Is DVORAK Gaining Traction Among Coders?

coderpath asks: "At a recent Seattle Ruby Brigade hack night someone asked how many people used the DVORAK keyboard layout. Out of 9 people, 7 used DVORAK and only 2 were using QWERTY. I personally made the switch last Christmas, after 25 years of typing with QWERTY. What do you use? Have you switched to DVORAK? Have you been wanting to make the switch? Has anyone else noticed an increase in adoption of DVORAK lately?"

Comments

Vim

[FromWithin]

Always wanted to try the Dvorak layout, but I've become a slave to the Vim and that sort of messes things up for me...

Re:Vim

[Doytch]

Why not just remap whatever keys you need(HJKL and such) to the apprpriate keys for a Dvorak layout?

A quick Google turned up a few already-built config files that handle the dirty work for you. Alas, I don't use Dvorak so I can't test them. Although like you, I have always wanted to switch cold turkey.

Re:Vim

[Aladrin]

It's not just Vim, but everything else I do as well. It's hard to imagine going back to being careful where the keys are... I've had plenty of times that I just kept on typing while I was looking at my boss (he was talking) or I got something in my eye and just needed to finish a sentence that was in my head.

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard. I'm sure I could find some online if I looked, but I'm -very- happy with the feel of my current keyboard (I own 2 and a wireless version of it now) and don't look forward to trying to find a Dvorak layout one that I like.

There's still just too many reasons not to switch, and only 1 to switch: It's supposedly quicker. (Last I heard, it actually wasn't enough quicker to care.)

Re:Vim

[poopdeville]

Dvorak is only faster if you're a touch typist, in which case it doesn't matter what letters are printed on the keys anyway. Right now, my keyboard's top row says "ALEXROCKSU". (This makes it impossible for non-touch typists to use my computer)

So just get your hands on some Dvorak learning software and practice both. I did it. It was fun.

Re:Vim

[zsau]

I learnt VIM with Qwerty, and now I use VIM with Dvorak, a lot better and more skilfully than before. There's no reason to remap VIM's layout (and plenty of reasons not to). It will probably take a while to get used to it, but once you are you might find you use hjkl a lot more: in particular, I've found the hj (up/down ... or is it down/up? i just use them, i don't think about them) to be much better placed on dvorak than qwerty (they're on the left hand, so you have a choice: use hj with left hand, or cursor keys with right hand).

Once you're used to VIM+dvorak, it's absolutely no harder than VIM+qwerty. I would expect it'll take you longer to get used to VIM+dvorak than anything else+dvorak, but if you love vi as much as I do, it'll only motivate you to learn faster :)

On the other hand: Although I can touchtype fluently in qwerty and dvorak, my VIM+qwerty skills are almost entirely gone. I have to stop and think about just about everything; it's painful and the only time I ever regret switching. If you're going to be bouncing around on computers whose keyboard layouts you can't control, and you use VIM, consider this before switching. Maybe just remap some keys so up/down are where god (not Bill Joy) intended.

Re:Vim

[tomhudson]

I took an old keyboard and rearranged the key caps so they said "FUCKBILGATES".

Oddly enough, none of the Windows users could type with it - even after years of computer use, they're not touch typists ...

Re:Vim

[dhasenan]

I use dvorak and vim. You start ignoring the hjkl thing quickly. And jk at least are still adjacent, and h further left than l.

Really, since most bindings in vi are arbitrary, why shouldn't those be? And since the bindings are intended to be used with both hands remaining on the keyboard, it rarely makes a difference that you need both hands to navigate all directions without resorting to the arrow keys.

Re:Vim

[zsau]

It's not just Vim, but everything else I do as well. It's hard to imagine going back to being careful where the keys are... I've had plenty of times that I just kept on typing while I was looking at my boss (he was talking) or I got something in my eye and just needed to finish a sentence that was in my head.

I was like that before I switched. I'm like that after I switched. I wasn't like that for about a month in between. And I'm better at vi for it, too.

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard.

Fancy that, neither have I. You (i.e. I) touchtype dvorak. The only value you'll ever get out of looking at the keyboard is because it's fun to look at yourself typing on a keyboard with the keys marked wrong, and you can't do that with a dvorak keyboard.

There's still just too many reasons not to switch, and only 1 to switch: It's supposedly quicker.

Most reasons against switching are false; about the only one worth listening to is that lots of people use your computer and/or you use lots of computers. A very good reason, certainly, but still only one.

And the purported benefit of dvorak is that it's more ergonomic. This results in it being a little faster, but it's not the point. That's why if you do want to buy a dvorak keyboard, you'll find that almost none of them have the standard physical arrangement. But I do certainly notice the benefits of dvorak with my regular-format keyboards.

Re:Vim

[pestilence669]

I switched in 2001 and it took about six months to relearn the vim key bindings. It's possible, but seriously funky w/ the arrow keys. Most everything else is easy to get used to. The "Z" key is conveniently located for the quick SHIFT+Z+Z escape.

For coding, I've found that I move my hands much less. HTML & XML junkies should appreciate it as well, as the greater-than & less-than keys are more conveniently located. Many programming keywords & function can be typed entirely with the home row.

I wouldn't ever suggest someone make the switch unless they're completely serious and accept that they'll type like an idiot for the next three months. I also wouldn't expect a 30% improvement in speed, although you do get an eventual increase.

The biggest advantage is a reduction in effort when typing. Good for my carpal. Next biggest advantage: When people sit at your computer, they can't type at all! If you're like me, and pick up a Das Keyboard, the absence of lettering combined with a different layout ensures that no one can type on your workstation when you step away.

Re:Vim

[Doctor Memory]

most bindings in vi are arbitrary Wow, I may have to re-calibrate my bogometer after that one. Arbitrary? ^F goes (F)orward a page, ^B goes (B)ackward a page, ^D goes (D)own half a page, ^U goes (U)p half a page. 'w' goes forward a (w)ord, 'W' goes back a (w)ord, likewise 'n' goes to the (n)ext match of the current search expression, 'N' goes to the (N)ext in the opposite direction. h,j,k and l were chosen because ^H is backspace (left), ^J is a newline (down), ^K is a vertical tab (up) and ^L is &mdash well, OK, ^L is a form feed, so that doesn't really follow. However, if you'd ever used an ADM-3A (a popular serial terminal BITD), those keys had arrows printed on them that showed those directions. I'm not sure why they were there originally, but I'm guessing there was some prior art there that vi followed. Likewise with the / (search) and : (enter command mode) characters: those were brought in from the original Unix 'ed' editor (and so were most of the commands). About the only 'arbitrary' command I can think of is the '%' key — I've never made a connection between it and parentheses.

Now if only I could figure out how to make vim map CAPS LOCK to CONTROL when it starts up, I'd have it made...

Re:Vim

[cmarkn]

That's odd. Most of the Windows users I know can hit Ctrl-Alt-Del without looking at the keyboard. Usually they are too busy cussing to look at anything.

Re:Vim

[ThisNukes4u]

you can use an xmodmap if you're using X to map caps to ctrl, but I've found it doesn't work so well on some laptops that seem to have a "hardware" caps lock(ie, you hit caps lock, and the keyboard becomes caps, but it still sends ctrl).

Re:Vim

[IpalindromeI]

You don't need a Dvorak keyboard. Most operating systems (including Windows and Linux) let you switch the key layout in software. Sure, the keys are labeled wrong at that point, but how often do you look at your fingers while typing?

The Vim thing isn't bad. Just remap some of the keys and it's fine. Although cut/copy/paste in most apps does get more annoying.

The biggest reason I've heard for switching is not quickness. It's finger-health. Since the keys are laid out with a regard for typing English, it's much easier on your fingers. Many words can be typed without leaving the home row.

-- Satisfied Dvorak user for 2+ years

Re:Vim

[IpalindromeI]

Now if only I could figure out how to make vim map CAPS LOCK to CONTROL when it starts up, I'd have it made...

Better to just turn caps lock into control all the time, since caps lock is useless.

Here's a page giving directions: http://www.manicai.net/comp/swap-caps-ctrl.html

Or on Windows, search for the program KeyTweak.

Re:Vim

[cibyr]

Two problems with that:
1. I have an ergonomic keyboard so the keys are different shapes
2. I learned QWERTY by looking at the keys...

But the real reason that I haven't switched is that I spend so much time typing on other people's keyboards - kinda hard to do on-site support otherwise. If it wasn't for that I would've switched years ago. I'd still like to give it a try if I could get a USB keyboard hardwired for DVORAK - if I could just plug in and type (without any messing about in system settings changing keyboard layouts) it wouldn't be a problem.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard vi up/down keys (j=down right index finger, k=up right middle finger) are already in the optimal place on the QWERTY keyboard, there's no need to put them anywhere else. The reason is this: most people are right handed, so it makes sense to put the most commonly used functionality on the right hand. Now the most useful functionality on a computer is scrolling while reading a document (that's why modern mice have vertical scroll wheels, which you'll note are placed to be accessible to the index finger).

If you deal much with text, then you don't like to leave the keyboard and use the mouse, but you still want to do a lot of scrolling. So optimally, you want the most common scrolling operation to be on the strongest finger of your right hand, namely the j key if you like to keep your hands in touch typing position. Then you put the next most useful functionality, ie scrolling back, on the right middle finger.

There's also an argument that you want that functionality on the biggest possible key, namely the spacebar, accessible with the right thumb. However, that's not as symmetrical for scrolling up, because the next biggest key isn't in the middle of the keyboard. Thinking like that produced the convention of spacebar or return=scroll forward, backspace=scroll backward.

Finally, if you can scroll forward and backward with one hand, it makes sense to also scroll left and right with the same hand, which gives the h=left,j=down,k=up,l=right convention. Then you can give the left hand a rest.

Nothing stops you from training yourself on the dvorak keyboard layout, but it's not going to be anywhere near optimal for scrolling.

Re:Vim

[rjamestaylor]

how often do you look at your fingers while typing?

Everytime. Every single time.

Re:Vim

[im_thatoneguy]

I switched to Dvorak. However:

1) I hated switching the hotkeys of every app I touched.
2) After a month was still significantly faster at QWERTY and doubted I could catch up to a lifetime of QWERTY in less than a year.
3) Knew the world would always be qwerty and I usually wouldn't be able to switch it over, so I would have to switch back and forth at work, on a co-workers computer, on my blackberry, etc etc etc.

so I gave up.

I'm not going to carry around a config file for the 10,000 applications I use every week on multiple computers because I want to type a bit faster. That's a false optimization in my opinion.

Re:Vim

[zsau]

Why would you need to change the shortcuts for every program you use? I use exactly the same keys as a qwerty user. Even with VIM. Especially with VIM; I like the dvorak positionings of hjkl a lot better than the qwerty ones. Less mnemonic, but more useful.

For anyone with the intelligence it takes to write a computer program, touchtyping in two keyboard layouts should be no problem at all. In fact, I'm touchtyping this on qwerty. The minimal cost of knowing two layouts is clearly worth the ergonomic benefits of using dvorak when I can, if you ask me.

As for issues with speed, the point of dvorak is not and never has been speed. It's ergonomics. This perhaps gives you a bit more speed—an irrelevant amount more speed—but it's not the point! I said that in the post you replied to: Why bring it up again?

Re:Vim

[letxa2000]

Has anyone else noticed an increase in adoption of DVORAK lately?"

Nope. I've never known even a single person that used DVORAK.

Re:Vim

[fishbowl]

>Nothing stops you from training yourself on the dvorak keyboard layout, but it's not going to be anywhere near optimal for scrolling.

What? If I used a Dvorak keyboard map, absolutely my VI cursor movement keys would be mapped to exactly where they are on a QWERTY map, regardless of what letters they happen to be!

Do Dvorak VI users seriously miss this?

For the record, I use vi key mapping in my editor, my shell, and gaming. Also,
I'm strictly a QWERTY typist, but I can actually do OK on Dvorak and on several European keymaps when necessary.

Re:Vim

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

My qualm about Dvorak has always been that I don't exactly know where the brackets and schtuff all go in Dvorak, so I would have a bit of a problem with that. I still look at my keyboard for squigglies and the top row of characters. My Bad. But if they change in Dvorak, how can I find them without labels on my keys? Yeah, yeah. Lazy lazy me, and all. But then, I didn't 'take' to touch typing for a very, very long time.

Re:Vim

[fishbowl]

>you can use an xmodmap if you're using X to map caps to ctrl

OSX has a standard feature to do this, also a very straightforward way to map Dvorak.

As for learning it, don't change your keycaps (forces you to learn it from memory), and treat it like the "Memory" solitaire game. No reason to "switch", that's just an excuse for being too lazy to learn "both."

Re:Vim

[cheater512]

Is it faster than two fingered touch typing?

Never got the hang of proper touch typing.
I can type with two fingers at ridiculous speeds with pinpoint accuracy.

No I dont need to look at my keyboard or even my monitor. I can stare out the window and still type fine (including backspacing).

Re:Vim

[shadroth]

I use the Colemak layout, which has a custom mapping for vim.

Colemak is much better than QWERTY, from a research paper listed the Colemak site:
"All things considered, I believe Colemak is better than Dvorak and the best alternative to QWERTY."

The layout is similar to QWERTY in some ways QWZXCVBM stay in the same place, but everything else moves.
CAPS becomes BACKSPACE. Colemak was entered in the CAPSoff competition (a contest for keyboards with CAPS lock), which it won.

Colemak was designed by Shai Colemak after considering the most common digraphs (two letter combinations).

When you start to type quickly, your brain works on it's memory of key combinations, not key locations, so you'll start typing in QWERTY while you're learning, as you speed up.

It took me 3x 10 hour days using ktouch to learn the layout well enough to use it well and about 2 months to equal my QWERTY speed. All progress from there.

Re:Vim

[el-tramo]

There are two Dvorak keyboard layouts available in most major OSes: plain Dvorak, and Dvorak+QWERTY. The latter switches to QWERTY while one of the control keys or alt keys is pressed, allowing you to keep your shortcuts.

Personally, I just re-learned all my shortcuts, and I don't really have any problem with those any longer, neither in VIM, nor in any other program.

As for Dvorak keyboards: you're better off without them initially, because they'll slow you down at first (you keep looking at your keyboard). Once you're trained, they might be useful for entering shortcuts quickly. I just rearranged the keys on one of my Apple keyboards, which works for this type of keyboards (all keys have an equal slope). You'll want some sticker on the homing keys to locate them fast, though. But anyway, the keyboard i mostly use is still laid out in QWERTY.

Re:Vim

[__aaclcg7560]

A co-worker was seriously messed when the IT department replace the ESC key with a red PANIC button and told him under no circumstances should he ever use the PANIC button. It was an interesting sight as people told him to disregard IT policy by pressing the red button and he panicked at the thought.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

even 'random char generator' folks would ease their life with vim, since :q are one next to the other (bottom left), and 'Z' is right at the other end (bottom rite)

Re:Vim

[yoyhed]

How many words per minute?

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

False optimization is not learning a new keyboard layout that improves your speed (and strain on your hand; haven't had anything like RSI since I switched; before I could only type a few hours and felt a bit of pain), because, OMG, it takes a month to get up to speed again.

Switching layouts in an investment FOR LIFE, so spending a month relearning ain't bad at all.

Re:Vim

[KDR_11k]

You take a screw driver or something and start rearranging keys?

Re:Vim

[jaavaaguru]

Are you a Unix sysadmin?

Re:Vim

[shaitand]

'Sure, the keys are labeled wrong at that point, but how often do you look at your fingers while typing?'

Once you've mastered the layout? Never. When initially learning the key locations? Constantly.

Perhaps you have perfect recall of 100+ characters on the keyboard after one exposure but I don't. The biggest challenge in switching would be learning where the keys are now located. This means trying not to look but also means failing miserably and looking constantly for at least two weeks.

Unfortunately, I can't stay in a program that teaches me the location of dvorak characters for two weeks.

Re:Vim

[rts008]

I was getting ready to call B.S. until my two brain cells finally connected.

