" made "comparisons of the new keyboard to a jeep and the old one to an ox". Jeeps were invented in 1941. Some origin theories of the name date back as far as WW I (but for recruits, not vehicles). If the author truly used this comparison in 1936 it would be a tremendous citation for the word's origin. Or perhaps the comparison was made in a later edition of the book. Don't know.
- tylerflick 1y ago
  This is not the first historical inaccuracy I’ve noticed from this site.
- goosedragons 1y ago
  Popeye introduced a character named "Eugene the Jeep" in 1936. Could have also been the origin of Jeep for the vehicle.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Yes, that's one of the popular theories. I personally prefer reuse of the existing word "jeep" meaning "new recruit" to mean "new vehicle". But that's just an opinion.
- mechanicum 1y ago
  I think they mixed up their sources. The jeep/ox comparison appears to be from the 1944 US Navy report: https://archive.org/details/APracticalExperimentInSimplifiedKeyboardRetraining/page/n24/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/APracticalExperimentInSimplified... (Typewriting Behavior, for the curious: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74878/page/n11/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74878/page/n11...)
dmaa 1y ago
I was motivated to learn Dvorak in order to get rid of bad keyboard habits. And happily stuck to it. Not sure that I type any faster, but it feels somehow as a more rhytmical, much more pleasant experience.
- kesslern 1y ago
  This mirrors my experience. When I was a teenager I could type rather quickly using only two fingers on each hand. I figured I'd be typing a lot my whole life and it'd be easier to re-train proper typing habits on a whole new layout rather than trying to adapt my QWERTY habits I picked up while playing Runescape in elementary school. It took about a month to learn, but on the side it largely fixed my QWERTY habits too, and I can freely switch between them pretty easily.
- kqr 1y ago
  The rhythmic feeling is Dvorak's hand alternation. I use Colemak because it is better for my native tongue, but I really would have preferred the rhythmic typing of Dvorak had it worked as well for other languages.
p0w3n3d 1y ago
I tried to convert to Dvorak. I even switched my keycaps, but when I started learning with linux application, I finished at level 3. It required me to write three different letters. When there was 1 - it was okay. When 2 - quite nice. But 3 - it made me feel pain in the back and in the brain. It felt like something was going very wrong with my nervous system. I had to quit.
- adrian_b 1y ago
  It is likely that you did not have enough patience. When planning to switch between keyboard layouts, you must be prepared to allocate at least a week in which you will not have to type anything useful at the computer, because initially your typing speed will drop tremendously and you must be able to resist the temptation of reverting to Qwerty or whichever is the layout used previously. After a week of practice, using only the new key layout for everything, you should be able to use a computer for normal tasks, but still you will be much slower than before. After a month, you should recover your typing speed and begin to realize that typing has become much more comfortable. It is preferable to not switch the key caps. Even if you have never achieved blind touch typing on Qwerty, it is much easier to achieve it on Dvorak and this can be a benefit of switching the keyboard layouts. At least for me, the assignment of letters to keys has been much easier to memorize for Dvorak than for Qwerty, being more logical. Of course, after enough practice, muscle memory will take over and you will no longer be aware of the key assignments.
Ajedi32 1y ago
I tried Dvorak for a while but gave up after I realized: 1. Not only are the key positions for typing different, but all the keyboard shortcuts I know needed to be re-learned too, and were often in much worse locations (as just one of many problems, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are no longer next to each other) 2. I still need to be good with QWERTY because basically everything uses it. It's a shame, because it does seem more efficient (you can type a lot of words without having to move your fingers from the home row), but I just felt like it was too much work for too little gain.
- anon84873628 1y ago
  Not only are Ctl+C and Ctl+V not next to each other, but they move next to other shortcuts that are annoying to mis-hit, like the one to close a browser tab... Remapping the shortcuts is possible but too much effort; I just live with it. Fortunately, modern video games seem to understand different layouts and automatically change their input to match the actual finger placement rather than what they QWERTY letters would be.