Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023) • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by pmarreck » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 3:57 AM UTC

gwd wrote: post #19

pmarreck wrote: post #14

Decided to try Colemak-DH after reading this article and googling: 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.

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 swit…

I don't actually care if I get faster.

My fingers currently feel sore from hours at the keyboard.

THAT I can do without.

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

#102

Post by knorker » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 7:25 AM UTC

alpaca128 wrote: post #99

knorker wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The much reduced hand movement is extremely comfortable, paying dividends every day. And it fixed my RSI. Of course over long periods of time we're bottlenecked by our brains. But the things to write come in bursts, and typing speed blocks there. Also transcribing what someone is saying, needs high speed. My experience completely contradicts your assertions.

The part about hand movement confuses me. On qwerty you can reach all letters without moving the hands. On both qwerty and dvorak you still need to move or stretch the hands to reach backspace, arrow keys, escape etc. So how does dvorak reduce hand movement? > the things to write come in bursts In short bursts I can reach higher speeds than what I can maintain over a period of time. It's fast enough for me. > transcr…

The physical keys are the same ones no matter if it's qwerty or dvorak, of course, so yes you can reach the keys without shifting your wrists over.

But some movement is there, and once I reached even 10 wpm or something, it was immediately noticeable that this is more comfortable because so much of what I now type is on the home row. Fingers need to stretch less, wrists wiggle less.

> In short bursts I can reach higher speeds than what I can maintain over a period of time. It's fast enough for me.

I don't do Dvorak for the speed. I did it for the comfort and getting rid of RSI. But I'm also faster.

To me it's a bit of a separate question of "does speed matter?". I'd say yes, because sometimes you're taking notes while someone is talking, and the less time you have to type while listening, and the less you are behind on noting down what was said, the easier it is to not lose the thread.

> [transcribing what someone is saying is] a very specific use-case

Some version of this happens every single meeting I'm in.

You don't necessarily need word for word, or maybe you want word for word, but you don't need every sentence, but note taking during a meeting will be much worse if you can't type fast.

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

#103

Post by adornKey » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 8:38 AM UTC

alpaca128 wrote: post #98

adornKey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand there is spatial memory. Overloading things has some downsides - it adds more possibilities for errors - and makes muscle memory complicated. In a lot of software those extra function keys are well used, easily go into muscle memory and help to safe a lot of time.

I actually make fewer errors and in some cases reach higher speeds when typing a lot of special symbols as everything is reachable without moving my hands and I arranged all special symbols in a way that makes sense to me. Muscle memory works perfectly fine, with the difference that I don't need to make blind error prone hand movements across the keyboard to use arrow keys etc.

That sounds promising. Training muscle memory for a custom arrangement of keys is something I'm not (yet) brave enough to do. Did you arrange everything yourself?

Normal Arrow-Keys on a layer are good. But I need Arrow-Keys usually in combination with Shift and Ctrl. (move to start, end, next instance, declaration, implementation, Select something). This is already overloaded a lot, so I'm not sure, how well this works with a layer.

The thing that's missing for me most are those function keys. I need them a lot - sometimes overloaded in combination with Shift and Ctrl. Those actions are usually something that should be out of reach from normal typing (Terminate something, start a Compiler, mess with Breakpoints, ...).

Those small keyboards never include function keys. But I think I could just build something for that.. Custom button-Panels with a few keys are quite easy to make.

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

#104

Post by Terretta » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

comrade1234 wrote: post #2

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)

> Yeah but

This is in the article.

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

#105

Post by Terretta » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 2:27 AM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #48

vintermann wrote: post #16

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 op…

> Though, I'm typing this on a swiping keyboard. It's different enough that a better layout might have been worth it here... This seems to be an interesting place where the type bar optimization problem of the earliest typewriters came back in a new weirder form. For swiping keyboards to work the words need recognizably different shapes and for irregular pairs to be closer together (just as with the type bar problem)…

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