Brain fart on my part:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kevorkian) .

DVORAK, Kervorkian.....I'm going to bed now...nevermind!

Re:Vim

[SillyNickName4me]

False optimization is not learning a new keyboard layout that improves your speed (and strain on your hand;

Of course DVORAK is 'optimized' for English, which may at times be helpfull when entering code, but often is not, not to mention that a substantial part of the world doesn't speak English.

There is the problem of having to switch all the time when using someone elses computer, or as in my case, working from some random computer at the office. (having to switch between a US querty and a German qwertz layout is already trouble enough for me, and not so much for letters and numbers, but for all the symbols and shortcuts)

Hence, this optimization is more then a bit relative. That said, when it does apply to your situation, it can be a good argument.

haven't had anything like RSI since I switched; before I could only type a few hours and felt a bit of pain), because, OMG, it takes a month to get up to speed again.

Interesting.

I happen to be typing English most of the time on a querty keyboard, and I regularely manage 8+ hours/day. I have been doing this for the last 20 or so years, and no RSI here. If it helps you, good, but that might well be due to finally having learned to type correctly in the first place, and less with the actual layout that you are using.

Switching layouts in an investment FOR LIFE, so spending a month relearning ain't bad at all.

Maybe it is for you, but untill the day everyone speaks English most of the time, we write software in English, and DVORAK keyboards are the norm, it won't be better for the majority of the people (YMMV)

Re:Vim

[rvw]

1) I hated switching the hotkeys of every app I touched. On my Mac I have the option of using Dvorak - Qwerty. This option leaves the shortcuts as they were. So I suppose all control/command/option key combinations stay as they are. I don't use Dvorak though, and I'm not planning to use it, so I haven't tested it.

Re:Vim

[nickallen]

Speed is not the main reason to switch to Dvorak. It's a nice benefit but the main reason for me is the comfort due to less finger stretching and movement and the even distribution of typing alternating between both hands.

The only downside I have found is the movement of shortcut keys. The main one being the X,C,V for cut, copy, paste. But I bought a typematrix http://typematrix.com/ keyboard that has separate keys for these operations anyway. Overall the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks for me....

Re:Vim

[tehshen]

I happen to be typing English most of the time on a querty keyboard

Dude, how the hell can you misspell "qwerty"? :p

Re:Vim

[zsau]

I use vi key mapping in my editor, shell and from time-to-time my webbrowser, and I always do so with the dvorak layout. Like I say, I like to be able to control scrolling up and down (the two most common actions as your anonymous parent observes) with either the left hand (jk) or the right hand (mouse, cursor keys, scroll wheel). jk are both on the left index finger, so it's not like it's a weak spot, either.

(I'm not a lefty, but doing everything with one hand tires it. Hence using dvorak, which balances the load a lot... It also means I can mouse with my right hand and scroll with my left hand, which is something I do from time to time.)

(Oh, I was wrong by the way, and said h and j were on the left hand. They're not. jk are on the left hand. Evidently I don't pay attention to how I'm doing something.)

Re:Vim

[zsau]

Of course DVORAK is 'optimized' for English, which may at times be helpfull when entering code, but often is not, not to mention that a substantial part of the world doesn't speak English.

Please stop bringing this argument up, everyone reading this article! Dvorak is optimised for English, and no-one argues that anyone but people using English (or other languages similar enough) should use dvorak.

As for RSI etc. I've heard this a lot from people who've switched to dvorak, and many assert they touchtyped properly beforehand.[*] The fact that you get by without getting RSI on qwerty doesn't mean it's not a risk for some people: Some people just don't get RSI for no clear reason. And likewise, many people switched to dvorak because of its purported benefits, and their RSI wasn't cured. Point: Everyone's different.

[*]: I touchtyped properly beforehand. But I didn't have RSI, so dvorak can't've cured it.

Re:Vim

[zsau]

Oh indeed, I know exactly what you mean. It took me a lot longer to get used to certain punctuation, and when I go and touchtype qwerty nowadays, I usually try to type the dvorak form and have to look down.

Of course, this provides the benefit that you'll eventually learn to touchtype punctuation. Just leave the image of the keyboard layout attached to your monitor, and consult it, not the keyboard. Looking at your screen and touchtyping will help you learn to touchtype a lot better than looking at your keyboard ever will.

(I didn't practise what I preached here. I physically rearranged the punctuation after I was fluent in dvorakese for letters but still couldn't hit + or ] to save my life. So I never learnt them, till I got a laptop and I had no choice.)

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding non-English use of Dvorak, see my other comment here:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230855&cid =18739447

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned to touch-type Dvorak a few years ago, largely to fill in some required training time at work. To begin with I forgot how to touch-type on QWERTY, but now I can switch between the two very easily.

I'm mainly a Mac user, and one keyboard option is to use Dvorak for typing but with the normal keyboard layout for Command keypresses. This gives the best of both worlds.

Re:Vim

[hpavc]

GEORGE: (Stuttering) I, I, I, .. here, let me - let me help you..

WOMAN: No, no ,no. It's all right. (Begins helping him pick her things up)

GEORGE: It - it's just that I'm here with my parents, and my mother wants me to take a civil service test - and to tell you the truth, I don't even think I'd pass it.. So..

(George hands the last of the items to her, she takes them from him, then starts to admire his hand)

WOMAN: Hmm..

GEORGE: What?

WOMAN: (Looking at both his hands intensely) Your hands.

GEORGE: What about them?

WOMAN: They're quite exquisite!

GEORGE: They are?

WOMAN: (Mesmerized) Extraordinary! Have you ever done any hand modeling?

GEORGE: Hand modeling? (Shakes his head 'No')

WOMAN: (Fishes a card out of her purse, then hands it to George) Here's my card. Why don't you, uh, give me a call? (Walks off)

Re:Vim

[alvarl]

well, it would be qwertz for the Germans.. :)

Re:Vim

[JPickard]

I'm -very- happy with the feel of my current keyboard What keyboard is it?

Re:Vim

[tekess]

I've been using dvorak for almost 4 years now, and switching was best decission I've ever made. Only found some trouble with vim at first, but after 2 weeks it was solved. I still can use a qwerty layout, btw.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh.

Assuming you're being serious about the two-fingered touch typing, I'd say a Dvorak keyboard wouldn't be much help. The keys are layed out so that you're statistically most likely to hit adjecent keys on every other keystroke. For a regular touch typist, this means you can play do something similar to playing arpeggios to type a word.

As a QWERTY user, think of typing UIO with your index, middle, and ring fingers as quickly as possible. If you're good, you'll almost key a chord, but you'll have a sort of "rolling" motion going on too. For a better idea of the Dvorak layout offers, consider the 'owieur' combination. (Right index on o, left on w, right middle on i, left on e, etc.) Obviously, you can do "arpeggios" with QWERTY, but they aren't likely to generate useful letter combinations.

You can become incredibly fast on oft typed words using this "chording" technique. Even on QWERTY. Dvorak makes learning chords easier though.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

He was probably using a DVORAK keyboard!

Re:Vim

[robotissues]

Curious ... what keyboard are you using?

Re:Vim

[poopdeville]

Well, the first two objections aren't that big of a problem, assuming you learned to touch type. (Even if you learned QWERTY by looking at the keys). In practice, typing on a keyboard is a lot like playing a musical instrument. You can get used to pretty much anything if you practice.

Your point about using other keyboards is fair. I found that learning Dvorak while using random QWERTY keyboards was difficult. Mostly because it would take my fingers a few moments to figure out which layout I was using. (That actually made learning Dvorak fun. My fingers got a weird, slightly acid trippy ache at first.) But I found that if you practice both simultaneously, you can learn both fairly easily.

I think the best reason to "switch" isn't because Dvorak is better, but because learning a new way to type will make you a better typist in general. You'll focus on good technique that you haven't thought of in years, if at all. On the other hand, you can use Mavis Beacon - QWERTY edition to the same effect.

Whatever floats your boat. I use QWERTY primarily. :-)

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

VIM keybindings are really nothing that QWERTY specific. Sure, hjkl seem to be more organized on QWERTY, but it's the sort of thing you can get used to it. Besides, don't you use w and b more often for quicker movement along the line, rather than h or l?

Since I switched to Dvorak a few years ago, the only thing I couldn't get used to are shortcuts in games (oh, like Warcraft?), especially since those things are usually designed to be typed with left hand on QWERTY layout (hence requiring either two hands or jumping around the keyboard with one hand).

Re:Vim

[Aladrin]

Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000. It has just enough of the curve to be more comfortable, without the huge separation between the middle keys. It's fairly quiet, but still audible. And I like how the keys are -just- hard enough to push that you know you've pushed it. And it's only $20. I've spent well over $100 for a single keyboard looking for the right one, and almost always been disappointed. To find the perfect one for $20... Amazing.

Re:Vim

[bytesex]

That co-worker of yours. That wasn't Sandra Bullock, was it ?

Re:Vim

[gratemyl]

There are quite a few possibilities actually, just to demonstrate some here:

- quirte
- qerwys
- qserty
- awerty
- qwerth

The list is endless!

Re:Vim

[fmobus]

Oh god, this is one thing I hated about coming to germany. The qwertz thing is not really a problem for me anymore, but is terrible for programming:

• the >< is in a horrible place (next to left-shift).
• {[]} are on altgr-7,8,9,0
• / is shift-7
• " is shift-2

Compare to the layout I was used to (brazilian ABNT2, quite similar to American standards), where >< are in different keys, {[]} are on the top row and /? is near the right-shift.

But, at least, I didn't go to France like some colleagues of mine. They are really screwed, keyboard-wise.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I just printed out a diagram of the layout (which I found using Google Image Search) and put it above my keyboard. After a couple weeks, I layed it down and got as far as I could. After a month, I'd adjusted. I switch back and forth between it and qwerty at work and have no problems at all. YMMV, but it's also much more comfortable for me.

Re:Vim

[GrievousMistake]

Rule #1 when learning touch typing: Never look at the keys. Print out your keyboard layout and have it by your computer, but don't train yourself to look directly at the keyboard. The habit will linger.
This is why all serious touch training programs show the layout on the screen.

Re:Vim

[FungosBauux]

Damn!

Do this way: put your finger at key "Q", now jump one by one clicking in the right-sided key until you got at "Y".

QWERTY

Its not hard!
Now, try with a full hand (pinky at "Q") and cycle fingers until "R", move your hand 2 keys to right, and then finish with "TY".

Re:Vim

[Urza9814]

I switched over last christmas. Got an IBM Model M, switched around all the keycaps, and love it. Only problem is I can no longer type in QWERTY. At all. Took me a while to get good at Dvorak, but if you switch around the keycaps, it's a LOT easier. I tried learning it before but couldn't until I did that. IMO, the best way to learn is to look. But anyways, I'm surviving just fine without using QWERTY. I do switch every computer I use over to Dvorak first. Only takes about half a minute to set up keyboard shortcuts so you can switch back and forth. Hell, even at school where they have control panel locked, I just go into gpedit, unlock it, and set up the hotkeys. It's really not that much of a problem for me. As for hotkeys...I've re-learned copy/paste, and that's all I really use.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Vim with Dvorak for a while, and I have to disagree. Especially hjkl got uncomfortable to type, and remapping stuff to get those into more sensible positions is annoying when you jump between systems. That said, I'm very glad I learned Dvorak, as it taught me proper touch-typing (I used to touch-type with two fingers, which is a cool party trick, but exhausting in the long run).

Re:Vim

[Provocateur]

But when you hit CTRL-backspace, doesn't the view out the window change?
 

Re:Vim

[WgT2]

That's a copout; your are a slave to Qwerty or whatever keyboard layout that you use because that's where your muscle memory is.

Having said that, I doubt it would make it any easier for you to switch away from Qwerty at all.

I personally have been using Dvorak for about 4 years. I have only met two others who do or have used it or at least let me know they have *the skill*. While I was training a co-worker he mentioned how weird it looked for me to use Dvorak. I don't watch my hands when typing so I didn't know what he was talking about. But, after another Dvorak user came on the job and I watched his hands: yes, it looks weird, even to me.

Re:Vim

[fritsd]

Or AZERTY for the french!
I have used qwerty, qwertz and azerty, but never yet dvorak. I'm getting curious about it though, so I installed dvorak7min (debian: http://packages.debian.org/stable/games/dvorak7min ) hoping it's any good.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he as referring to the fact that some countries have a different layout.

Example: The French uses an AZERTY layout. Picture here: http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/keyboards/kbdfr .htm

Re:Vim

[WgT2]

Right now, my keyboard's top row says "ALEXROCKSU".

Dang it! If only my name didn't have a repeating letter in it!

(by the way, thanks for the great laugh)

Re:Vim

[master_p]

Dude, how the hell can you misspell "qwerty"? :p

He typed it on a DVORAK keyboard...

Re:Vim

[scribblej]

I'm 31, I've been typing since I got my first Commodore-64 in about 1980, and I am in the same boat as you; I am a ridiculously fast two-finger touch-typist. Now, I don't literally use two fingers; I actually type with all my fingers (although the pinkie fingers get very little use).

People who are touch-typists often are impressed with my typing speed. Everyone assumes I am a touch-typist. Then I invite them to watch my hands when I type.

I will never forget my typing class in high school; I could type faster than the instructor, but he would have to make me down because I didn't do it the right way.

Re:Vim

[adrianmonk]

About the only 'arbitrary' command I can think of is the '%' key -- I've never made a connection between it and parentheses.

The '%' character is just about the most natural ASCII character I can think of for the purpose it has in vi and vim. The character itself makes a pretty good ideograph for two opposing things: it's a symmetrical image with two circles on opposite sides, with a line in the middle to show separation between them. It's kinda like a yin-yang symbol[1]. So it makes perfect sense as a key for bouncing between pairs of opposites.

For what it's worth, a symbol specific to parentheses might not be ideal, since the '%' key works on other types of brackets as well ("{}" and "[]").

On a side note, I guess this may be why the '%' character is used to denote an associative array in Perl. Associative arrays are sets of pairs of things, and the '%' character seems to make a good symbol for that as well.

[1] Or I guess I really mean a Taijitu.

Re:Vim

[GrievousMistake]

I'm using Norwegian dvorak, where the æøå keys have been added, and the punctuation is more similar to standard Norwegian.
English and norwegian letter usages are similare enough to give a decent typing pattern and hand alternation, and I suspect this would hold true with at least most Germane languages. The author of the layout notes that although some keys are more and less used in Norwegian, like kj and qw, it's probably not worth the trouble to introduce major differences to the standard dvorak.

I find the finger movements I do while writing with dvorak somehow feels more comfortable than qwerty, even disconsidering any RSI effects, with which I've never been troubled. This may not be easily quantifiable, but it is very noticable to me.

(Rest of comment not specific to parent.)

Any direct comparison with regards to typing speed is difficult, as I never really learned proper touch typing with qwerty. The test here rated me as only 62 wpm, so I've certainly not attained any godlike speed from the switch. I'd say that if you're like I was, and have never really learnt proper touch typing, you might as well start with dvorak as with qwerty, since the extra unfamilarity could just as easily be a good thing when you're unlearning your old writing habit.

I find it works well with the standard vim keymap, where the keys layout isn't very logical to begin with, except for the hjkl, which ends up in acceptable locations, though you need to use both hands.
The worst common combo on dvorak would be the ctrl+x/c/v keys, that require moving the left hand to the right side of the keyboard if your right hand is on the mouse.
The only shortcuts I've edited to accomodate my dvorak layout is foobar2000, where I have winamp-like z/x/c (on dvorak æqj) for stop/play/next.

Recently I've seen a couple of references to a 'Colemak' layout. At first glance it looks more uncomfortable than dvorak to me, but I guess these things have to be felt. At the risk of sounding like a qwerty user with respect to dvorak, it just hasn't been worth my time to learn a new layout when I already can touchtype pretty well, though I'd look into it if i had time. One of it's strengths and weaknesses seem to be that the standard layout can access most international characters, thus enabling one standard layout over multiple languages, while making the entry of said characters a bit awkward.