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  It is one of the things I like about Colemak that it takes into account QWERTY's dominance in computers and intentionally doesn't move a lot a shortcut keys and punctuation. Semicolon is the most obvious punctuation mark that does move, most of the rest stay where they are. The big list of shortcut keys that stay the same place includes AZXCVBMWQ. XCV not moving is especially a big deal, as you also mention copy and paste as key shortcut examples. In general Colemak doesn't move keys to radically far from their QWERTY positions (many stay on the same finger, even), so I've heard using it and QWERTY together isn't too bad. In my personal case, I had a terrible QWERTY form and realized I don't have to do anything but "hunt-and-peck" in QWERTY when using other people's machines. I may feel a bit like an idiot doing it, but it turns out, most people don't even notice if you touch type or hunt and peck (partly because so many more people hunt and peck than you tend to realize; even in a world where QWERTY touch typing has to be taught in schools, I think it is still a skill like Cursive that you think everyone else uses once you learn it, but you forget how hard it was to learn in the first place). It's more "my guilt" that I "use QWERTY poorly" than anything anyone else actually cares about.
zibzob 1y ago
For everyone complaining about the issues with app shortcuts when using Dvorak, the solution is to use a keymap that switches to QWERTY when you hold down the CTRL or CMD key. It is a bit unfortunate that common CLI commands (`ls` is the worst offender) and semicolon usage in programming languages are designed around QWERTY, but I still prefer Dvorak.
glxxyz 1y ago
I switched to Dvorak about 27 years ago. And I switched back to Qwerty about 26.75 years ago. I got to the point where I could comfortably touch-type in Dvorak to about the same speed as I could Qwerty. While Dvorak was a slightly better layout ergonomically, it wasn't good enough to justify the frustration of switching to a computer that I didn't own at work. I've heard that some people can switch easily and touch-type on both layouts, but I couldn't.
- kqr 1y ago
  I mean, switching to a non-owned computer will be frustrating when you're used to Dvorak, because you're used to a more ergonomical layout. I touch-type both Colemak and Qwerty fine, but I still sigh a little internally any time I have to use the inferior layout for more than a few minutes.
  - mlx0x 1y ago
    .
- deleted 1y ago
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carabiner 1y ago
The biggest myth is that it's some cosmically different typing experience. Dvorak is a bit more comfortable, rhythmic. That's it. I've used it for 20 years on my personal computer. On my work laptop I use qwerty.
teo_zero 1y ago
For a keyboard that aims to the title of "Scientific", isn't it weird to offer the "zero" key after the "9" instead of its natural (mathematically speaking) position before the "1"?
- rlkf 1y ago
  The original Dvorak layout had 0 positioned on the right index finger (where 7 is on Qwerty keyboards). The layout of the numeric keys on what passes as a "Dvorak" layout today was apparently determined by the ANSI committee for... reasons.
Perenti 1y ago
I have issues with my right hand due to damage to my brachial plexus. I changed to Dvorak about 22 years ago, and have far less fatigue and pain when typing longer documents. The article mentions in passing how Dvorak may help people with physical hand issues - well it certainly helps for me. YMMV
dsego 1y ago
Isn't dvorak optimized for alternating fingers but doesn't leverage same hand finger rolls? There are more modern layouts that take rolls into account.
ktallett 1y ago
The issue with all the layouts for me is the challenge of buying a device with them. I use Neo2 daily (I changed due to injuries and it has helped me recover and still be able to type) and the only method I enjoyed was getting a blank keyboard on a Framework Laptop (as stickers all over the place is not for me) and I bought an MNT Research Keyboard in a Neo2 layout. Regular usage is key, and a desire/need to change keyboards. I previously tried to switch to Dvorak on one of those Typematrix keyboards and never kept it up as the pain of switching wasn't worth it. I can still use qwerty due to muscle memory when I need to, I just find myself making dumb mistakes initially. As others have said, typing speed is not a focus due to my ability to only think at a specific pace.
- adrian_b 1y ago
  At least for me, achieving blind touch typing has been much easier with Dvorak than with Qwerty. I have used Qwerty for decades, but I was still looking from time to time at the keyboard. After switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty marked keyboard, I have never needed to look at the keyboard again, so there is no point in having a Dvorak-marked keyboard when a standard keyboard is fine. So a good ergonomic keyboard should be used, but how the keys are marked should not matter.
cwmma 1y ago
There is actually a really good paper [1] that tracks the origin of the QWERTY keyboard and the specific incremental changes that bring it from mostly alphabetical to QWERTY. 1. https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc434be9-80cd-499b-a984-f9fa35954c3b/content https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/server/api/core/bitst...
anikom15 1y ago
I can type in Dvorak, Qwerty, Zhuyin, and Kana direct input. If you are a slow typist, the problem is not the layout. It is an overreliance on looking at the keys and not taking the time to learn the layout by muscle memory. My keys only have labels for Qwerty but I can touch type in four different formats because I forced myself to use them. That process works. The individual layout does not matter much. How ergonomic the keys are also doesn't matter much. The limit is likely you.

