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I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

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Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#171

Post by tracker1 »

I switched back to mechanical keyboards (actual buckling spring from unicomp) at home, and a cherry mx brown (real cherry switches) at work. The only reason for the browns at work is it's slightly less noisy.

I hate every laptop keyboard I've ever worked on. The least annoying beyond the early 2010's macbook keyboards before they reduced travel. Now they're a bit worse imho.

I'd have a horrible time switching, and have tried a number of alternates. Ergonomic options, etc. What made the rsi stuff better was a simple, mechanical keyboard and being able to register a click without always bottoming out.

The layout of different options is from bad to horrible. Especially arrow keys on some keyboards. Worst was one where the up arrow was left of the right shift key. Changing is hard and the difficulty cannot be understated.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#172

Post by tracker1 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #31
cecilpl2 wrote: post #11

I've been typing dvorak primarily for about 20 years, also since I was in high school, and I highly recommend it. I agree that switching is a pain in the ass. It will make you essentially unable to type for about 2-4 weeks. Ctrl-C/V/X is a valid concern. I fixed it by mapping mouse buttons to copy/paste, and also getting an Advantage2 Kinesis into which I've programming custom keybinding for Undo/Redo/Copy/Cut/Paste.…

> I've been typing dvorak primarily for about 20 years, also since I was in high school Same. I type on my laptop pretty much all day, and am not even close to having an RSI. To me using QWERTY just seems irresponsible, like driving without a seatbelt or something. If you don't use a computer that much then I guess that's one thing, but if you actually use one on a daily basis for your job and are using QWERTY then t…

For me, what alleviated the RSI pain was switching to mechanical (cherry mx brown and buckling spring) keyboards.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#173

Post by jlg23 »

sovietmudkipz wrote: post #147
jlg23 wrote: post #132

The author was literally not the target audience. Unless you are already touch-typing, there won't be much of a benefit: * all keys are equally easy to reach when you hover your finger 10cm above the keyboard while searching for a key * you are moving fingers, hands and arms much more and with much more variety than when touch-typing, the risk of repetitive strain injuries is therefore lower * you are typing much, mu…

> as a lisp programmer I don't care about curly or square brackets, when I have to hack on other languages, I adapt my layout to make required special characters more easily accessible I find it fascinating that people change their keyboard layouts frequently. For me, there seems to be plenty of mental complexity to contend with that adding n > 1 keyboard interfaces would overload my ability to work efficiently. I’m…

It's just a few keys that change. If you stick to one layout per task/language, muscle memory will take care of that.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#175

Post by creese »

maskros wrote: post #104
busterarm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on a computer pretty much 12-16 hours a day for 30 years now. Dvorak only makes sense to me if you only have to use a single keyboard/workstation for all of your computing time consistently. On my own I have four different machines/OS and I frequently have to type at other peoples'. I spent 10 years in Dvorak, Colemak and a variety of modified Colemak layouts before settling back on qwerty. I never noticed…

"Using vim with dvorak is a real pain." That is not my experience, at all. Then again, I don't use Vim like notepad with "hjkl" instead of arrow keys... All the powerful movement and editing commands (b, w, $, 0, /foo, *, #, %, cw, dd, ^], ^t, cib, ., etc.) work just as well with dvorak as with qwerty.

When combined with Colemak, Vim's default keybindings are particularly bad. On Colemak, HJKL all map to the same finger.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#176

Post by blunte »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #146
blunte wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK and Netherlands use an international keyboard with a tilda ~ key where the return key should be, and a backslash key where the left shift should be. To hit return requires actually moving the right hand to reach return. How often is that tilda needed? That is a poor trade. Moving the shift key away is even worse, because it's a modifier key. Now you cannot press shift with your left pinky finger while also reachin…

>> How often is that tilda needed? That is a poor trade. That tilda is needed every time I need to access my home directory on Linux, and the backslash key is also a pipe key when you press shift - so I can use a pipe in command line using a single hand. I actually come from a country with US keyboard by-default. Now, whenever possible - I switch to UK layout even on MacBooks. UK layout is actually wonderful for deve…

Seriously, are you suggesting that you reference your home directory so often that it is a more frequent need than hitting Return?