As an aside, The Typing of the Dead (cheesy horror arcade FPS converted to cheesy typing training game) and iSketch (online pictionary game) can both be fun ways to train your touchtyping.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I used http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ which worked fine for me. Note that it's pretty hardcore, and when you only type actual words you won't make nearly as many mistakes as when doing that course, because you know the typical keys that come in sequence.

("Slow down cowboy, it's been 36 minutes since you last posted." WTF don't they get about "slowing down"???)

Re:Vim

[Hooya]

he's got DVORAK layout but doesn't know it?

Re:Vim

[ClosedSource]

What's cool about what you do is that it's probably easier on your wrists than touch-typing.

Re:Vim

[adrianmonk]

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard. I'm sure I could find some online if I looked

Well, there is this one. And here's the page for the original design concept. All I can say is that when I first saw this, all I could think was "Oh HELL yes!". Now that this thread has reminded me of it, I'm half thinking of switching to the Dvorak layout just to manufacture a way to justify buying one of these things. But it's a stretch -- they will not be cheap.

Apart from the fact that this thing is just waaay cool, can you imagine the improvement in user interface that would result from having keyboard shortcuts shown directly on the keyboard rather than having them buried in 2 or 3 levels of menu at the top of the screen? I can only assume that would be one of those "wow, this is exactly how it should have worked all along" moments.

Of course, it's not perfect. Some keyboard commands are sequences of keys, and there is no way to show the sequences directly on the keyboard all at once (hmm, although you could show them as animations!), but still it could be made so that as you type a sequence, the state of the keyboard changes in response, showing what following keys are legal and what they do.

On a side note, this keyboard was developed by some Russian guys, who would be accustomed to having to deal with various keyboard layouts, and the designer has written a great article on keyboard layouts.

And finally, check out the download page for one of their other products. I found it amusing.

Re:Vim

[BlueStraggler]

I'm a slug at vi, but thanks for letting me know who to blame for some of the idiotic keybindings in emacs. ^B for back and ^F for forward always makes me want to slap some two-finger typist up the side of the head. Obviously designed by a programmer who didn't know how to type (the unix sysadmin comment above was probably close to the mark) - it's perfectly logical, until you look at the key placement.

The golden age of computer keyboarding was probably in the late 1980s. The control key was where it was supposed to be, and everyone used sensible WordStar keybindings.
</nostalgia>

Re:Vim

[PopeRatzo]

I can already type faster than I can think. I made the mistake of pirating a copy of Mavis Beacon years ago and now I can type so fast some people think it's eerie. I also have the bad habit of hitting the keyboard a little too hard, so not only do I run through keyboards at an alarming rate, but I also can wake up my wife when she's asleep in the bedroom downstairs from my little work room.

She says I type the way Cecil Taylor plays piano.

Re:Vim

[WgT2]

I used a Dell non-ergonomic keyboard which ended up with different sized keys based on their Qwerty row possition. It looked a little funny and uneven, but it didn't hinder my look-and-learn approach to Dvorak.

So, you might be able to do it also. You won't know until you try.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why I haven't switched to Linux.

Re:Vim

[Aladrin]

I was gonna say 'Has that come out already!?' but I see they are still 'planning to take pre-orders' ... Hmm... Vaporware still. Even their stupid 3-key keyboard doesn't improve my outlook on things. Ah, it's got a price now, too. $1500. That's pretty far off from the $200 they originally suggested it might be. $200 is 'wow, expensive, but still must-have' while $1500 is 'are you crazy?' Add to that the fact that it isn't likely to have Linux support, and the pricetag will discourage anyone from buying it to MAKE Linux support, and I think we can pretty much write that thing off as a bad move.

Re:Vim

[gefahrmaus]

I never understood this excuse; a weak excuse on all fronts. What you want to tell us: your real problem is that you are a slave to hunt-and-peck.

As a "slave to Vim" myself, and one that has been using Dvorak since 1996, I can say, "Just start using Dvorak." The J key still moves down, K still move up, H left, L right... you just different fingers and reaches to do it. I can promise you Vim doesn't give a hoot about your keymap. All your Vim experience remains directly applicable.

Dvorak Tip from a veteran: dump hunt and peck habits by keeping your QWERTY keycaps and typing with a Dvorak keymap . Keep a Dvorak keymap printout near your desk for hints, or pick up Mavis Beacon (MB). MB runs on Mac and PC; sorry Linux crowd, you'll need a good typing tutor. MB will help you with reaches and you will begin to see immediate benefits, while picking up touch-typing habits...you can't cheat and look at your keyboard because the keycaps will be useless! Bwahahahahaha!

Re:Vim

[LinuxDon]

While people who type with two fingers often think the main advantage of touch typing is speed, it actually isn't the biggest advantage.
The biggest advantage is that with touch typing you -never- have to look at the keyboard, therefore saving a lot of 'switching time' (looking at the monitor->keyboard and visa versa). Even a quick glimpse at the keyboard can break your concentration, causing you to have to reposition your eyes to look at the right line on the paper or the screen.

Also, with touch typing you can position your other fingers before you actually pressed the previous button. This minimizes the time between key-presses since you're optimally using all of your 10 fingers (including both of your pinkie fingers).

Another reason to learn to touch-type is that you will look more in control of the computer imho..

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to dvorak in 5 days and i was typing faster in about 2 months. I had maxed out about 65wpm on qwerty and i was getting a great deal of strain from irc chatting. With dvorak I get to about 80wpm and no strain at all.

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I've become a slave to the Vim

I've been sniffing that stuff for years myself.

It ate away my nose, just like they said it would.

Re:Vim

[normal_guy]

What is ridiculous speed? 80wpm+ ?

Re:Vim

[U235.1-rc0]

I've become a slave to the Vim

I've been sniffing that stuff for years myself.

It ate away my nose, just like they said it would.

Re:Vim

[jaelle]

I switched over winter break a couple years ago..took less than a week after 20 years of typing qwerty. I did it because my wrists were falling apart. They're a lot better now, and my typing is more accurate most of the time. I didn't bother to change keycaps around, tho sometimes if something uses odd keys I'll mark them on the keys temporarily.

I'ts gotta be the easiest typing system to learn evar, tho. Since most of the keys you use the most are in the home row or the top row, you have them down almost instantly. Unlearning qwerty took longer than learning Dvorak.

Re:Vim

[Abcd1234]

Nah, I much prefer turning capslock into a third modifier key, which I then use with WindowMaker as a hotkey for manipulating the window manager. So, to resize a window, I hold down capslock, then right-click-drag. To move a window, it's capslock+left-click-drag. Makes it extremely easy to manipulate many windows on the desktop without interfering with application key bindings.

I suppose you could swap capslock and control, then turn control into a third modifier, though...

Re:Vim

[amazon10x]

Same here. I can type at about 80-120wpm (On the One True Keyboard, mind you). I see no reason to try Dvorak because I already type much faster than I think (even more so when I am writing succinct code rather than this long, drawn-out English).

Re:Vim

[Alan Shutko]

That's exactly what i've found about my (similarly crazy) three-fingered typing layout. I've already known fellow developers my age who've needed treatment for rsi... so far, I've avoided it.

Re:Vim

[Alan Shutko]

I, and I am guessing the earlier poster, are what you'd call "two-fingered touch typists". I don't have to look at the keyboard, and I can type in the dark, with my eyes closed, or while reading something else. Somehow, I've learned to fairly decently preposition fingers, although I don't use all the fingers.

It's really pretty interesting. Any typing coach would be horrified, but I'm fairly efficient.

Re:Vim

[Wolfrider]

No, it was Jodie Foster...
:b

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

I only recently started using vim, but i was a nethack addict (or still am, can you ever come clean?). Nethack is much easier with the vi keys, it even has diagonals. However they are not that bad in dvorak. The 'h' and 'l' are still on the left and right fingers of your right hand. The 'j' and 'k' are not that well positioned, but they are on your right hand which might even improve moving speed..

Re:Vim

[God of Lemmings]

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard. I'm sure I could find some online if I looked, but I'm -very- happy with the feel of my current keyboard (I own 2 and a wireless version of it now) and don't look forward to trying to find a Dvorak layout one that I like. Most keyboards have keys that snap off and pop on....

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere below ludicrous speed.

Re:Vim

[FlyingRobin13]

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard. If you learn to type fluently, you don't need to look at the keyboard at all anyway, and I assume most Dvorak keyboard users (myself included) try it out and learn it first before investing in a new keyboard, and once you've learned it (or QWERTY for that matter), it doesn't really matter what's printed on the keys... I would rather a keyboard with nothing printed on the keys - I'm sure it'd be a much better tool for anybody to learn any keyboard layout because it removes the possibilty of typing by hunt'n'peck

Re:Vim

[wng_z3r0]

Yep, you nailed it on the head exactly.

My personal thoughts on dvorak:
http://spyware-free.us/2007/03/my-thoughts-on-dvor ak.html

wng

Re:Vim

[tedgyz]

... Right now, my keyboard's top row says "ALEXROCKSU". (This makes it impossible for non-touch typists to use my computer) Sure they could.

al3x r0x u

Re:Vim

[BlackSnake112]

not trying to nitpick but..

If your brain controls your hands how can you type faster then you can think? Your hands know what you are going to think? Your hands can tell the future? I have seen people type as fast as they can talk.

As for me I suck at typing. I stare at the keyboard not the screen. I even know when to delete a character or two since I saw my fingers hit the wrong key. When I was learning to type I had multiple broken fingers. I had a broken finger or two for 3-4 years. Between sports and accidents it was bad. I taught myself to type all be it a non-traditional way but it works.

Re:Vim

[pAnkRat]

<voice type="Butthead">
What the hell are you talking about, Beavis?!?!
</voice>

Re:Vim

[Skater]

I used Dvorak for several years then switched back. It wasn't worth the hassles as you mentioned.

In particular, Windows 2000 was horrible about switching between layouts. It was per-program (each program would be in whatever mode Windows was in when you started the program, so if you switched keyboard mode later without restarting the program, some programs would be in one mode and the rest in the other), plus it would affect the password screens and such - and you had to reboot to switch those back to Qwerty (such as when the techs needed to work on your PC - EVEN REMOTELY! - they'd type and get gibberish).

It also caused issues for my CueCat scanner at home. ;) (Okay, that wasn't a big problem.)

It wasn't worth the trouble it caused, so I switched back and haven't regretted it.

Re:Vim

[nobaloney]

A long time ago in a universe far far away I was a typesetter. Came up through it all.

Linotype, Friden Justowriter, IBM Selectric Composer, Compgraphic Compuwriter IV and Editwriter, Varityper, Alphatype, etc. (in no particular order)

They all had different keyboards.

Even when using multiple keyboards at the same time I never had a problem; sitting in front of a machine just put my brain into the mode it needed to be in for typing on it's keyboard.

Re:Vim

[Edball]

About two years ago, my co-workers rearranged the keys on my keyboard while I was out. It took two weeks for me to notice. I have yet to bother to change it back.

My favorite comment I've gotten was from a software tech. She came around to install some new software and wasn't able to type with the few letters switched around. She turned to me and asked, "Is this a left handed keyboard or something?"

Re:Vim

[tomhudson]

She turned to me and asked, "Is this a left handed keyboard or something?"

I hope you told her yes ...

... or that it was for dyslexics ...

... or "there's nothing wrong with it ... maybe you caught a computer virus ..."

Re:Vim

[BlueItalian]

I, and I am guessing the earlier poster, are what you'd call "two-fingered touch typists". I don't have to look at the keyboard, and I can type in the dark, with my eyes closed, or while reading something else. Somehow, I've learned to fairly decently preposition fingers, although I don't use all the fingers.

IT's called pinky-homing (I made up the name), it's the same technique used by guitarists!

Re:Vim

[Silas is back]

I've been using Dvorak for two years on my Mac now and I've been using this layout. Works exactly as you describe, as soon as you press the command-key, the american qwerty-layout is activated. I like it that way since Cmd + C, Cmd + V and Cmd + H are burnt into my cerebellum like walking or breathing... =)

Re:Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, VIM works very well with dvorak keyboards -- j and k are next to each other, and h and l are in spots that (at least on my laptop) are even more comfortable than the h, j, k, and l keys ever were using the editor on a qwerty.

A lot of software is badly written -- with the assumption that everyone uses qwerty. Thing is, this is a lousy assumption even without dvorak on the scene -- much of the world uses other keyboard layouts, there's a reason the qwerty layout is "US" in the layout options.

So personally, I just put up with a few odd layouts, most of the time, dvorak works perfectly fine.

Personally

[WED Fan]

I find Dvorak a bit tedious. For coding, I prefer Williams, John, not Andy. Sometimes I listen to something light like Bocelli. Moody Blues. But, never metal when I'm coding.

Re:Personally

[jd]

That's strange. I agree about Dvorak, but there's nothing like Sisters of Mercy for shell-scripting, or a bit of Sabbat for a debug session. Paul Di'Anno's Battlezone seems to be better for GUI work, though.

Re:Personally

[sconeu]

Don't forget ZZ-Top for either heavy coding, or cranking out documentation.

Re:Personally

[Short Circuit]

Mod parent "+1 VIM pun".

Re:Personally

[fyngyrz]

Frankly, what really makes typing easier is an hour spent with a hot brunette relieving both of your tensions. Lingerie makes it even better, and the skilled employment of toys will make sure that you'll be welcome to do it again later and in the days to follow. Touch typing requires significant manual dexterity; so do hot brunettes. 'nuff said.

Re:Personally

[sconeu]

Damn! I didn't even realize that... I was serious, there's nothing like the steady beat of ZZ-Top for getting into the zone...

Re:Personally

[Short Circuit]

I prefer the Red Alert soundtrack, myself. Or possibly a random waltz through my Amiga music collection.

*sigh*...It's been too long since I could sit down and code something interesting. Summer vacation can't come a moment too soon.

Re:Personally

[Gazzonyx]

Never tried ZZ-Top; seems like it would get me into the zone. I end up going between Bach (when juggling eggs), a bit of Zeppelin for steady pace, and Five Iron Frenzy (Christian Rock/Ska/Punk - outside of the genre they're somewhat obscure) for starting off a project. Oh, and Riddlin' Kids for all around boring coding.

Anyways, I have the same problem as most parent posts - I use VI almost exclusively, (I'll take PuTTY/SSH and BASH over a GUI any day of the week, and move twice as fast) and I don't even know the bindings anymore; it's all muscle memory. I find myself hitting Esc. when typing in windows at least once day. As for speed, it's not much of an issue, I've actually slowed down from my senior year in highscool writing report after report and easy C++. That coupled with my pinkies being all messed up from / from Linux and shift from Java (freaking 5 word methods means 4 shifts per call! plus ()'s), I just don't care about speed so much as I just want a comfortable keyboard.

How hard is it to break the muscle memory, and how long should I expect it to take? I also hate the 'break in' period on keyboard (and wired mice)... I might as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone and switch to DVORAK while breaking in my next keyboard. I love my cheap Logitech wireless, the keys are all finally smooth after 2 years; now that it's comfortable it'll probably die. How is support for them on BSD, Linux, Mac, etc?

Re:Personally

[smbarbour]

I find a mix of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Chumbawumba to be excellent when working in Crystal Reports.

Re:Personally

[uglyduckling]

uhhh... when you say "mix" are we talking consecutive or concurrent?

Re:Personally

[StrahdVZ]

When first reading the title of the article, I thought it was asking if John Dvorak had gained popularity amongst coders. I was wondering what the world was coming to.

If only the cost was less...

[Tokimasa]

At one point, I went out looking for a DVORAK keyboard, starting at my local computer shop and expanding to office supply stores and even Wal*Mart, just to see if anyone had one and if not, how much it would be to order one. After prices over $200, I checked online and found the cheapest, most basic, DVORAK keyboard at about $100 + shipping and taxes.