70 points by kens 1y ago

Yeah but with QWERTY you can type out the word 'typewriter' using only the top row of the keyboard; so if you're a typewriter salesman QWERTY is the way to go. (Been using Dvorak for 25 years now. Doesn't matter what the physical keyboard layout is - currently I'm using a Swiss layout)

lagniappe 1y ago
There are no more typewriter salesmen.
- anon84873628 1y ago
  I believe this was a reference to one of the origin myths discussed in the article.
Terretta 1y ago
> Yeah but This is in the article.

garaetjjte 1y ago

http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...

IAmBroom 1y ago
This seems to be a more in-depth treatment of the advantages of QWERTY in the typewriter mechanics contemporary to its introduction.

fsiefken 1y ago

I feel the Dvorak layout has a bug. In both English and my native language, the letter 'I' occurs much more frequently than 'U', so I've switched the 'U' and 'I' keys. Does anyone know why this issue seems to have been overlooked by August Dvorak & William Dealey, or was it by design? Perhaps it's to make typing the relatively common English digraph 'ou' a comfortable inward roll, but for me, that doesn't outweigh stretching my left index finger all the time reaching for the I.

opan 1y ago
The Workman layout (much newer, to be fair) "solves" this. Right hand homerow is NEOI, with U on the top row and pressed by the middle finger. I've been using Workman for a few years and would recommend it. I used Dvorak for maybe 1.5-2 years before it.
mechanicum 1y ago
It’s common niggle but, as far as I know, nobody is sure of the precise rationale for placing every key, only the broad explanations of the layout that Dvorak published and promoted. The layout wasn’t based only on letter frequency but they attempted to account also for bigram frequency, frequency of repetition within words, frequency with which words are used, and with an objective of rhythmic alternation between hands. Consider also that it was developed in the 20s and 30s. Nowadays you could throw some moderately hefty compute at almost everything of note written in the English language and come back to an error-free analysis after lunch, but who knows how representative was the corpus they analysed, painstakingly and manually. It might have made perfect sense with their data set. Ultimately, the English language didn’t evolve to be easy to type, there will always be compromises somewhere, and the English of today isn’t the English of a century ago anyway. I imagine you’d get quite a different layout if you based it on Gen Z text messages or something. Personally, I can’t help but note that Dvorak’s first name was August.

antiquark 1y ago

In a tech support scenario, Dvorak is always troublesome. You sit down to type at someone's computer, and random characters start popping out.