Every single command you type ends with return. Unless you are typing long paragraphs in a word processor with line wrapping, you will be hitting return once every 80 characters or less on average (much less in the case of commands). Do you really need to reference a unix home directory once every 80 characters you type?

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#177

Post by blunte »

eMSF wrote: post #134
blunte wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK and Netherlands use an international keyboard with a tilda ~ key where the return key should be, and a backslash key where the left shift should be. To hit return requires actually moving the right hand to reach return. How often is that tilda needed? That is a poor trade. Moving the shift key away is even worse, because it's a modifier key. Now you cannot press shift with your left pinky finger while also reachin…

Which left hand keys can't you reach while pressing left shift? (I can quite comfortably reach up to J column with my index finger, at which point it's about 50-50 which Shift to use if I have to navigate left-handed.) Also, being used to it, I find a large Enter key more convenient than a wide one.

I will accept that adapting to a reduced width left shift is possible, but I cannot accept the suggestion that a taller return key has any value.

Unless you are doing something really "interesting", you should be hitting return with your right pinky finger. And assuming your other fingers are on the home row, your pinky finger has an easier reach to the US return key (on the left edge) than it would the international return key on the row above.

Now, if you suggested expanding the return key to exist where the { key does, then I could agree that it was an improvement. { is immediately accessible to a right pinky finger, and arguably { is less often needed than return - even in programming.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#178

Post by kkarakk »

tomhoward wrote: post #144
kkarakk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mind-Body Prescription In this acclaimed volume, Dr. Sarno reveals how many painful conditions-including most neck and back pain, migraine, repetitive stress injuries, whiplash, and tendonitises-are rooted in repressed emotions (book description from amazon) Excuse me while i chuckle heartily

Half-jokingly: it's repressed emotions that usually cause reactions like that :) I haven't read Sarno's book but I've read the books by another prominent author in this genre, after battling stubborn health conditions for years without respite. Addressing repressed emotions has been the thing that made the difference for me, without doubt. Other things have been important too (diet, exercise, sleep, etc) - but none o…

just goto a doctor and leave this newage stuff in the bin where it belongs. pain management is a different thing from pain alleviation.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#179

Post by _ywdj »

kkarakk wrote: post #178
tomhoward wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half-jokingly: it's repressed emotions that usually cause reactions like that :) I haven't read Sarno's book but I've read the books by another prominent author in this genre, after battling stubborn health conditions for years without respite. Addressing repressed emotions has been the thing that made the difference for me, without doubt. Other things have been important too (diet, exercise, sleep, etc) - but none o…

just goto a doctor and leave this newage stuff in the bin where it belongs. pain management is a different thing from pain alleviation.

Sarno was a conventional physician.

Nothing about his theories are "newage" or anti-scientific. Indeed, theories around pain must surely be less scientific if they rely on a dualistic notion of the mind and body being seperate entities.

Plenty of people visit mainstream doctors for pain conditions and are told that nothing can be done other than pain medication, which as we're now witnessing, can too often lead to addiction and death.

Whereas people who adopt the Sarno approach can and do achieve complete healing of the emotional and physical aspects of their illness.

If you actually have any expertise to add to the discussion please share it, otherwise, please step aside and allow grown adults to make their own judgements about what works for them.

Re: I’ve used Dvorak for 10 years, and it’s not all that

#180

Post by Foivos »

melling wrote: post #103
blunte wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that auto-complete will ever become more useful than the costs it imposes on the user. Even when the suggestion is correct, it still causes a mental interrupt to shift from thinking about whatever virtual problem you were solving to validating some UI behavior. To me it's just another source of distraction. If auto-complete could reach the point where it was near perfect, then it should probably be…

I’m quite capable of dealing with the mental breaks and prefer an editor that can save me some typing. The only improvement for me would be able to say “switch statement (3 cases, no default)” swi switch { case : default: } Actually, if I could say “switch on enum X” then have all cases generated, that would be a huge productivity gain.

You are describing code snippets. This feature is available at least in vs code [1], but I think other editors have similar features.

[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippet...

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