I know I could get a cheap QWERTY and rearrange the keys. But (at least from the pictures I've seen), wouldn't be a true DVORAK layout. If I could cheaply obtain or emulate a DVORAK layout, I would try it. But right now, I have a laptop, so I would only use it when I'm at my desk and I would need to purchase one first. The idea of switching back and forth day after day and the cost just doesn't help...

Re:If only the cost was less...

[rustalot42684]

Even if it isn't a true Dvorak layout, it's still far more efficient than QWERTY to have a mostly-Dvorak layout.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[RealRav]

I was typing dvorak for years before I purchased a dvorak keyboard. It is better when you type not to look at the keyboard anyway. Just change the layout in your OS, then print out a keyboard layout and tape it to you monitor for the three day learning period. After that, you will know where the keys are by touch and the actual keyboard doesn't matter.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[rs79]

"At one point, I went out looking for a DVORAK keyboard"

Maybe it's me but I just switched the keycaps around.

I tried Dvorak for six months and tried really really hard. But I couldn't get
to be a fraction as efficient as I could with qwerty. If nothing else whoever
put the M there should be shot.

I've been using a computer keyboard for 37 years starting with an IBM 029 keypunch and I may just
be too goddamn old to learn. You young punks may have a chance.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Seumas]

I don't know about that. If you already type about 100 wpm or so, how great is Dvorak giong to be for a coder? Are you really going to write code at 300 wpm? I doubt it. And while I suppose it might put less straight on your fingers, a lot of us have absolutely no problem with QWERTY. Not to mention the time involved in re-learning a new layout. And I gaurantee they aren't teaching Dvorak in school.

It's an improvement over QWERTY. Over that I don't think there is any doubt. But I'm not sure the improvement is worth it if what you have is working as it is. Dvorak is mostly just something people can brag about to be different, just like people who buy Zunes and iRivers so they can show how cool and different they are because they didn't buy an iPod.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Guido del Confuso]

You don't need a Dvorak keyboard anymore. Just change the settings in the OS. Ah, but what about the keycaps, you ask? Leave 'em as they are. I started using Dvorak about seven or eight years ago, and when I did I got a programmable keyboard. I was never quite as fast using Dvorak as I was with QWERTY, but I persevered. When I eventually got a Mac, the programmable keyboard wouldn't work with it, so I just used a QWERTY keyboard and remapped it within the OS. Within two weeks my typing speed in Dvorak significantly improved, since I could no longer fall back on looking at the keys as a crutch. When I didn't know where a key was exactly, I would start hitting around near it until I found it. I think the learned muscle memory from that experience was a far better teacher than having the keycaps. Interestingly, my QWERTY typing speed improved somewhat as well, because I realized how often I had been glancing at the keys while I typed, out of sheer force of habit from when I was learning to type. I quickly broke that habit, and my typing speed went up maybe 20%.

I ultimately stopped using Dvorak because it was too much of a pain to reconfigure the keyboard all of the time when getting a new game or something. I doubt I'll go back at this point, since I currently make my living using Avid and I know all of the Avid commands I regularly use by their letter and keyboard position. I could remap them, I suppose, but after all the fun I had trying to use Emacs with a Dvorak layout, I'm not sure I find the advantages of Dvorak compelling enough to bother.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[beelsebob]

The irony being that m is in fact in the same place as it is on a qwerty keyboard.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[maxume]

It was Dvorak.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[aslate]

I gave Dvorak a good 1 year trial and frankly found it made no real difference at all.

I've got one of those IBM spring-loaded keyboard that my mum got from work with an old PC, so i could re-arrange the key caps (not even the physical keys, but the cap with the letters on) to Dvorak. I even changed the Qwerty keyboards at school to the Dvorak settings (which should help my learning as i can't do hunt-and-peck at the keys). And never noticed anything useful.

Now it may have been in part that i would every-so-often have to use a Qwerty layout (such as a friend's keyboard and hence wouldn't change it), but Dvorak made fuck all different to any typing skills, sticking to Qwerty is so much easier...

I also used the Dvorak switch to learn to type properly (when i use Qwerty i only use one finger on my right hand, fucked up, but it works as a typing style and is damned quick no matter what anyone says). So from that i should have learned to type faster, because not only was i using Dvorak, but typing in the proper style (4 fingers on home keys and such). But it never helped my typing speed.

Finally, no-one should spend that much on a keyboard. We've got 3 IBM spring-loaded keyboards probably worth a good £50+ each, but they're worth so much more to keep any type on compared to any new keyboard :p

Re:If only the cost was less...

[pestilence669]

Das Keyboard is an excellent keyboard (different key resistance zones) and has the benefit of having no key markings. This helps you type faster as looking down won't help you at all. Blanking keys is highly recommended for learning new layouts, with masking tape, if nothing else.

It has the extra benefit of never needing key cap rearrangement between layouts. It's a good unit and I'm very picky when it comes to keyboards. ...and should you never make the switch, there's nothing stopping you from using it with QWERTY, Dvorak-Left, or Hungarian.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[mikesd81]

Here

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Inoshiro]

The cost is nothing. I'm typing this on an IBM model M with the keycaps re-arranged to Dvorak. I've had Windows, MacOS X, and Linux all set to use the Dvorak keyboard layout with no troubles.

Now, as for actually having the keycaps set to Dvorak, that's mostly for when you start out. Once you develop your muscle memory so that you can touch type, it's really not an issue. MacOS X even has the DQ (Dvorak-QWERTY) mode for helping people who type like this. When you're typing normal text, the layout is Dvorak; when you press the command button, it shifts back to QWERTY so the shortcuts you're used to (Apple-X, C, V, etc) are all in the same location as before.

The real cost is your personal time. You will not be able to type above 50wpm for a few weeks.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Falladir]

What's wrong with having the M there? I'm assuming your remark is completely guileless, which might be wrong.

M isn't as important as H,T,N or S, so it shouldn't be a home key. It's more important than W or V or Z, so it gets a stronger finger than those. The placement is totally logical.

(dvorak user for three years; only issue is hotkeys, and it's just an annoyance. Also, you have to keep a "switch to qwerty" hotkey, so you can play games without manually remapping, and so that other people can use the computer)

Re:If only the cost was less...

[aliquis]

You are sure it's not a rebranded Keytronic KT2000? Have always looked just like one and thought I very much liked the comfort of those ones they always died in a very short time for me, the last new one within a month or a few, and I was to lazy to have it replaced in time :(

Now I use a Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 since split design feels much better on my shoulders and the angels feels better in my .. uhmm. the part between the hands and arms :D, quality isn't that good since some keys stoped working after two months or so and this replacement unit had an n-key which didn't wanted to "take" and an m-key which did the same thing sometimes, seems to work now thought so maybe it was just a wear&tear-issue and had to be used in ;D

Re:If only the cost was less...

[webmistressrachel]

It's very inconsiderate to diss the guy just because he dislikes the M key even if it is in the same place - everything else has moved and this changes the way the "m" key feels to him - not being an DVORAK expert myself but it seems to me if most characters he uses are in a block in the new layout and the M key is way over "there" somewhere then his perception that it doesnt "feel right" is completely reasonable, esp. given the time he's spent on QWERTY.

We geeks claim to be intelligent and reasonable, and yet sometimes we can be the most closed-minded and inconsiderate bunch possible at times! And plus, the guy was probably programming in assembler before your PARENTS knew what a computer was so of course he's more used to QWERTY and set in his ways than 99% of the baby boomers here ... give him some respect... he can probably code better with his QWERTY than you can with your "me too! I'M FASHIONABLE! " fancy new keyboard (ps Im only 25 but I can completely understand where he's coming from)

Just my 2 cents

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Vorlath]

You don't need to buy a keyboard especially for dvorak. I buy a keyboard where all the keys are the exact same shape (watch the surface angle). They take a little bit more hunting down (like going to 2 or 3 local stores instead of 1). Then just rearrange the keys and you're done. I've never met a keyboard where you couldn't pop the keys out. $15 bucks and you're done. And we're talking Canadian money here.

I'm a coder and I will NEVER use qwerty again if I have a choice. Plus, no one will mess with my computer. It's better than a password. Typing is SOOOO much easier on Dvorak. I'd been using qwerty for over 10 years and I could not type worth sh*t. I still can't type fast, but I can touch type and I can do over 50 wpm in code-wise with Dvorak. 45 to 80 in regular text mode. There's always a word here and there that slows me down (bursts of speed with the odd slow word). Not because of the keyboard. Just because I don't like typing. So I went from 25 wpm to 50wpm and in text mode and if I'm really into it, I can reach over 100wpm. In qwerty, the best I could do is 40wpm (yes, I was a sad sight). So for me, it's been a win-win scenario. I couldn't get any worse at qwerty than I was, so it was never an issue. I still type at the same 25wpm speed on qwerty.

Oddly enough, even at 25wpm I'm still the fastest coder I've ever seen. So if you think the keyboard makes a difference in coding speed, you're 100% wrong. If you switch to Dvorak, do it because it's easier and more comfortable. You hardly have to move your fingers. Mostly, you just push down where they're at. But for a coder, speed and wpm don't mean a thing. Typing takes less than 1% of the total work. The typing stage is after everything has already been decided. You're just plugging in details at this point and going through the motions. I'll never understand people who sit at a computer to program software. The computer just slows me down. I'd get bored programming in front of a computer. The funny thing is real programmers understand this implicitly like I'm stating the obvious, yet it seems so nonsensical to debutants.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[toddestan]

I find that the M and W keys are one of the gremlins of the Dvorak layout, along with the P, Y, and F keys on the top. The Dvorak layout is not without its faults, but I still prefer it to Qwerty.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[toddestan]

Switching the settings in the OS works most of the time, but some things like some games, particularly old ones, some DOS programs, and things like the Windows installer, the Bios screens, etc. ignore the OS entirely, talk to the keyboard directly, or simply can't be configured. A real, hardwired Dvorak board is the only way to get around those issues, though I choose to just live with it myself.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[BrokenHalo]

The first computer I worked with (a Burroughs B3700) had a master console (which they called a SPO, sor "Supervisory Printer Operator") which was like a big, clunky teletype. The keys were so stiff, not even God would have been able to touch-type on that thing. So I, and who knows how many others, learned a sort of heavy-handed thump-type involving both thumbs and the first two fingers of each hand.

The only evolution in technique came about when we had glass teletypes and started using that new-fangled TECO, and later EMACS. Then I started to use my little finger...

OK, so I'm not a super-fast typist (somewhere in the region of 100 wpm) but the point is, I spend a lot more time thinking than writing anyway. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the way it should be.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[slimey_limey]

And I gaurantee they aren't teaching Dvorak in school.

And I can guarantee that they're not teaching any sort of typing in the Seattle School District. For chrissakes, Microsoft is just across the water and they're not teaching the kids to type! What are they going to do, with all the Indians learning to type at ten thousand words per week!

Seriously, though, my parents were required to take typing programs in grade school. When I was in middle school, typing was an optional, one-quarter class (which I took). Now it's not even offered. What is going on?

Re:If only the cost was less...

[spiritraveller]

It's very inconsiderate to diss the guy just because he dislikes the M key even if it is in the same place

I didn't diss anyone. I only said that it was a strange complaint. If he doesn't like where it is, he should explain why. It was a pretty interesting post otherwise.

the guy was probably programming in assembler before your PARENTS knew what a computer was

It's rather inconsiderate of you to assume that you have any idea how old I am.

he can probably code better with his QWERTY than you can with your "me too! I'M FASHIONABLE! " fancy new keyboard"

What are you talking about? Dvorak has been around over 50 years. There's nothing new or fashionable about it. The keyboard that I use happens to be over ten years old, and it's not a Dvorak keyboard (though the OS has been told to treat it as one).

The M key is in a good place considering that it competes for space with other, more commonly used keys. It's in a place where the right index finger can hit it pretty easily.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[peterarm]

Buy an MS Natural 4000 keyboard and use Dvorak layout with it. This keyboard is great (ironically, it's even more configurable with OS X than with Windows). Start by going to http://gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html and work through that "course" once. Then, just try Dvorak for 3 weeks. You won't type faster, but your hands will be happier.

Shameless self-promotion: I blogged at length about this almost a year ago.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[drgonzo59]

Ideally there would need to be a portable (foldable) USB keyboard that is small yet comfortable to type on, with OLED keys and a switch such that one could easily switch between QWERTY and Dvorak. The user could load any keyconfigs, and use it for FPS gaming, video editing and even Photoshop. I would pay $200+ for such a gem. For now, I'll just dream about it...

Yes, yes, I know the Optimus Keyboard by the Lebedev studio from Russia : here , it's just that it is not small enough to carry around and I am not sure if it can store keymapping and switch them externally without having a specialized driver for it....

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy an Apple //c off of Ebay, press the little "Dvorak" keyboard button, and use Ascii Express as a terminal emulator.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[cerberusss]

Just google for 'keyboard stickers'. My russian colleagues use them, but they're available with a plain western alphabet as well.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[qbwiz]

Of course, where I grew up we had typing class from 6th-8th grade, so it might just be where you live.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Yirimyah]

on linux, edit ~/.bashrc and add alias aoeu='setxkbmap us' alias asdf='setxkbmap dvorak'

Re:If only the cost was less...

[slimey_limey]

The school district has many serious problems, so that's probably the case.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[newsdee]

There's a company that makes keyboard "skins" for laptop keyboard... I've been using one to type on my laptop in a language I'm learning. They have a DVORAK skin on their site (http://www.speedskin.com/shop.html). Sure not as nice as a real keyboard, but cheaper...

Re:If only the cost was less...

[rs79]

"the guy was probably programming in assembler before your PARENTS knew what a computer was"

Maybe. I began programming in assembler at 13 in 1970 on an IBM 1130, graduated to a pdp-8 then a pdp-11. I was the first person to use the compiler Dave Conroy wrote now known as "gcc". I sat next to him when he wrote it in 1976. For all you history buffs out there Dave and I went to U Waterloo although he was a couple of years ahead of me. We both worked at a place called Teklogix in Mississauga and his C compiler was half written on the PDP 11/45 at Waterloo and half at the PDP11/34 (wow a multuilpy instruction finally!) at Teklogix. It was first used on an LSI-11/03 controller for a x/y/z/tilt/rotate 12'x12' camera gantry for a company caller Pericam that was used to film some commercial for Quasar. The scene in star wars where luke set us up the bomb in the ventilation shaft was filmed on something similar if not the same.

I feel dirty just saying I'm typing this on a windows machine, but Conroy works for MS now which doesn't make me feel as bad.

I don't touch type 100% and the M and W mess me up worse than anything on a qwerty keyboard. Hey I gave it a good hard try, I WANTED to be a believer but I was slower than old people fucking with the stupid thing and ended up swapping all the keys on my beloved 1983 Model M keyboard back to the same place Dennis Ritchie had them.

If it's good enough for God it's good enough for me.

The peope I look up to say Dvorak is ok if you start with it and touch type but otherwise you'll never get used to it.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[TapeCutter]

Heh, when I grew up boys were not allowed to do "home eco" or "typing" and girls were not allowed to do "shop" or "mechanical drawing". Their thinking was "what man would want to cook and what woman would want to weld"?

I still can't touch type, but typing speed is not a particularly important skill for a developer (OTOH: neither is welding).

Re:If only the cost was less...

[jez9999]

Honestly, why do you want to switch to DVORAK? I use QWERTY, and can reach about 80WPM (according to this site), which is fine for me; never had a problem with it. Actually, I'm probably a bit faster than that as I can type what I'm thinking faster than what I'm reading.

Switching to DVORAK doesn't seem like the kind of revolutionary switch as from dialup to broadband, for example. It seems like a costly (in time and money) way of slightly improving typing speed.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[SageMusings]

Bingo!

I was wondering when someone was going to mention this. I find I spend more time figuring out what logic I want to perform or how to structure my code than I do pumping raw characters onto the screen. Typing speed has never been a limitation for me.