ghaff 1y ago
In general, even if it may not be "optimal," significantly non-standard keyboards (yes, Mac isn't quite like Windows) is IMO more trouble than it's worth.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Back to the author's point: "good enough" is the bar, when we are talking about a choice that impacts millions of users. Changing "good enough" to "optimal" requires gigantic costs in retraining and redesign, and simply isn't worth it.
opan 1y ago
People make this argument a lot, but you should optimize for the most common situation before an edge case. I am usually at my own PC/keyboard and I greatly enjoy my weird keyboard and layout. I can't type qwerty as well as I used to, but I rarely have to. (If I had to do it more I'd probably retrain it to make switching back and forth less troublesome). It reminds me also of people who swear by using default settings in their editor or other programs so they can feel at home anywhere. Yeah, that's sort of a benefit, but I don't think it outweighs optimizing your workflow at your own machine. I had a friend who used a split keyboard, blank keycaps, and a very odd layout (QGMLWB or BEAKL2 I think) at work. IIRC he said he kept a second normal keyboard at his desk for when someone would come by to pair program. This is sorta the inverse of your scenario. I guess he'd need to carry his keyboard to someone else's desk, or just type slower.
- anon84873628 1y ago
  The only time I have to use QWERTY is the occasional touch screen kiosk or something. And you're not exactly touch typing an essay in that scenario. Back in the in-person days when sharing a keyboard with a coworker was more common, you have the very handy switcher icon in the taskbar.

grim_io 1y ago

I've tried to switch to Dvorak, but after a year I was just tired of the universally shitty default keybinding experience. Either customize every app to better match the layout, or live with the afterthought UX. Oh, and gaming. Better get used to switching to qwerty.

opan 1y ago
To give a contrasting viewpoint, I don't think you need to change your per-program keybinds. I've used vim with qwerty, dvorak, and Workman. I never rebound hjkl or anything else. The letters are in another spot, which you have to get used to... just like you're already doing to type words at all. Plus, in the case of vim you'll probably use stuff like e and w and search to get around faster a lot of the time anyway. As for games, I always rebind everything, or play with controller. It's a one-time thing per-game and then you're comfortable and can also use an in-game chat without trouble. Plus you can use this chance to switch to ESDF-style (the equivalent in your layout, so RSHT for me) controls from WASD controls so your fingers can be in the normal homerow position.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I have a new keyboard with a physical switch on it to switch keyboard layouts / settings, wonder if I should give it a try sometime. But, same issue, I switch between typing, gaming and programming. Switching to dvorak would mean I would also need to remap all my applications.
pmarreck 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45102335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45102335 On Colemak, WASD becomes WARS. What’s not to like? :)
tom_ 1y ago
The only particularly bad case I've found is v/w/z being right next to one another, which can be annoying. Still, I think I've won out overall. I spend a lot more time typing text than I do invoking keyboard shortcuts. Regarding games, switching keyboard layouts in Windows 10/11 is thankfully super easy. (And some games do get it right, and the bindings go by physical position, so they just fall into place - though personally I've never liked this, because I don't really know where any of the Dvorak keys are individually, for non-text purposes. I'd rather switch to QWERTY and then I can look at the labels on the keys to figure out where to put my fingers.)

alpaca128 1y ago

The real problem with current keyboards is the physical arrangement of the keys. Staggered rows instead of columns make them less ergonomic, the oversized spacebar wastes much of the most valuable space on the keyboard. The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text. While the weak pinky finger has to cover more keys than the others. These things are more significant than qwerty vs dvorak. Need to type faster? Spend some time practising every day and you will gain more speed within weeks than from just switching layouts. Most people don't as speed often isn't actually that important. I myself am bottlenecked by my brain, not my typing speed. Need less hand movement? Placing symbols, arrow keys etc as secondary function onto the central keys with a programmable keyboard helps with that, changing to dvorak doesn't as much because on a modern keyboard you can reach all letters without hand movement either way.

k__ 1y ago
"The thumb as one of the strongest fingers has almost nothing to do, with both thumbs mostly sharing a single key while typing text." To be fair, that single key is used rather excessively compared to the rest.
- alpaca128 1y ago
  That key makes up about 15% in English text, and it could be covered by 10% of fingers but instead it's 20%. Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. Altough I haven't looked at actual keypress stats and how those are distributed across fingers. Might be interesting to look into. On my keyboard I cover six keys with my two thumbs. It eliminates almost all hand movement and guess what, I feel a difference in my pinky fingers but not in the thumbs. I'm not saying every keyboard should be like this, but I think on a large scale you can probably improve wirst and hand health in the population by making a few small tweaks in how keys are arranged.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    > Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys. As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal. Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically. I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.

