As somebody who uses Dvorak, don't learn an alternative keyboard layout. It makes pair programming, and more generally using other people's computers, an unnecessary pain. More importantly, there are better uses of your time, such as actually programming.
Workman Keyboard layout
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#72How many people can actually type in multiple layouts proficiently? I can program & type in Colemak and Qwerty equally at speeds over 100 WPM. I tend to use Qwerty at work and Colemak at home, minus tablets/phones.
Some notes based on my own experience:
* If you can touch type very well in Qwerty already, you may have a much easier time picking up a layout than the average typist. And you may have an easier time retaining more than one layout.
* What you're typing (context) is important with regards to adjusting to a layout. For example, if you learn Colemak and decide to try using the Terminal some time after you've become proficient, you might find it awkward - at first. I personally haven't found the type of physical keyboard you use to matter much with regards to this..
* When I was at the state where I could type in both layouts very poorly (due to muscle memory being confused), I realized I took many things for granted that eliminate needing to type quickly altogether like auto-suggestion/completion - and a lot about software development is about automating tasks.
* When I started to become proficient at Colemak and started to lose my proficiency at Qwerty, I developed a justification and bias that Colemak is way more comfortable for my daily usage.
* The most effort I ever put into typing was ironically typing tests, not programming =P. And those can be really tiring if you do them frequently regardless of layout.
Maybe I find these days that colemak is marginally more comfortable. Maybe I just don't type that much though, although I use the computer a lot. Software developers certainly don't type nearly as much as a "typist job" (if those still exist) in any case. If I lose my ability to type in Colemak, I don't think it will effect me that much. All in all, I can't say my transition was worth my time.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#73As somebody who uses Dvorak, don't learn an alternative keyboard layout. It makes pair programming, and more generally using other people's computers, an unnecessary pain. More importantly, there are better uses of your time, such as actually programming.
Pair programming doesn't have to mean one computer or one keyboard.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#74As somebody who uses Dvorak, don't learn an alternative keyboard layout. It makes pair programming, and more generally using other people's computers, an unnecessary pain. More importantly, there are better uses of your time, such as actually programming.
Pair programming doesn't have to mean one computer or one keyboard.
Yeah but like, do you really wanna be that guy?
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#75Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Wordstar diamond was quite common at a time, and definitely not mnemonic.
Never used it, but it sure had its fans. Too bad that it lies beneath the left hand.
I doubt that handedness really matters for these kind of tasks, but of course everyone has their preferences.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#77I would comment on the original blog, but comments are closed. In the last comparison, the results are given as QWERTY = 16653m and Workman = 88027m. This suggests that QWERTY is significantly better!
Apparently the last one is a sum of the previous results, so it looks like they made some kind of calculation error there.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody sits down and streams out kernel code in serial order at speed.
Nobody writes a whole book in one go either. It would be nice to see for comparison purposes.
My point pertains to units smaller than books or source files. I stream out sentences all the time, but rarely stream C statements.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#7920 years ago or so, I ran an evolutionary algorithm that permuted keys in a layout, evaluated them against a corpus of English texts from Project Gutenberg and the Linux kernel sources, and a home-grown cost function that penalized finger motion and especially double-hits by the same finger. The best layouts all had the property that the vowels were on the home row under the left hand, and the common consonants were…
Hey, I found my best evolved layout: K,UYP WLMFC OAEID RNTHS Q.';Z XVGBJ Some things to note: 1) E and T just have to be under the middle fingers on the home row in any comfortable layout. 2) T and H need to be adjacent. 3) Vowels on one side, consonants on the other side of the home row. Keep the home row's Scrabble score to a minimum. Honestly, I think that's all that really matters. Dvorak isn't perfect for me (I/…
Hey, I did something similar about 12 years ago!
I'd tried the Dvorak keyboard layout and found that I liked the guiding design principles, but decided that the actual layout was a sub-optimal implementation of those design principles. So, I dumped several megs of personal email archives (with the headers & '>' removed) and several megs of C++/Python source code (including comments) through some little statistical number-crunching programs I had written, to analyse:
* key frequency (I still recall that the top 7 were ETOAINS)
* 2-key combination frequencies (for example: TH, SH, ST, NT, EA, OU, IE, etc)
I also wanted it to be Vim-friendly, C++-friendly & UNIX command-line-friendly where this didn't degrade the effectiveness for general English language.
My best layout (which I've been using as my keyboard layout for the last 12 years, thank you Xmodmap on Linux) is:
QYOU, XRDCW
PIEA. VHTSN
K;JG_ ZLBFM
Just as you did, I came to some specific conclusions about comfortable layout:
* E & T must be under the middle fingers on the home row.
* T & H need to be adjacent.
* Vowels on one side, most important consonants on the other.
In an important contrast to your layout, I optimised for rolling fingers inwards. This is something I learned from the Dvorak layout: It's easier to drum your fingers by rolling inwards rather than rolling outwards. This is why I have "IEA" on the left in contrast to your "AEI", and "HTSN" on the right in contrast to your "NTHS". (It's actually quite striking how similar our home rows are.) Similarly, I have "YOU," on the upper left, in contrast to your ",UYP".
[Interestingly, the Workman layout lays out SH & ST for inwards finger rolls, but does not lay out TH for an inwards finger roll. I consider this a failing of the Workman layout.]
Another principle that I borrowed from the Dvorak layout is that the most agile fingers in order are: middle, first, ring, pinkie. So, I tried to avoid adjacent double-use of the same finger; but when double-use is necessary, prefer to do it with one of the first two fingers.
I also tweaked the layout for Bash shell a little: My most frequently-used command is `cd`, so these two letters are adjacent. Also, '.' is frequently doubled in directory paths (".."), so that's a first-finger key. It also makes sense to have '.' & ',' as middle-column first-finger keys, because they usually occur at the ends of words in prose (that is, at the end of an inward finger roll), and words almost never end in A or U in English.
Re: Workman Keyboard layout
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
>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
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.