Yes, I also occasionally look at the keyboard to "recalibrate" myself. I am not a perfect touch typist nor even feel it's necessary.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[SageMusings]

He meant the lower case "m".

Re:If only the cost was less...

[SageMusings]

How have you managed to stay in the industry so long? I just turned 40 and I am already being inched toward the door by management. I fully expect to be unemployable in 5 years by any HR dept. Tell me your secret.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[holywarrior21c]

also 'A' key is placed on the same spot too!

--

Re:If only the cost was less...

[seebs]

Who cares what the keys say? Just set the mapping up and you're done.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[ThJ]

I use two fingers to type. That typing test gave me 95 WPM with 3 mistakes. Typing tests that stop on mistakes like that always have me confused for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it is it wants me to do, so I'm probably over 100 WPM.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have three words for you: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

I can't cite specific studies, but for myself, I know I type much more smoothly when I'm typing in Dvorak, whereas typing in QWERTY always felt a little awkward with all that jumping around the keyboard (... which, as you know, was actually by design).

It's not really a matter of speed, but of stress on your fingers and wrists.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overall, I think of learning a different keyboard layout as analogous to a child learning a second language---many people are better for it (as many second generation immigrant Americans can attest), but some people just don't have the aptitude for it and would benefit from focusing on one language and not switching back and forth.

I guess they just aren't smart---their brains are already overworked as they are.

So, for those people, they are better off sticking to one layout, one language. Just work with what works; since there's no chance of improvement for them.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't cite specific studies

That's okay - we'll just take your word for it!

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Eevee]

While the plural of anecdote isn't data...

Many years ago, I had a discussion about Dvorak keyboards with the head of our document production center, who was proficient with both. She mentioned that the only problem she had when switching between the two was with words containing the letter 'm'. Occasionally, after hitting the 'm' key, she would spontaneously switch formats--if she had been using Dvorak, she would type in Qwerty for a bit; if using Qwerty, she would type in Dvorak.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[prelelat]

But if you get a good iriver pmp the screen is larger and I find clearer than on the iPod video. I don't even put them in the same catagory. As for the iriver e10 thats comparible to the ipod video but I never put the two beside eachother, I have a zen vision. Hands down I would pick something not iPod because I don't use iTunes, and I like to piss of apple users by saying apple sucks. Which of course isn't true but you should see the anger and hate in their eyes :P

You can't compare that experiance with switching between QWERTY and Dvorak, hell no one besides your programming buddy probably knows about it. They probably think its some weird geek thing and just give you a funny look. Honestly though maybe Dvorak would be good for teaching those who are slow on QWERTY or peck and search too much, give them a QWERTY keyboard and tell them to use Dvorak or vise versa I guess, and I bet they would be touch-typing in no time.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[KlaymenDK]

You don't need to buy a keyboard especially for dvorak. I buy a keyboard where all the keys are the exact same shape (watch the surface angle). They take a little bit more hunting down (like going to 2 or 3 local stores instead of 1). Then just rearrange the keys and you're done. I've never met a keyboard where you couldn't pop the keys out. $15 bucks and you're done. And we're talking Canadian money here. On the contrary, I find that a 'bumpy' keyboard is as good as no hassle at all. I get 'snagged' far less than I do on the one I put key cap stickers on. I suppose it depends on the shape of the edges and sides of the caps...

I'm a coder and I will NEVER use qwerty again if I have a choice. Plus, no one will mess with my computer. It's better than a password. I could not agree more -- dvorak breeds privacy. Except, I use the Norwegian variant, and Windows at work -- I had to hack-replace a DLL to fake the Norwegian dvorak, and change a registry value from "1" to something like "000419" (really!) in order to switch the layout on the login screen, too -- because yes, remembering your secure password in two layouts is dang tough.

Typing is SOOOO much easier on Dvorak. I'd been using qwerty for over 10 years and I could not type worth sh*t. I still can't type fast [...] Well, yes. Dvorak for me is all about comfort. I've been using it for over two years and I don't think I'm up to my pre-Dvorak speed yet, but I don't really care -- I pause every now and then for other reasons (like thinking) anyway. (As a side note, typing "...n't" and "...sn't" is surprisingly goofy in Dvorak and gets me every time. Weird.)

Re:If only the cost was less...

[ScrewMaster]

Yes and no. I'm a touch-typist myself (although I failed typing back in high school ... Mrs. Roberts never did like me anyway) and I've found that because the mechanics of typing are transparent, I'm able to document my code more thoroughly and painlessly than a hunt-and-pecker. If you can barely type fast enough to get the code itself out of your brain and into the computer in a reasonable amount of time, the odds are you won't have time to spend putting in many comments.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[izzo nizzo]

I'm wondering if the mac laptop will ever have an optimus-keyboard-like variable displays on the keys. I guess this is sort of an opposite route from the fiber-optic key lighting they have now. But optimus has many more implications for internationalization and the exploding apple market. I guess I could just rearrange the keys on my wireless keyboard - I am anxious to try Dvorak and this keyboard technology for a laptop is years away.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[mattwarden]

If you are using two different keyboard layouts, I highly doubt your claim that your typing speed has IMPROVED since you added the second keyboard layout. The two tasks (typing on the two layouts) are so cognitively similar that a new processing layer would need to be created to route the instructions to the correct memory locations in your cerebellum. The thought of "A" no longer directly maps to a typing instruction set. It has to go through a decision node to select whether we are talking about "A" in layout 1 or layout 2, as they are different muscle movement sequences.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Guido del Confuso]

Fine, yes. You got me. I made it all up. I decided to lie to a completely anonymous group of people about a subject that is of very little importance in a manner that benefits nobody.

I'm not even sure how to respond to overeducated pablum like this. Cognitive processing layers? Instruction routing? Give me a break. When I'm sitting at a keyboard I put myself in the mode for that keyboard layout, and I just start typing without really thinking about the individual actions involved. The letters somehow still come out. However, you completely missed the point. The reason my typing speed improved was because when I started typing Dvorak on a QWERTY keyboard, it called my attention to a bad habit that had been slowing my typing down, both in QWERTY and Dvorak. I corrected the problem, and my typing speed improved.

I find it incredible that with all of your supposed education in neuroscience, you are seemingly devoid of reading comprehension skills. Furthermore, your apparent belief that the brain is merely some sort of complicated flowchart is outright bizarre.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dvorak is mostly just something people can brag about to be different, just like people who buy Zunes and iRivers so they can show how cool and different they are because they didn't buy an iPod."

just like.. running linux.. :P Still think it's just for the brag factor?

Re:If only the cost was less...

[mattwarden]

You did not mention this epiphany in your post, so I'm not sure how I was supposed to tease that out, even with the most perfect of "reading comprehension skills" (unless you were referring to mind-reading?).

As for your belief that the "separation of powers" in the brain which results in a "flowchart" of processing is bizarre, well there's not much I can do about that. This is well-established, and if you find it bizarre then perhaps you should find a book...

Re:If only the cost was less...

[Guido del Confuso]

May I call your attention to the following part of my original post:

Interestingly, my QWERTY typing speed improved somewhat as well, because I realized how often I had been glancing at the keys while I typed, out of sheer force of habit from when I was learning to type. I quickly broke that habit, and my typing speed went up maybe 20%.

First paragraph, last two sentences. Go up and look at it right now to verify. I'll wait.

Okay, are we clear now? Good.

I'm not even going to bother arguing with you on your other point. Your simplistic belief about the nature of the brain is clearly unshakable. Good for you for having conviction.

Re:If only the cost was less...

[mattwarden]

May I call your attention to the following part of my original post:

I misinterpreted that portion of your post originally. Apologies. Nevertheless, there will be a cognitive ambiguity that will slow down processing of typing instructions compared to if you had only one way to type. If you want to liken it to computer code, it's adding some extra if-else branches (this is not how it works in the brain, but it works as a basic analogy).

I'm not even going to bother arguing with you on your other point. Your simplistic belief about the nature of the brain is clearly unshakable. Good for you for having conviction.

I find it likely that this decision is because you cannot support your suggestion. I'm not sure why you are arguing (with no supporting facts) such a fundamental and elementary notion with someone who spent years of his life studying this stuff, but whatever...

Languages

[JanneM]

Dvorak is optimized for writing English. Most coders - like most computer users in general - do not use English as their main language, and for us Dvorak is substantially worse than the qwerty layout in every way.

So no, most coders are not switching to Dvorak.

Re:Languages

[zsau]

Can you provide any examples? Most code consists of words. What's left over is punctuation. Words and punctuation are easier to access. (I code, and I use dvorak and qwerty, and I find that there's no difference in benefit of coding vs english in dvorak: And for both you notice the benefit of dvorak over qwerty.)

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, as a longtime Dvorak typist, I don't necessarily see that the Dvorak layout is less amenable to coding than QWERTY. Not only are most keywords in all the common languages derived from English (and who still types out their constructs anymore, in this TextMate day and age?) but frequently used characters, like _.=, are all easier to access. There's tradeoffs with {} and ; being further out of reach, of course, but that still doesn't make it obvious to me that QWERTY's so much better for coding.

The best part of using Dvorak? Nobody bothers trying to touch my computer anymore. And let's face facts, most programmers are disgusting, greasy-fingered creatures whom you'd rather not have filthying up your keyboard, if you can possibly avoid it.

—Tickletaint (forced to post AC due to karma)

Re:Languages

[Seumas]

Because QWERTY is optimized for non-english . . ?

And while I'm not a coder by trade, I'm pretty sure that code is still written in english, isn't it? I mean, sprintf() is sprintf() no matter where you're writing code? It's not elsprintfo() just because you go south of the border or anything...

Re:Languages

[TheGreatHegemon]

Has anyone tried DVORAK Programming Setup? It could possibly handle your objections.

Re:Languages

[jd]

I've heard that to be the case, and also that Dvorak can't map onto certain international languages at all. True, I'd hate to use Qwerty for writing Younger Futhark, but you can't have everything. Seriously, though, I am not convinced it is possible to map all languages onto a single keyboard layout efficiently. Too many forms (phonetic, alphabetic, syllargy, ideogramatic, etc) and too great a variation in the number of symbols (anything from 16 to 6,000). IMHO, it has been a grievous error to try and make things so cheap and so mass-produced that the very cheapness becomes expensive and the mass-production ceases to be for the masses.

Re:Languages

[JanneM]

Can you provide any examples? Most code consists of words. What's left over is punctuation.

Most coders spend at least as much time - normally substantially more - writing in their natural language, not actually writing lines of code. Comments, specs, documentation (in the code and test documentation sense), email, project reports, IM ... And that's the stuff you do as part of work, not the time you spend off work on discussion sites, writing a blog, communicating with friends and family or whatever.

I don't assume anyone seriously proposes switching to Dvorak when about to write code, then switching back to their normal layout once you've written your line or two.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, though, I am not convinced it is possible to map all languages onto a single keyboard layout efficiently.

It isn't, and I think most people understand that (for a change!), since if you travel at all, you'll find language-specific keyboards pretty much everywhere you go (sorry for the Wikipedia link, I'm feeling lazy).

Do you mean that regional layouts could be better than mere slight variations on QWERTY? Well, I agree, but QWERTY ain't got much to recommend it in the first place, either.

—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to fucked-up moderation)

Re:Languages

[farnsworth]

I've been using Drorak since I learned to touch type. I don't understand your comment. I type both English and Japanese. Although Drorak is designed and optimized for English, the same letter patterns appear in other languages too. Certainly not to the same degree as in English, but they are there. I've never typed Japanese on Qwerty, so maybe I'm wrong, but I find Japanese very natural on Dvorak. I imagine that Spanish, French, Italian, etc are also very natural on Dvorak. I've never typed Hebrew or Russian or many other substantially different languages, so maybe Qwerty is in fact much better suited to these languages.

Also, every single programming language I've used has English keywords. There are few languages that support unicode source code, but still I've never seen any real software written in anything except English.

The worst aspects of Dvorak for programming are:
- location of "_", "{", "}" etc. (Qwerty is not much better, but it is better)
- pair programming is just about impossible on windows because its input switching is so bad.
- several remote connection software packages support Dvorak badly. some not at all.

Re:Languages

[ozamosi]

I am currently using it, and I've used a more normal Dvorak layout before, and I'm not that impressed. Partly because I use funny letters, like åöä, which the Dvorak Programming layout requires me to use alt-gr for, but that is not in any way different from normal dvorak - just from the dvorak I used before.

My other complaint is that you have to use shift to type digits. Even though I enjoy being able to type special characters without pressing shift, I rarely write two special characters in a row, but I often write multiple digits, since numbers very oten consist of multiple digits. To solve that problem, I've replaced the numbers and the special characters. However, too many keys are on the numerics - the special characters would IMHO be much better placed on your home row or your upper row, just like they are in many swedish dvorak dialects, so I wouldn't have to stretch my fingers so much. I mean: I don't touch type on the numeric row, because my fingers are too short to reach it properly - don't cram too much stuff up there!

I sometimes wonder if there is any logic behind where the keys are placed. For instance, = is used on almost every line when you code, but it is in the least accessable position on the whole keyboard - on the absolute top, exactly between your index fingers. It feels like all special characters were moved around Just Because.

When it comes to the special digit arrangement: I'm not sure. I haven't been able to get used to it yet, so that means either that it sucks, or that I haven't tested it enough yet.

I should tell you that I probably don't code enough to experience the eventual advantages of this layout, but I still feel the layout isn't that good.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, where does your Dvorak layout put the underscore (_)? It's quite accessible on my Dvorak keyboard—immediately left of Return—but perhaps not all Dvoraks are the same, just as not all QWERTYs are either?

—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to fucked-up moderation)

Re:Languages

[Rix]

Most programming languages are designed by and for English speakers. Most comments in public code are in English.

Re:Languages

[pestilence669]

I disagree. Symbols are all in much more convenient locations, as far as I'm concerned. You could make the argument that the braces are too high up, but beside backspace isn't THAT far of a reach. I like that they're all above, rather than below, the home row (exception: semi-colon). That alone allows me to type for many more hours.

Re:Languages

[JanneM]

The whole point of Dvorak is predicated on it being more efficient to use than qwerty. If it isn't - and it isn't for most languages - then there's no benefit to changing, while you still incur the negatives.

qwerty isn't optimized for, say, Swedish or Japanese or Mandarin. Neither is Dvorak. So why change?

Re:Languages

[drix]

English might not be the first language of most computer users, but English is definitely the lingua franca of the internet. This explains why I am able to read the President of India's web site, or why LKML is conducted strictly in English, despite having participants from every continent. Increased adoption of the Dvorak layout could benefit anyone who spends a lot of time online.

As for coders, there's no need to stop with that distinction. I spend a lot of time coding Ruby. Certainly the best layout for me would have very little in common with that of someone who writes Java for a living (no semicolons for me!) I've often toyed with the idea of hacking together a quick-n-dirty genetic algorithm that would build an optimal layout based on analysis of your source files. Alas, too few minutes in the day :-)

Re:Languages

[JohnyDog]

And whether you do or don't use english as primary language, how much of _text_ are you really typing ? The world of IDEs is largery dominated by auto-completion related features and every professional coder i know uses them heavily. Even when i'm writing in self-descriptive languages as ruby, i'm using way more special characters and numbers (and tabulator for autocompletion) than the alphabet. QWERTY as well as DVORAK has most of them accesible only by little finger - not good. It's the one reason i'll probably never learn the proper touchtyping.

I'd say that most people that will go through the lengthy process of learning and trying DVORAK will stay with it not because it's substantially better, but because it's basically the same, and they don't want to repeat the process to go back to QWERTY. (Plus, there's the placebo factor and the uber-geekiness feeling of using input method that is totally inaccessible to commoners :) ). Thats not to say that there aren't any improvement - there is, if you're writing long english texts, but as i said, i don't think most of coders will fall into this category.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, maybe because most of us probably don't spend a lot of time writing in Swedish and Japanese and Mandarin?