pmarreck 1y ago

Decided to try Colemak-DH after reading this article and googling: https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-changing-my-keyboard-layout-1e21b97f8cba https://andre-wagner.medium.com/colemak-dh-my-journey-to-cha... The only problem I can find is that the only Mac mod I can find with this layout that is not completely custom has an annoying and minor difference with the Windows and Linux versions of the same type of mod.

gwd 1y ago
So did you actually get any faster? I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors. On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience. What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?
- 1123581321 1y ago
  I type Dvorak around my old qwerty speed. It’s probably not possible to be faster. For really fast qwerty typists, the brain has multiple fingers with the right hand contortions in motion, hitting keys in order, just in time. Dvorak eliminated hand pain by reducing motion, but it didn’t give my brain the ability to orchestrate my fingers with tighter timing.
  - horacemorace 1y ago
    The less-movement thing is also why I switched. Wrist pain instantly gone and never returned. Qwerty is torturous.
- angiolillo 1y ago

vintermann 1y ago

I don't have a particular beef in the great Dvorak vs. QWERTY debate. But I really wish I had a brain which could do things like acquire muscle memory fluency in one keyboard layout without losing it in another. Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... I feel like I'm not using that much of my regular qwerty muscle memory, and what's optimal for a swiping keyboard is probably quite different from what's optimal for a typing keyboard.

angiolillo 1y ago
> I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... Perhaps, but as someone who has been proficient in QWERTY, Dvorak, and Colemak, and who now uses Colemak-DH I can say that I leave my phone and small tablet keyboards on QWERTY. The separation of common letters in QWERTY forces your finger to move farther when swiping, but that provides a bit more distinguishing information for identifying words. When I tried swiping with Colemak and Dvorak my finger basically scrubbed back and forth across the home row and words were often mis-identified. There are slightly improved swiping input methods like 8pen, Typewise, Hero, etc but if you are entering enough text to be able to amortize their learning costs you might be better off getting a portable Bluetooth keyboard or just using voice dictation.
- anon84873628 1y ago
  Same here. I adopted Dvorak as a youth, so when I got my first smartphone I put the keyboard in Dvorak. That only lasted a few days for two reasons: 1) What you said about the mistakes. It is so much easier to fat finger in a way that makes autocorrect clueless. 2) The muscle memory doesn't translate at all anyway. Obvious in retrospect, but typing with your thumbs is a completely unrelated skill to touch typing. Turns out both live separately and equally in my brain.
  - stevage 1y ago
    Huh, I do use Dvorak on my phone. I have a weird phone typing style with my left thumb and my right index finger. My biggest issue is how often I hit '.' instead of 'p' for some reason.

IAmBroom 1y ago

According to this article, "a 1936 book called Typewriting Behavior" made "comparisons of the new keyboard to a jeep and the old one to an ox". Jeeps were invented in 1941. Some origin theories of the name date back as far as WW I (but for recruits, not vehicles). If the author truly used this comparison in 1936 it would be a tremendous citation for the word's origin. Or perhaps the comparison was made in a later edition of the book. Don't know.

tylerflick 1y ago
This is not the first historical inaccuracy I’ve noticed from this site.
goosedragons 1y ago
Popeye introduced a character named "Eugene the Jeep" in 1936. Could have also been the origin of Jeep for the vehicle.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Yes, that's one of the popular theories. I personally prefer reuse of the existing word "jeep" meaning "new recruit" to mean "new vehicle". But that's just an opinion.
mechanicum 1y ago
I think they mixed up their sources. The jeep/ox comparison appears to be from the 1944 US Navy report: https://archive.org/details/APracticalExperimentInSimplifiedKeyboardRetraining/page/n24/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/APracticalExperimentInSimplified... (Typewriting Behavior, for the curious: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74878/page/n11/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74878/page/n11...)

