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Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

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Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#111

Post by fallat »

hakanderyal wrote: post #104

You can use Dvorak and QWERTY together. I’ve been using Programmers Dvorak together with QWERTY for 10+ years. Whenever I need to use common shortcuts I switch layouts with a simple shortcut, and sometimes do this dance a few times if a few seconds subconsciously as needed. Typing speed is unimportant, it’s the reduced strain that is the main benefit.

Another 10+ year user of this reporting in. It's 10000% not the speed but the reduced strain. I used to get bad pain from typing 60wpm in QWERTY for 30 minutes. I can type 100WPM constantly for the whole day with zero pain since the days I switched in college. It took me 3 times to change, but once I forced myself it was great.

Edit: And want to clarify from reading other comments: I was a touch typist on QWERTY, had the recommended posture, and even used ergonomic keyboards. The pain happens in your knuckles and back of your hand, not wrists. Zero of that ten years later.

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#113

Post by spookthesunset »

kloch wrote: post #37
jerf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the best thing about Dvorak (and similar layouts) is that if you want to do proper touch typing, it is quite possibly easier to learn Dvorak than to learn how to touch type QWERTY. Touch typing QWERTY is a constant uphill battle of using your willpower to force yourself to type correctly, despite the rest of your brain claiming it isn't the optimal way to type on that layout. I don't know that your brain is…

> QWERTY users naturally wander around and have their hands leave the home row and I'm not entirely convinced it's actually wrong. I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique. I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be t…

> I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.

Same. It's like the one high school class I use every single day. Do they even offer typing in high school anymore?

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#114

Post by dadoum »

Dvorak is also based on English spelling, and thus its benefits vanish almost everywhere in the world. There are other alternative layouts, having the same kind of marginal gain over the standard, but then it's not available everywhere, and if you're a developer, you may also want an easier access to braces and stuff, and from here your keyboard will basically work nowhere unless you buy some kind of custom hardware to do the translation.

And it also has the same problem to me as QWERTY, it makes numbers accessible while I don't care since most keyboards have a numpad (and to enter a number holding shift isn't hard) while for example it adds a significant amount of keystrokes to open and close a brace.

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#116

Post by kadoban »

dheera wrote: post #82
marricks wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds very alluring but having to deal with setting up VIM in every environment or going to a new environment with VIM not set up sounds so painful. I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK

I use VIM on Dvorak, having [shift], [:;], [q] next to each other is awesome. Having [a], [i], [y], [p], [x] all on the left hand is also awesome. It's a bummer that [d] is on the other hand, though I could reach it in a pinch with my left hand if I need to. I don't need the fake QWERTY arrow keys, the real arrow keys work.

The "fake" arrow keys are nice so you don't have to move your hands. They are pretty decently placed in dvorak though, so it's no issue.

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#117

Post by lutorm »

darrylb42 wrote: post #15
api_or_ipa wrote: post #9

As a dvorak user, whatever increase in typing speed is mostly irrelevant, for most of us, our output isn't limited by how fast we can type, but how fast we can think. That being said, a long time ago I took an analysis of one of our code bases, mapped every character onto dvorak and qwerty keyboards to produce heatmaps, and it's startling how much less the fingers have to move on a dvorak keyboard. So if you're lazy,…

Are you able to have all your normal keyboards as dvorak? I have thought about trying to switch. But I use a few different keyboards in my day and it would be a real problem for other people if the keycaps didn't match what was on the keyboard. I also think my fingers would get confused about what letter is where when switching.

I'm in a funny situation that at my desktop I've been using a Kinesis dvorak keyboard for over 20 years, but on laptops or other random computers I use qwerty. My brain is totally bought in on the different layouts, I don't even have to think about it. It's too much of a hassle to manage to reconfigure all of them to dvorak, and then no one else in the family would be able to use them either. An extra complication is that I also sometimes use a Swedish keyboard to type åäö and on a dvorak I have no idea where they would end up.

Perhaps it would pay off to standardize... But like someone else said, the letters aren't the problem, it's all the symbols that you almost never use that become impossible if they aren't labeled.

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#118

Post by danpalmer »

carabiner wrote: post #41
nfriend wrote: post #26

Anecdotally, I gave Dvorak a try and became somewhat proficient, but ultimately reverted back to QWERTY for one reason: keyboard shortcuts! Control-C|V|Z are all transformed into either two-handed shortcuts or right-handed shortcuts. In either case, I can't copy/paste while selecting text with the mouse (since I'm right-handed). I now use Colemak ( https://colemak.com/ ) which doesn't have this issue and I'm quite ha…

On Mac, you have the "Dvorak - QWERTY ⌘" layout which retains QWERTY shortcuts.

I used to love this, eventually just took the plunge and learnt the shortcuts though and I'm more productive because I can use non-Mac Dvorak layouts.

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#119

Post by hakanderyal »

nashashmi wrote: post #107
hakanderyal wrote: post #104

You can use Dvorak and QWERTY together. I’ve been using Programmers Dvorak together with QWERTY for 10+ years. Whenever I need to use common shortcuts I switch layouts with a simple shortcut, and sometimes do this dance a few times if a few seconds subconsciously as needed. Typing speed is unimportant, it’s the reduced strain that is the main benefit.

So whenever you are constantly typing, you move to Dvorak? Otherwise you are in QWERTY?

Nope, I’m using Dvorak mainly, but switch to QWERTY when I need to use shortcuts with one hand while the other is using the mouse (when designing in Figma etc).

Re: Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]

#120

Post by notagoodidea »

retrac wrote: post #102
api_or_ipa wrote: post #9

As a dvorak user, whatever increase in typing speed is mostly irrelevant, for most of us, our output isn't limited by how fast we can type, but how fast we can think. That being said, a long time ago I took an analysis of one of our code bases, mapped every character onto dvorak and qwerty keyboards to produce heatmaps, and it's startling how much less the fingers have to move on a dvorak keyboard. So if you're lazy,…

> how fast we can think [...] an analysis of one of our code bases Well, with coding that's certainly true. I can spend all day trying to come up with a dozen lines of code. Input speed is not the barrier there. But for writing English prose, at around 90 wpm, my fingers are often lagging behind what I want to say. People can reach short bursts when speaking as fast as 300 wpm. When I get such bursts of thought, it c…

You want to be able to follow speaking pace? Learn steno, it is made for that. https://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/
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