If you're saying that all keyboard layouts are equally worthless simply because none of them can hope to be perfect for every situation imaginable, I have to disagree. I'd rather live in an environment designed for my specific needs, not those of some hypothetical Universal Man.

—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to fucked-up moderation)

Re:Languages

[bullok]

Dvorak is optimized for writing English. Most coders - like most computer users in general - do not use English as their main language, and for us Dvorak is substantially worse than the qwerty layout in every way.

Most (not all) computer languages have keywords and library names and functions that ARE based on English. Furthermore, English is the most common language used in comments when contributors have different native languages. So, coders type an awful lot of English and near-English words. So, I dispute your assertion about English not being used by most coders.

Furthermore, I don't see why Dvorak is a horrible layout for other languages. I type a few other European languages with some regularity on a Dvorak keyboard, and while accents are a bit of a pain, it's no worse than qwerty. Qwerty is essentially random, so it's certainly not tuned for any particular language, except perhaps by accident. I can't say whether qwerty's really good for some non-European languages, but I doubt that it's substantially better than Dvorak.

If you ignore the letter keys, the only things that are moved so that greater or less reach is required are: -_ swapped with [{ , and += swapped with ]} . Whether this is good or bad depends on your coding style and what programming languages you use.

Long story short: you're a moron.

I've been using Dvorak for 10 years. It took me a couple of days to learn, and I exceeded my qwerty typing speed within two months. Almost all of what I type is code. I'm happy with the switch.

Re:Languages

[aliquis]

The reason I've been thinking about it but never done it (because I know where the keys are on a qwerty-keyboard ofcourse.) are that they put "programming keys" on better locations, I hate that you have to use alt together with 7,8,9,0 keys for anything except normal paranteses on swedish qwerty, and the location of many other special characters, the english layouts seems so much better for those ones, and I've seen one swedish dvorak variation which had them in a way I seemed to like.

But I'm to lazy to switch :)

Re:Languages

[cmarkn]

Qwerty is essentially random, so it's certainly not tuned for any particular language, except perhaps by accident.

Actually, it isn’t random. It is optimized to slow typing on mechanical typewriters to avoid collisions of the bars that strike the paper. Most random arrangements would actually be an improvement over Qwerty.

While it is true that the fastest typists with Qwerty are as fast as the fastest typists with Dvorak, Dvorak is learned more quickly, and is less fatiguing to the typist.

Re:Languages

[BKX]

First, I definitely agree that English is the Internet's lingua franca. There can be no doubt. However, the reason you can read the President of India's website is because English is a native tongue in India. They even have their own distinct dialect and vocabulary. Most upper-class and middle-class Indians learns English as children, along with the usual Hindi and their regional language. That's the reason we can off-shore tech support to India but not China. There's no work involved in getting native English speakers in India. You can the thank the British Empire for that.

Re:Languages

[JanneM]

That is a bit annoying, I agree (before I used a laptop as my main machine I just used the brace keys on the numeric keypad instead). But if you're annoyed by that, it's probably just easier to remap the curly and square braces to some other keys than to switch to an entirely different layout. I mean, with Dvorak, you suddenly get "ÅÄÖ" on AltGr, which is a lot more annoying than braces, considering that common words like "är" (is), "gå" (go) and "gör" (do) use them. And the letter frequencies are different enough that you don't gain anything by using Dvorak even when you disregard the Swedish characters.

Re:Languages

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It is optimized to slow typing on mechanical typewriters to avoid collisions of the bars that strike the paper.

I think that's an urban legend worthy of Snopes. From what I can tell, QWERTY sped up typing by reducing the likelihood that adjacent letters will the typed in sequence, that's what usually jammed typewriters because of the arc of hammers, adjacent hammers are more likely to jam than far apart hammers. Less likely to jam meant that one could type faster.

Re:Languages

[macshit]

Actually, it isn't random. It is optimized to slow typing on mechanical typewriters to avoid collisions of the bars that strike the paper. Most random arrangements would actually be an improvement over Qwerty.

I suspect this is an urban legend. Qwerty instead seems optimized to avoid clustering of letters, by making common letter sequences use alternating hands. This alternation would probably help reduce jams in typical mechanical typewriter mechanisms -- but it also makes typing faster! [This is fairly obvious if you're a touch-typest: the easiest words to type really quickly are usually those with a pronounced L-R-L-R rhythm.]

Re:Languages

[zippthorne]

Indeed. As an exercise: "stewardesses."

Re:Languages

[fishbowl]

>Symbols are all in much more convenient locations, as far as I'm concerned.

I've been known to map parens, curly braces, and angles so that they don't need shift.

Re:Languages

[cranktheguy]

Comments, specs, documentation... What are those?

Re:Languages

[entgod]

As a Finn I also need the åäö keys alot. The truth is that Dvorak is simply not that good for typing languages beside English. You should try something else instead. I've started using das (http://www.students.tut.fi/~seres/DAS_en.html>) a few weeks ago and although it's certainly not very good for English, I recommend it to all Finnish typers.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

That's totally BS.

I'm German, so I have to type äs, ös und ßs all the time, but that's no problem at all. How do Americans type Spanish or French accents? Exactly, they can, and so do I.

I switched to US layout a few years ago, which alone was a serious improvement for programming, but then switched to Dvorak maybe a month later.

The only problem with Dvorak is that it takes a month of serious studying and even then you're not as fast as before. But it works, and within another month you start getting faster than you were before.

Re:Languages

[zsau]

Sorry, I completely misunderstood you! You were referring to natural languages, of course.

As for that, the QWERTY layout is no better for Swedish or French or Russian than the Dvorak layout is. It lacks the letters these countries use. So they've created their own ones, which makes it easy to type ä and é and Cyrillic characters. The French have gone so far as to move AQZW around. The situation is exactly comparable to Dvorak: People who largely write foreign languages should use a keyboard layout optimised for those languages. I know one exists for Swedish; it shouldn't be hard to create one for others, given the substantial freely avaliable databases of commonly used words you can get from the Internet.

The hard part there is trying to get the layout included in operating systems!—I'll agree, this will be difficult!

Re:Languages

[DerekLyons]

And while I'm not a coder by trade, I'm pretty sure that code is still written in english, isn't it? I mean, sprintf() is sprintf() no matter where you're writing code? It's not elsprintfo() just because you go south of the border or anything...

You miss the OP's point. The Dvorak keyboard is optimized to improve the efficiency of typists typing in English. Code isn't English - even though it uses the same alphabet, the frequency of the letters is different as are the common patterns (digraphs, trigraphs, etc...).

Re:Languages

[SillyNickName4me]

I'm German, so I have to type äs, ös und ßs all the time, but that's no problem at all. How do Americans type Spanish or French accents? Exactly, they can, and so do I.

And I'm Dutch, we happen to use a US keyboard layout here (eventho a Dutch one does exist, it is seldom used, and mostly differs in symbols and accents, the layout for letters/numbers is identical), and due to spending a lot of time in Germany, I also happen to use a German keyboard layout often.

Sure, you can enter virtually all accents and such, but it is a lot easier to do on a keyboard that has often used ones on easy to reach keys, Like for example the German keyboard when typing German.

I switched to US layout a few years ago, which alone was a serious improvement for programming

I bet, if only because {[]}\| are in sane and easy to reach places. The fact that this is easier however is the exact same reason why typing German on a German keyboard layout works better. Its not very important when doing it incidentely, but it becomes a big difference when it is what you do mostly.

, but then switched to Dvorak maybe a month later.

In other words, you say that Dvorak works better then qwertz (DE layout) for programming? no doubt about that, but does it work better when you type German a lot?

The only problem with Dvorak is that it takes a month of serious studying and even then you're not as fast as before. But it works,

Well, yes, you can learn to type on an alphabetical layout as well, and can become quite fast on it. That is really not the issue. The issue is if it is more efficient in speed and strain on your fingers.

and within another month you start getting faster than you were before.

I'm glad it worked for you. I'd like some properly independent research that shows this for various languages...

Re:Languages

[Hognoxious]

How do Americans type Spanish or French accents? Exactly, they can, and so do I.

Yes, you can type accented characters on a UK/US keyboard; it's just not very easy. You either have to take your shoes off to make some of the chords, remember obscure non-mnemonic codes, or have charmap open and copy/paste from it.

Re:Languages

[orzetto]

Most programming languages use keywords taken from English. Good programmers will not use random variable names, but descriptive ones (ie, in English). Good programmers also write documentation. Anyone also has to write some text or emails once in a while.

As far as my experience goes, I have been using Dvorak at home and at work for the past four years. I started a new job as a C++ programmer in a small company six months ago. Since in the beginning I worked only 2 days a week (had to finish the PhD thesis), my machine was used by others during the other days, so I thought I would keep that QWERTY. However, even if I can still type QWERTY, this does not mean it was not painful as hell. After a few hours of work, I would get stiff and aching wrists. I switched to a Dvorak-like layout and the pains went away immediately.

Yeah, anecdotal evidence, but that's as far as I care really.

As for Dvorak being optimised for English, it surely is, but English contains a bunch of Latin words taken from French. Optimising for English means obtaining a solution that is likely better than QWERTY for most European languages too. All languages that regularly alternate vowels and consonants will notice an improvement over QWERTY because Dvorak places all vowels on one side, even if it is not the optimal layout for that language. I can at least confirm this for Norwegian and Italian. Welsh and Polish may be exceptions.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

The sheer arrogance and ignorance of English speakers never ceases to amaze me.

Most programming languages are designed by and for English speakers. Most comments in public code are in English.

Most code is not public. Most code is developed in house for in house use. When a German, French or Dutch company writes specifications, they write them in their native language. When they communicate they do so in their native language. Comments are written in the native language. Trust me, I make a killing being a techie who speaks 4 languages.

Re:Languages

[bungo]

Dvorak is optimized for writing English. Most coders - like most computer users in general - do not use English

Further to that, where I am, almost all keyboards are not QWERTY, but a version
of AZERTY, and that's because I'm in a non-English speaking country. It may be
surprising to some, but the majority of people in the world to not speak English
as their first language.

Really, how somme can bring up amazing claims from a small sample size of
an essentially self-selected group, and have it posted to the front page of
slashdot is beyond belief.

It must be a slow news day....

Re:Languages

[Monkeybaister]

Most of the letter patterns are different only because they optimized the typing of those words for the QWERTY layout. The original developers realized how bad QWERTY was for typing actual words, so they made most of the commands non-words.

Which seems to be changing now with newer languages, they're now using the whole word instead of the word minus the vowels.

Re:Languages

[lordholm]

Only, that all documentation and comments are written in English anyway. This is done to simplify moving code and software between different parties involved in some project (this is especially true in Europe, where there is a lot of IP exchange between different states that have different official languages).

Most indo-european languages are sufficiently similar to English to make Dvorak a lot better than qwerty.

Going back, to the original discussion. Using Dvorak on a UNIX based system is a real pain, L is above S and at the right pinky position, this is the reason that I am not using Dvorak.

If one want a good layout, go for the Kinesis or Maltron keyboard and get the Arensito layout that is optimised for English and code.

Re:Languages

[brezel]

Dvorak is optimized for writing English. Most coders - like most computer users in general - do not use English as their main language. i disagree. i live in austria, still _all_ the source code i write plus the documentation is being done in english. also since my company has branch offices in 12 countries i do most of my email communication in english too. i don't think i am a big exception here.

Re:Languages

[DerekLyons]

Sounds like an urban legend to me. Cite?

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I do type a lot of German, but also some programming and English typing, and overall I prefer being able to comfortably type English and code, and German works fine too.

Of course a non-programmer that only writes German might prefer German, or something like German dvorak (haven't ever tried that, not sure what it looks like).

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. Usually you type some kind of compose character or right-alt and " to generate characters with dots above the characters, such as ä. you type compose + s to generate something like ß. You type something like compose and ' to turn e into é.

Re:Languages

[Patito]

>Dvorak is optimized for writing English.
I think for coding language isn't all that important. Far more important is where all those special keys are located.

I once thought about switching to a non-QWERTY layout, but after checking all sorts of layouts I found that for coding pretty much every layout on this planet sucks.

Buying a blank keyboard and creating a layout based on statistics for special-keys used in the currently used programming language would be my way to go.

... about DVORAK one thing I don't like is that one of its principles is: (wikipedia)
- The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.

That's totally crap.
If anything then the the 'weaker' hand needs a little bit more training. Treating both hands equally is definitely my thing.

Re:Languages

[Hognoxious]

"some kind of compose character"? Odd that you don't seem to know which specific one it is. It's because you're full of shit, right?

Re:Languages

[TeknoHog]

I don't assume anyone seriously proposes switching to Dvorak when about to write code, then switching back to their normal layout once you've written your line or two.

On a related note, I use a UK keyboard layout for most things, and switch to Finnish for writing in my native tongue. Finnish has three extra letters, which take the places of certain punctuation keys, and they end up in completely unusable locations with the AltGr modifier.

Re:Languages

[KlaymenDK]

I agree. However, regarding "I don't assume anyone seriously proposes switching to Dvorak when about to write code" there is such a thing as a coder's dvorak.
Furthermore, some very frequent keys are awkward using any country's dvorak or qwerty layout -- for instance, to get "@${[]}" I need to type "AltGr-247890", and the coder's layout makes that kind of characters seriously more accessible -- although, to be truly useful (and keep the Dvorak spirit), I guess you'd have to have a whole layout *per programming language*, which is probably more than anyone wants to deal with.

In truth, I have yet to try the coder's layout, and it might well be some time: almost all of my coding happens at work, on Windows, and that's the one OS where you can't easily drop in your customized layout. (Trust me, I've had to resort to all sorts of hacks to get Norwegian dvorak installed so I could have my øæå.)

Re:Languages

[Geekbot]

"...the majority of people in the world to not speak English as their first language."

See, you wouldn't be making typos like that if you spoke English as your first language. See what you get for using some weird alternative language.

You probably speak Australian or something. ;)

Re:Languages

[robertchin]

While this is true (and I can type dvorak ~45 wpm, qwerty 100+ wpm), the command line is extremely painful to use with dvorak. Simple commands like "ls", which are two handed commands on a quwery keyboard, all of a sudden become one handed pinky pressing nonsense... I love dvorak, but there are too many command line program names, keyboard shortcuts, etc., designed for qwerty users.

Re:Languages

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some kind," because it differs from OS to OS, you moron. I'm not informed about the Windows details, but on X window you can map the key yourself (except for Sun workstations, which usually have a "compose" key on their keyboard).

And please stop generalizing from yourself to others (the "full of shit" part).

Re:Languages

[WarJolt]

Have you ever seen anyone really proficient at emacs? Thats one example that would make switching a pain. Dvorak was not designed with emacs in mind. I've seen mentioned remapping game keybindings are a pain. Letters are easy to type. It's the punctionation that slows me down. In anycase I spend more time thinking about the code I'm writing then actually writing it. Think about how many operators in C require a shift key. I know both keyboard layouts have similar problems. I just can't wait use the excuse "If I had a faster keyboard I could write more code." Idon't think a keyboard layout would really effect the amount of code I could write and debug in a day.

Re:Languages

[Hognoxious]

I'm not informed

Well t least you got something right.

but on X window

Don't use it.

And please stop generalizing from yourself to others (the "full of shit" part).

You said it so that's you. Hey, Mr Full-of-shit, you're full of shit. How'd you like that, Mr Full-Of-Shit?

Alas, a laptop!

[Tragek]

I probably would switch, if there was a simple way to reconfigure my keyboard. Alas, laptops are not exactly amenable to keyboard layout switches.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Khakionion]

Actually, many laptop keyboards use scissor switches that are perfect for detaching and re-arranging. I do it on my MacBook Pro, and did it back when I had a Toshiba Satellite.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[FigTree]

Maybe I'm just incredibly clumsy but I've broken way too many keys on my 12" PowerBook to feel safe popping keys on and off anymore. I was going to switch to dvorak awhile back until I realized Open Firmware only uses qwerty (and thus, yaboot as well I believe). Guess this probably isn't a problem on the mactels...