dmaa 1y ago

I was motivated to learn Dvorak in order to get rid of bad keyboard habits. And happily stuck to it. Not sure that I type any faster, but it feels somehow as a more rhytmical, much more pleasant experience.

kesslern 1y ago
This mirrors my experience. When I was a teenager I could type rather quickly using only two fingers on each hand. I figured I'd be typing a lot my whole life and it'd be easier to re-train proper typing habits on a whole new layout rather than trying to adapt my QWERTY habits I picked up while playing Runescape in elementary school. It took about a month to learn, but on the side it largely fixed my QWERTY habits too, and I can freely switch between them pretty easily.
kqr 1y ago
The rhythmic feeling is Dvorak's hand alternation. I use Colemak because it is better for my native tongue, but I really would have preferred the rhythmic typing of Dvorak had it worked as well for other languages.

p0w3n3d 1y ago

I tried to convert to Dvorak. I even switched my keycaps, but when I started learning with linux application, I finished at level 3. It required me to write three different letters. When there was 1 - it was okay. When 2 - quite nice. But 3 - it made me feel pain in the back and in the brain. It felt like something was going very wrong with my nervous system. I had to quit.

adrian_b 1y ago
It is likely that you did not have enough patience. When planning to switch between keyboard layouts, you must be prepared to allocate at least a week in which you will not have to type anything useful at the computer, because initially your typing speed will drop tremendously and you must be able to resist the temptation of reverting to Qwerty or whichever is the layout used previously. After a week of practice, using only the new key layout for everything, you should be able to use a computer for normal tasks, but still you will be much slower than before. After a month, you should recover your typing speed and begin to realize that typing has become much more comfortable. It is preferable to not switch the key caps. Even if you have never achieved blind touch typing on Qwerty, it is much easier to achieve it on Dvorak and this can be a benefit of switching the keyboard layouts. At least for me, the assignment of letters to keys has been much easier to memorize for Dvorak than for Qwerty, being more logical. Of course, after enough practice, muscle memory will take over and you will no longer be aware of the key assignments.

Ajedi32 1y ago

I tried Dvorak for a while but gave up after I realized: 1. Not only are the key positions for typing different, but all the keyboard shortcuts I know needed to be re-learned too, and were often in much worse locations (as just one of many problems, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are no longer next to each other) 2. I still need to be good with QWERTY because basically everything uses it. It's a shame, because it does seem more efficient (you can type a lot of words without having to move your fingers from the home row), but I just felt like it was too much work for too little gain.

anon84873628 1y ago
Not only are Ctl+C and Ctl+V not next to each other, but they move next to other shortcuts that are annoying to mis-hit, like the one to close a browser tab... Remapping the shortcuts is possible but too much effort; I just live with it. Fortunately, modern video games seem to understand different layouts and automatically change their input to match the actual finger placement rather than what they QWERTY letters would be.
WorldMaker 1y ago
It is one of the things I like about Colemak that it takes into account QWERTY's dominance in computers and intentionally doesn't move a lot a shortcut keys and punctuation. Semicolon is the most obvious punctuation mark that does move, most of the rest stay where they are. The big list of shortcut keys that stay the same place includes AZXCVBMWQ. XCV not moving is especially a big deal, as you also mention copy and paste as key shortcut examples. In general Colemak doesn't move keys to radically far from their QWERTY positions (many stay on the same finger, even), so I've heard using it and QWERTY together isn't too bad. In my personal case, I had a terrible QWERTY form and realized I don't have to do anything but "hunt-and-peck" in QWERTY when using other people's machines. I may feel a bit like an idiot doing it, but it turns out, most people don't even notice if you touch type or hunt and peck (partly because so many more people hunt and peck than you tend to realize; even in a world where QWERTY touch typing has to be taught in schools, I think it is still a skill like Cursive that you think everyone else uses once you learn it, but you forget how hard it was to learn in the first place). It's more "my guilt" that I "use QWERTY poorly" than anything anyone else actually cares about.