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[zsau]

Simple solution: Don't physically rearrange the keys. You gain nothing in two-fingered hunt-and-peck if you're using dvorak; it's benefits are almost entirely limited to touch-typing. It'll force yourself to learn the layout faster and better if you can't look at what you're doing. Also, it helps for if you ever need to run your computer in recovery mode when it won't load keyboard drivers, or for stupid games that don't realise not everyone is an American using qwerty layout; and sometimes it helps interpret typos on the web.

Trust me on this: I learnt Dvorak by keeping a printout attached to my screen for a week or two...

(To reconfigure the layout, use your operating environment's keyboard control panel thing; it's usually very simple. Every recent operating system installs the layout files by default, too.)

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the keyboard on the MacBook Pro still easily replacable? I know the keyboards on PowerBooks and iBooks used to be brain-dead simple to swap out, and Apple used to hand out replacement iBook and PowerBook keyboards like candy, which was nice if you ever wanted to share your Dvorak-capped laptop with anyone else. The new (non-Pro) MacBooks look like a real pain in that regard.

—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to fucked-up moderation)

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[dhasenan]

Why not type by sight in those rare cases you need qwerty and use dvorak when you're in your OS? You shouldn't need to muck about in your BIOS or boot menu that often.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Falladir]

You should be touch-typing anyway. I found that dvorak keys' locations are easier to remember than qwerty anyway, because there's some logic relating frequency to distance from the home row and finger strength.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Since when are laptops not amenable to running software?

Hint: only morons physically rearrange their keys.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[TheRealAnonymousCowa]

Actually, you don't need to change the keyboard itself. Even Windows (at least XP) supports changing the keyboard layout. I just tried using a Dvorak mapping, and it works perfectly, although I've switched back to QWERTY for now. You can get the keyboard layouts after a simple Google search. Even Wikipedia has the images of the layout. I plan to learn this layout and see it's benefits.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[roman_mir]

you can try my ff extension.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Disharmony2012]

You could use a USB keyboard with DVORAK, it isn't totally unpractical at a desk. Esepcially with an external moniter, you could just fold up the laptop somewhere, with eternal KB/mouse, and moniter. Though I know that kind of setup defeats the purpose of a laptop, I use my laptop on my main computer desk 95% of the time.

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit - i got macbook last year and the first thing i did was grab a spoon, pop the keys and rearrange into dvorak layout - no worries!

(make sure its a plastic spoon...)

Re:Alas, a laptop!

[Tragek]

really now. I cant say I knew it was that easy on a macbook. I too have one. All I recall is the ridiculous amount of pain it was on my thinkpad. Enough pain I gave up on it.

Happy Dvorak User Here

[Khakionion]

I started using it because I heard it can reduce wrist stress. I'm not going back; I love the Dvorak layout. Well supported across Mac/Lin/Win, and speeds my typing up significantly. I dunno about the wrist stress part, but it sure does feel like I'm spending less time contorting my hands to type code.

Not only that, but it's a great way to look elitist and pretentious, now that Macs are gaining market share again.

aoeu > asdf!

Re:Happy Dvorak User Here

[rlwhite]

I'll second that, except that I noticed significantly better comfort rather than a speed increase. I suppose it's a matter of whether you try to type fast; personally I keep a leisurely pace.

Re:Happy Dvorak User Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but it's a great way to look elitist and pretentious, now that Macs are gaining market share again.

Exactly! Which is why I embedded a codec for the Enigma machine in my keyboard driver. Every day a daemon process randomly changes the key (using only first posts from slashdot for entropy), so the key changes and so does the keyboard layout. Sure, it's a bit rough for the first 3 minutes of the day, but after that my typing's noticably faster.

Re:Happy Dvorak User Here

[Anonymous Coward]

aoeu > asdf!

I nearly fell over. They heard me laughing in the cubicle next door when i read that remark.

Some of the other developers when looking at database records asked me what 'aoue' was once. Perhaps only the Dvorak users will think this is funny though, I find it akin to a humor of reiterating a common unspoken understanding like amongst guys jiggling it at the urinal.

Laptops?

[loony]

No dvorak for me - until they start labeling the keys on laptops that way :-)

But to answer the original question - nope - big IT shop here and since I switched to my laptop and back to qwerty, not a single guy using dvorak...

Peter.

DVORAK will never win cause its too hard to spell

[cpaglee]

Qwerty on the other hand is very easy. In fact its spelled out on every keyboard right at the top.

Every keyboard except DVORAK keyboards that is.

dvorak is useless

[Zheng Yi Quan]

I always wanted to switch, but coding requires so much punctuation that DVORAK doesn't help. Plus it doesn't work with vi.

Monster cables

[Anonymous Coward]

DVORAK is comparable to Monster Cables. Most or all of the improvement is from the placebo effect.

Re:Monster cables

[Anonymous Coward]

> DVORAK is comparable to Monster Cables. Most or all of the improvement is from the placebo effect.

Only if Monster cables gave you the same sound quality while using 50% to 60% the energy.

Only good for touch typing?

[kherr]

I'm a fairly fast hunt-and-peck typist, I don't do touch typing. My fingers "hover" above the keyboard and I've basically got muscle memory for where the keys are, moving my fingers without looking at the keyboard. While I like the idea of the dvorak layout, I don't see how it benefits someone who's not a touch typist.

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but I've never met a hunt-and-peck typist that's any good at coding. I strongly advise you to learn to touch type, whether on QUERTY or DVORAK. Seriously: Learn to touch type. It only takes one day, and it'll be worth 10s of thousands of dollars if they sit you down at a keyboard for an interview.

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[tomhudson]

No offense, but I've never met a hunt-and-peck typist that's any good at coding. I strongly advise you to learn to touch type, whether on QUERTY or DVORAK. Seriously: Learn to touch type. It only takes one day, and it'll be worth 10s of thousands of dollars if they sit you down at a keyboard for an interview.

REAL programmers have to touch-type - we've worn the labels off the keycaps on too many keyboards ...

What's funny is watching people who claim to be such "hotshots" and still don't know the keyboard shortcuts for selecting, cutting, and pasting, in ANY editor.

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[psm321]

I thought I was the only one who did this. I peck with a few fingers, but don't hunt (like you said, muscle memory). I'm fairly fast; in fact, I catch myself typing without looking at the keyboard sometimes, but couldn't do it if I thought about it. On the other hand, I tried to learn standard touch-typing many times... just can't do it.

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[SQLGuru]

I think that "muscle memory" is really the key. I started programming back in 4th grade on the C64. No training, just hunt and peck with my two index fingers. As I got better at the locations, I went from two fingers to four....then later to six. I stuck there for a while. In high school, I took 6 weeks of typing (which I cheated at, don't tell my teacher -- I was still the fastest in class), but it allowed me to learn how to use all 10 fingers.

Now, I type without ever looking at the keyboard, but I also don't type using the traditional fingering. My hand wanders around so that most letters are typed with my dominant fingers, but when necessary, I can hit any key with any finger. As stated by someone else above, I can even look back over my shoulder to talk to someone while I complete a paragraph. The key to touch typing is knowing where all of the keys are by "feel" not "sight", not necessarily keeping your fingers on the home row keys.

Layne

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[rta]

Heh. Back in '94 when i switched to Dvorak i did it EXPRESSLY to force myself to touch type.

I had also taken a typing class once (in middle school) and didn't really like it. I was a decent 4-6 finger typist at the time but still had to look at the keyboard even though i generally knew where the keys were. Speaking only for myself, learning to touch type (or rather, forcing myself to do it until it felt natural) was definitely worth the investment. Now i really don't have to think about the typing at all. I just think the word and it happens. It's actually a bit disturbing in that i couldn't say where the specific keys are on the keyboard since my fingers just DTRT.

Sadly, i still kind of hunt around for some symbols and digits: I waste an inordinate amount of time hitting "0" instead of "[" and "[" instead of "]". It's not that i look at the keys to find them, but there's alaways half second of uncertainty and stress on those every time. In other words i have to think about them... which breaks the flow i was talking about above. I really should do something about that.

Anyway, bottom line for me is that touch-typing in Dvorak is great; i recommend it highly. I suspect that touch-typing in QWERTY is almost as good though i have never done it.

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[Jartan]

I'm a fairly fast hunt-and-peck typist, I don't do touch typing. My fingers "hover" above the keyboard and I've basically got muscle memory for where the keys are, moving my fingers without looking at the keyboard.

You seem to be using the label "hunt and peck" incorrectly. All touch typists do what you just described yourself doing. Almost none of the good ones hold their fingers on the keyboard. Hunt and peck literally means you "hunt" by LOOKING at the keyboard to find the key you want to hit then you "peck" it by pushing it with your index finger.

If you mean to label yourself a hunt and pecker because you do something different like always use your index finger to hit keys but you still don't look at the keyboard then you should come up with some sort of bizzare label like "touch peckist".

Re:Only good for touch typing?

[nickallen]

That's the person it can benefit the most IMHO! Learning to touch type on Dvorak is significantly easier than with Qwerty because within minutes you can be typing real words instead of jkjkjkjkfdfdfdfd like in qwerty typing lessons. This gives you a sense of progress and since much more typing is done on the home row with Dvorak you can type full sentences soon after. To do that in qwerty you have to be familiar with the whole layout and go through tedious and boring lessons.

If you can't touch type then I recommend you learn - you will never look back. And if you want to learn then it's much easier on Dvorak. If you use KDE then ktouch is a good program to learn with and of course it's free too...

DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Henry V .009]

DVORAK is another way to show other people that you're different. Any benefits are minuscule and are outweighed by the incompatibility downsides. It's another symptom of the "geek" disease.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Jerf]

Yes. Optimizing a device you spend tens of thousands of hours using is such a waste of time. Definitely only for status and stuff.

If you want to make a rationality-based argument, even "miniscule" benefits add up to a slam-dunk decision in a rationality computation across so much usage.

Most people aren't rational on this issue at all, neither switchers nor bitchers.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Anonymous Coward]

Harsh, I saw a lot of myself in that essay. Time to make some lifestyle changes.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Sancho]

How much of an improvement in QWERTY could you see if you spent as much time improving that skill rather than learning DVORAK? Obviously you hit diminishing returns, but for a lot of people, the effort and time spent to switch just won't get enough of a return.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Cthefuture]

Heh, that "disease" is actually a disorder and it's called Asperger's Syndrome (well, that's the current buzzword for it anyway). It's not really the fault of the person. In some cases, sure but a lot of geeks can't help the way they are. That essay is akin to calling mentally challenged people retards that should be wiped off the planet because of their inability to cope with life.

Real nice...

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[ogleslurp]

Nice link. Perhaps you'll be interested in another post from that site?

Charming.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Henry V .009]

Is that you, Al Roker?

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Matthew Weigel]

There is no amount of time I could spend training myself in QWERTY that would keep it from hurting my hands and wrists.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Anonymous Coward]

About 8-10 years ago DVORAK seemed faddish and all the hottest nerds used it. I thought most of us just stopped giving a shit about it since then.

I'll continue using qwerty, since with it I can touch-type reasonably fast with no discomfort.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[tomstdenis]

I dunno about you but I can type on QWERTY (touch type) much faster than I can design or debug software anyways. So the bottleneck is rarely "oh my slow fingers type faster!! if only I could write 100 lines of code a minute instead of half dozen or so!!!!"

Unless you're some sort of .NET reject who just codes and codes all day without thinking it doesn't matter.

It's like bragging you have a quad-opteron workstation for text editing. At some point, excess performance just doesn't matter.

Tom

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[m50d]

How much of an improvement in QWERTY could you see if you spent as much time improving that skill rather than learning DVORAK?

My personal experience was a 15wpm increase with a month of work. You hit the point where return on typing practise with the same layout is less than that pretty quickly.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, the incompatibility is a downside? It's yet another way to secure your workstation, especially if you often forget to xlock it or something when you leave it (well, at least until Dvorak gains enough users).

As an anecdote, I had an ass of a coworker who used to mess with my terminals when I leave it for a minute. Ever since I changed to Dvorak, he can't do that any more, especially since he's too dumb to learn the new layout like many people have done. (And, yes, since I use only xmodmap to change keyboard layouts and a window manager that can do very little with only mouse clicks, he'd have to know Dvorak to change the layout back (or delay him at least a few minutes, enough for me to put a stop to him).)

And if you type your passwords in Dvorak (or in Dvorak layout on Qwerty keyboard, or vice-versa), that's yet another way you can make it more obscure (although, you really should be using randomly generated, non-phonetic passwords, so change of layout wouldn't make a difference).

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[quarrelinastraw]

You raise a good point, but it proves too much. Geeks certainly have quirky preferences, and they may take pride that they are different. But the pride comes AFTER they switch. They switch because they believe it's better and then scoff at people who have failed to make that realization. It may look like they're just trying to be different because once something becomes mainstream, that's a cue that other people may have alread improved it in some more obscure circles.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[Anonymous Coward]

When I typed qwerty my hands hurt. I switched to dvorak and my pain has all gone away. I am a geek, but switching to dvorak was hardly just to be cool or different.

Re:DVORAK -- just for fanatics

[inanet]

I find that laughable - (especially once reading that link, the guy sounds like the penultimate "anti-geek" he is one who strives not to be.

aside from the fact his description is that of a nerd not a geek.

at the end of the day you are saying that a layout that was based on studies and logic, which makes more sense when typing in the english language is more for fanatics and that an illogical effectively random layout is for normal people?
yes I use a dvorak layout,

however I use dvorak for the left hand on my left hand and dvorak for the right hand on the right ( I use two keyboards)

my reasons are my own, however if you think about it logically learning to type is no different than learning to play an instrument.

you need to instruct your fingers on each hand where to go to achieve a desired result, and once you practice it enough then it becomes an automatic muscle memory response that people with more knowledge in brain and cognitive studies than me can explain.

but this said dvorak is definitely slowly and surely gaining ground, i have been using dvorak for a number of years, but up until 6 months ago it was only once in a blue moon... no I lie, up until six months ago I hadn't met ANYONE else who used a dvorak layout.

now i have just started a new job where two other guys who already work there use dvorak, and i know of about twenty others.

I also don't fanatically run around asking people if they use dvorak, its only when it comes up in conversation, so who the hell knows?

in a field where there is the constant strive to find better, more efficient and faster ways of doing things, why the hell wouldn't you switch to dvorak?

My sample

[Jerf]

Well, in my sample size of one, 100% of users have switched. Therefore, clearly, there's nowhere to go but down.

Addressing some myths:

• It's probably not any faster, but it is much more comfortable. There's no scientific evidence whatsoever about whether it affects carpal tunnel, neither for nor against, so you're on your own.
• You don't need a special keyboard, just the willingness to actually learn to touchtype. Even if you don't switch to Dvorak, you really ought to learn to touchtype anyhow.
• Code complaints vary from language to language. [] and /= may switch, but I actually took the time to do a character count in my Perl code (what I work in professionally) and it turned out they were as close to identical as to make no difference. You can make your own custom layout to move those back, but the further away from a standard layout you get, the more nervous I am. (I did end up remapping Caps Lock to Backspace, which has been nice, and that's not special to Dvorak. The key is to unmap the normal Backspace key; you'll learn in nothing flat.) Some languages may suffer more, some may even come out ahead.
• You don't lose QWERTY per se, but I find there is a "reloading" period of five or ten minutes before I can really crank along again. If you're just using the keyboard briefly this can look like you'e lost QWERTY; I think this is the kernel of truth behind the myth.

Re:My sample

[Grishnakh]

Let me add myself to your sampling. I've switched too.

1) It really isn't much, if any, faster. Probably depends on the typist. But that really isn't important; you can be an extremely fast typist on QWERTY, but you'll be contorting your hands in the process and giving yourself carpal tunnel syndrome. In Dvorak, you don't have to twist your fingers around so much.