zibzob 1y ago

For everyone complaining about the issues with app shortcuts when using Dvorak, the solution is to use a keymap that switches to QWERTY when you hold down the CTRL or CMD key. It is a bit unfortunate that common CLI commands (`ls` is the worst offender) and semicolon usage in programming languages are designed around QWERTY, but I still prefer Dvorak.

glxxyz 1y ago

I switched to Dvorak about 27 years ago. And I switched back to Qwerty about 26.75 years ago. I got to the point where I could comfortably touch-type in Dvorak to about the same speed as I could Qwerty. While Dvorak was a slightly better layout ergonomically, it wasn't good enough to justify the frustration of switching to a computer that I didn't own at work. I've heard that some people can switch easily and touch-type on both layouts, but I couldn't.

kqr 1y ago
I mean, switching to a non-owned computer will be frustrating when you're used to Dvorak, because you're used to a more ergonomical layout. I touch-type both Colemak and Qwerty fine, but I still sigh a little internally any time I have to use the inferior layout for more than a few minutes.
- mlx0x 1y ago
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carabiner 1y ago

The biggest myth is that it's some cosmically different typing experience. Dvorak is a bit more comfortable, rhythmic. That's it. I've used it for 20 years on my personal computer. On my work laptop I use qwerty.

teo_zero 1y ago

For a keyboard that aims to the title of "Scientific", isn't it weird to offer the "zero" key after the "9" instead of its natural (mathematically speaking) position before the "1"?

rlkf 1y ago
The original Dvorak layout had 0 positioned on the right index finger (where 7 is on Qwerty keyboards). The layout of the numeric keys on what passes as a "Dvorak" layout today was apparently determined by the ANSI committee for... reasons.

Perenti 1y ago

I have issues with my right hand due to damage to my brachial plexus. I changed to Dvorak about 22 years ago, and have far less fatigue and pain when typing longer documents. The article mentions in passing how Dvorak may help people with physical hand issues - well it certainly helps for me. YMMV

dsego 1y ago

Isn't dvorak optimized for alternating fingers but doesn't leverage same hand finger rolls? There are more modern layouts that take rolls into account.

ktallett 1y ago

The issue with all the layouts for me is the challenge of buying a device with them. I use Neo2 daily (I changed due to injuries and it has helped me recover and still be able to type) and the only method I enjoyed was getting a blank keyboard on a Framework Laptop (as stickers all over the place is not for me) and I bought an MNT Research Keyboard in a Neo2 layout. Regular usage is key, and a desire/need to change keyboards. I previously tried to switch to Dvorak on one of those Typematrix keyboards and never kept it up as the pain of switching wasn't worth it. I can still use qwerty due to muscle memory when I need to, I just find myself making dumb mistakes initially. As others have said, typing speed is not a focus due to my ability to only think at a specific pace.

adrian_b 1y ago
At least for me, achieving blind touch typing has been much easier with Dvorak than with Qwerty. I have used Qwerty for decades, but I was still looking from time to time at the keyboard. After switching to Dvorak on a Qwerty marked keyboard, I have never needed to look at the keyboard again, so there is no point in having a Dvorak-marked keyboard when a standard keyboard is fine. So a good ergonomic keyboard should be used, but how the keys are marked should not matter.

cwmma 1y ago

There is actually a really good paper [1] that tracks the origin of the QWERTY keyboard and the specific incremental changes that bring it from mostly alphabetical to QWERTY. 1. https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc434be9-80cd-499b-a984-f9fa35954c3b/content https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/server/api/core/bitst...

anikom15 1y ago

I can type in Dvorak, Qwerty, Zhuyin, and Kana direct input. If you are a slow typist, the problem is not the layout. It is an overreliance on looking at the keys and not taking the time to learn the layout by muscle memory. My keys only have labels for Qwerty but I can touch type in four different formats because I forced myself to use them. That process works. The individual layout does not matter much. How ergonomic the keys are also doesn't matter much. The limit is likely you.