2) You actually do need a particular type of keyboard. Some keyboards have the keycaps sculpted differently, depending on which row they're in. On other keyboards, the keycaps all have the same shape. Switching keycaps will only work on this latter type (which is still probably most of them). It works great on my IBM Model M, but I tried it once back in '98 on a crappy IBM keyboard and found out about the differently-shaped keycap problem.

3) I code in Perl and C using vim, and I don't have any trouble using either QWERTY or Dvorak. I use all the standard keymappings in vim for both keyboard layouts.

4) How long have you been using Dvorak? I can switch instantly between them, though if there might be a little bit of fumbling at first, but only for a few seconds, certainly not 5-10 minutes. However, I've also been using Dvorak at home since 1993. Since my computers at work (and laptop at home) are still QWERTY, I've learned to switch between them easily.

Re:My sample

[Jerf]

Dvorak for two years or so, I think. 5-10 minutes is the time it takes me to be cranking along at full speed in QWERTY; in 10 seconds I'm probably 80% there, but still making dumb mistakes. I don't do it very often, if I did it'd probably go faster. The only thing I do in QWERTY is my Angband playing, and that's because I don't think "'maa' to cast magic missle", but because that key combination is a built in shortcut in my head just like a copy keyboard shortcut, so there's no benefit in trying to stick with Dvorak there since it's not really "QWERTY" in my head, either.

The answer is NO!

[joto]

Very few people are switching. Very few people ever did switch. And very few people will switch in the future. I use Qwerty, or a national variant of it, as is 99.99% of everybody else using a computer. I have never switched to Dvorak. I once considered it, and determined it would be a waste of time, as I'm not a secretary, I already type pretty fast, there is no Dvorak for Norwegian, and I like having labels matching output on the keys of my keyboard. Also I'm weird enough as it is, and don't need to type weirdly too. So in conclusion, no I haven't really wanted to make the switch, otherwise I would have done it long ago. I have absolutely not noticed an increase in Dvorak use lately. It's probably the same two people who are still using it now, as it was in 1952.

Re:The answer is NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there's Dvorak for Norwegian.

I mapped æ, ø and å to lalt-e, lalt-o, and lalt-a, respectively. Works great.

Of course, I use lalt for a lot more stuff, e.g. lalt-space = backspace, lalt-s = enter, etc... Folded the non-ascii I use most frequently to lalt + well-placed keys.

Re:The answer is NO!

[somejeff]

Keyboards today should have a 'www.' and '.com' key. That would speed things up. I'd place it somewhere around the 'xxx' key.

Re:The answer is NO!

[Eivind Eklund]

So, you're a non-programmer, or program in something other than the C and derivatives space? Or maybe you're young? 'cause AltGr-7 to get { is a pain when programming. It's a wrist killer. My wrists aren't worth "having the labels match what I type" - I don't look at the keyboard when I type anyway. Og det burde ikke du heller, hvis du vil skrive raskt og riktig og uten å ødelegge håndleddene...

Re:The answer is NO!

[bob frost]

There's actually an interesting historical example of Dvorak success. At the outset of WW2, the US Navy decided for efficiency reasons to use Dvorak across their units. This was easy, as there was minimal relearning, given that the male desk jockeys on those keyboards were mostly new to typing anyway (remember that until the 1980s, "typing" was defined as women's work, and when men started typing on computers in large numbers the task was renamed to "keyboarding" in order to avoid threatening masculinity).

So the Navy trained thousands of men to use Dvorak and ordered up a mess of Dvorak-configured typewriters. It all worked famously, but at the end of the war, demobilization meant that those guys largely went to masculine jobs and quit typing, which went back and regendered to a feminine task, and women were, of course, almost all QWERTY. The Dvorak typewriters were junked and the experience largly disappeared from memory. In the end, it was one massive experiment that indeed showed the better efficiency of Dvorak--and the fact that it was all about social and workforce issues, and really very little about keyboard configs.

I switjved tb Dborgx

[sakusha]

I chpngyd to thp Dvprak kehboxc ank thp qualxpy og my coginq chamgbd drabaciralle.

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[CptNerd]

I'm a bit unnerved, I was able to understand what you typed on the first pass...

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[flyingfsck]

Dvorak will certainly swell the numbers of the ASD (American Dyslexic Society).

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Anonymous Coward]

Same, but I work at disneyland so I deal with understanding gibberish on a daily basis

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey me too and i've never used a DVORAK in my life...

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Joey Patterson]

C jab-y gbe.poyabe ,day frg ap. yflcbiv Mafx. frg b..e yr jdabi. frgp t.fxrape nafrgyv

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to spoil the joke, but the craziest part is that A is in the same place in both qwerty and Dvorak. That's the one letter that never gets messed up.

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Grishnakh]

Sorry to spoil your joke, but if I were to type your sentence in QWERTY on my Dvorak keyboard, it'd look like this:

C khabi.d yr yd. Ekrpat t.fxrape abe yd. 'gancyf ri mf krecbi kdabi.e epamayckannyv

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Paco103]

It's funnier the other way though. We can still figure out what he said.

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[the grace of R'hllor]

I chpngyd to thp Dvprak kehboxc ank thp qualxpy og my coginq chamgbd drabaciralle.

You misspelled 'kehbonxc'.

HTH, HAND.

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[dysprosia]

It inst the smae, but tehre was a sudty dnoe whree msot pleope can raed a snetnace if the frsit and lsat lttres are in the smae palce whit the ltertes mxied up.

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[muellerr1]

Yeah, but I can't get it to compile...

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you coding in Perl?

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[basshedz2]

Too much time programming perl!

Re:I switjved tb Dborgx

[Shadowlore]

You were able to understand it because most of the words had the key letters the same. Various studies have found that if the first and last letters are correct you can quickly piece the rest together often without noticing it. If there is a center placed consonant that is correct the ability to inherently understand rises. Also if you ar ea fast reader you will catch words that don't fit the above criteria without realizing it. Fast readers tend to look ahead several words and "read" in sets or phrases. When this is done the context is present and your brain fills in the small words that are not as clear.

So don't be unnerved, but revel in it. :)

Dvorak is fun!

[pizzach]

I have been using Dvorak for years. It has been an interesting mental exercise...but I would not say it is more productive. It's just different.

Some things you should consider before taking the plunge:

• Dvorak seems to be worse for Japanese. There a lot of words only using one hand. Not to mention it's a pain setting the default layout for Japanese to Dvorak on some OSs.
• VIM isn't as much fun in Dvorak when you have to switch randomly to QWERTY. For one thing, ":wq" is all done with on one hand.
• The curly braces feel too far in Dvorak when coding
• You will need to keep your qwerty skill up. Especially during the learning period.

I also had some unforeseen side-effects occur using Dvorak. When I had first started becoming proficient in it, my QWERTY skill practically disappeared from lack of use. When I had gotten my first web design job, my boss thought I was a computer newbie at first because I was typing so slow and with so little confidence. I didn't want to go mucking changing his keyboard layout so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thank God keyboards have the QWERTY letters on them. (I never thought I would say that.)

On the other hand, my computer is an impenetrable fortress of solitude nowadays. I run a desktop with no icons, Dvorak keyboard layout, Left handed mouse setup, all on top of Japanese Linux. You just try and touch my computer. I recommend you use a 6 foot stick.

To wrap up, I want to say you're a sissy if you actually buy a Dvorak keyboard or dare rearrange the keys. Thank you.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[tomhudson]

Dvorak seems to be worse for Japanese. There a lot of words only using one hand.

Sounds perfect for japanese pr0n chat!

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[Falladir]

VIM isn't as much fun in Dvorak when you have to switch randomly to QWERTY. For one thing, ":wq" is all done with on one hand.

qwerty: colon is on the right, w and q are on the left.

dvorak: colon and q are on the left and w is on the right.

Niether layout has them all on one side. Do you not have to key the colon in manually? I'm a newbie at VIM.

...my boss thought I was a computer newbie...

I'm having a hard time imagining a situation in which you couldn't casually remark "I'm a little slow on qwerty because I use a different keyboard layout." I always get great reactions when I say that.

you're a sissy if you actually buy a Dvorak keyboard or dare rearrange the keys. Thank you.

This is 100% correct.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[pizzach]

Oops, my bad on the wq thing. I'm not as awake as I had thought I was. I have a feeling the last sentence of my post is probably costing me mode points....

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[parasite]

I'm guessing you mention "left handed mouse setup" cause you are a right-hander? I think it's great to use the mouse with your non-dominant hand to increase brain plasticity. I use left hand for work mouse, right hand at home.

I've also got a deadly coworker torture technique I use at work, inspired by left hand mouse use. I put the monitor, keyboard and mouse at a sharp sharp angle with piles of garbage stacked on the right side -- so you must sit with the chair slanted looking at the desk and the only possible way one could use the mouse with their right hand is if they reach across their chest and break their wrist to bend their hand at a 45 degree angle with their arm HAHAHA. --- Secret number two is to crank up mouse sensitivty to absolute max, this increase your own productivity anyway once you are used to it, then when they TRY with their lefthand and see it is hopeless they finally contort their body and realize they can't even control my mouse with their right hand... oh it's GREAT. The look on their faces when they are just trying to show me how to do something for the new project... Don't forget to put every other setting out of whack -- double clicking at highest speed with 1 pixel movement max, I actually had a guy give me a priceless comment the other day after 10 failed attempts "Your computer doesn't support double clicking??"

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[Brandybuck]

Many years ago I knew a couple of medical transcriptionists. These are people who type 120 WPM for hours at a time. Many actually speed up their audio playback so they can type faster. I talked with one about DVORAK, and she said those in her profession that used DVORAK weren't any faster than the QWERTY users. My high school typing teacher decades back used to switch between QWERTY and DVORAK typewriters at a moments notice. She wasn't any faster on one than another.

My conclusion is that much of the DVORAK claims are wishful myth.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[SkankinMonkey]

Is there a way to fix windows IME to work with a dvorak layout instead of QWERTY? I looked a while back but couldn't find anything useful. I've been using Dvorak for about 4 years now and hate having to switch back and forth (between QWERTY and Dvorak) to type in Japanese.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[xaxa]

Dvorak is more comfortable, your fingers don't have to move so far. My wrists start to hurt a bit if I type on QWERTY for too long, it takes much longer for Dvorak to do the same.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[mcrh]

VIM isn't as much fun in Dvorak when you have to switch randomly to QWERTY. For one thing, ":wq" is all done with on one hand.

ZZ is always done on one hand. Try that.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[putte_xvi]

The only way I've found is to change it in the registry. Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\Keyboard Layouts\E0010411" (at least on my system) and change "Layout File" to the right DLL.

Now, you wouldn't happen to know how to change the shortcut for switching layouts to something other than the braindead ctrl/alt+shift?

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[jasenj1]

Long time Dvorak user chiming in here. I initially made the switch because I could NOT force myself to learn to touch type with QWERTY. Took me a few months of having a cheat sheet in front of me, but I finally learned it well enough to use regularly.

As other posters have pointed out, it works great for keeping other people off your machine. And password security is good too - just switch to QWERTY, type in your password as Dvorak, and you have an impenetrable mass of letters.

I like the mental gymnastics of switching back and forth when using QWERTY. I feel it keeps my mind flexible - perhaps a LITTLE bit like being bi-lingual is supposed to do.

I also find the stress on my hands to be less than when using QWERTY. Maybe that's because I never learned QWERTY "right", maybe it's because my muscles are more relaxed now when cranking along in Dvorak, maybe it's an illusion.

- Jasen.

Re:Dvorak is fun!

[meringuoid]

And password security is good too - just switch to QWERTY, type in your password as Dvorak, and you have an impenetrable mass of letters.

Substitution cipher != impenetrable. That's pretty poor security even for children in treehouses.

I use Dvorak but

[rolfwind]

I'm not a gamer. I like it better than Qwerty, my wrists don't hurt anymore. However, I used to touch type Qwerty, now I can't. This isn't a big deal but would someone point me if a USB device exists that could be plug in between the keyboard and the computer that could translate qwerty signals into dvorak ones? I would find this helpful on computers other than my own.

If you want to learn Dvorak, like a foreign language I would suggest to plunge in and stop using qwerty. Your muscle memory needs to get accustomed to the new system and changing in between is not helpful. I initially tried learning dvorak by taking online lessons in small doses. After six months, I wasn't getting anywhere. I switch cold turkey one weekend, and by Monday morning, was a touch typist again (I spent roughly 6 hours on online lessons that weekend and did all my other computer stuff in Dvorak).

There are potentially better layouts designed recently but I want to ask anyone with experience with the "Neo" Tastatur/Layout - is it better in your experience?

Neo Layout:
(German - has useful visual comparison to QWERTY, DVORAK, and other layouts)
http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout.php

If you never have heard of it:
English:
http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout/index_us.htm l

Re:I use Dvorak but

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be easier just to pick a Dvorak keyboard layout? I recall hearing that Windows has similar functionality, and I'd be surprised to learn you couldn't do the same in Gnome or KDE.
—Tickletaint (forced to post logged-out due to fucked-up moderation)

Re:I use Dvorak but

[rolfwind]

If you are replying to my request for a usb device that intercepts qwerty signals and traslates them into dvorak signals, I have all my computers set on dvorak layout.

However, there are times I use a computer at other places, at work or at school, where the system is so locked down that I cannot change the layout in software - yet I have access to the hardware.

I would find such a device easier to use than to lug around a dvorak keyboard just for that purpose.

Re:I use Dvorak but

[Loconut1389]

If you've got an FPGA dev kit, you can probably implement such a thing without a huge effort- but making that portable would cost lots of $$$ to get an ASIC and circuit board made up.

Re:I use Dvorak but

[Anonymous Coward]

My husband uses qwerty as does my son (it's not fair to teach him dvorak when he has to learn qwerty in school). We have a little program running in the system tray of all our computers that you can switch between the two with a simple right click and then click. I carry it around on my USB device at work so if I sit at a computer in a meeting or such, I just run the program off the stick and switch to dvorak.

Programmer Dvorak

[spiritraveller]

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask this question about Programmer Dvorak rather than standard Dvorak.

Progammer Dvorak has the same letter layout as regular Dvorak (allowing for compatibility with other machines), but it changes the placement of punctuation in a way that "makes it easier to write source code in C, C#, Java, Pascal, LISP, CSS and XML."

Re:Programmer Dvorak

[richardwatson]

I use Programmer Dvorak. It's definitely more comfortable (for me) but there are some disadvantages. You have to install it on any computer you want to use, OR remember QWERTY. Also, last time I checked he had no Apple support, so if I ever move to an Apple I have to make the layout myself. I can use vanilla Dvorak too, so that's at least a good stopgap.

Once, I moved to a new computer and he'd taken down his PD page for a bit. I nearly had a freakout! I now have the Windows and Linux installs buried deep in various places, just in case.

Spelling!

[seebs]

"Dvorak", not "DVORAK". "QWERTY" is named after the appearance of the letters; "Dvorak" is named after a person.

I switched to it ages ago. It's not always faster, but it hurts less. I also use QWERTY keyboards, because better even than a better system is changing systems from time to time to change my muscle usage patterns.

Re:Spelling!

[drix]

I agree with that last point. Ironically I have found that the best way to "rest" my hands after a long bout of piano is to play guitar. I don't know why or how but this just works for me.

Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[spiritraveller]

The complaints about there not being many Dvorak keyboards for sale are just silly.

Why would you change layouts without bothering to learn how to touch-type??? If you don't touch-type, you will never type fast, regardless of which layout you use. It doesn't matter what the keys on your keyboard say if you are touch-typing.

The best thing to do when learning a new layout is to have a copy of it on paper taped to your monitor. You want to get out of the habit of looking at the keyboard, not perpetuate it.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[CastrTroy]

If the key caps don't matter, and you never have to look anyway, I suggest you get Das Keyboard.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[spiritraveller]

If the key caps don't matter, and you never have to look anyway, I suggest you get Das Keyboard.

I am hoping to get one of those for father's day. At the price, I would probably never buy one for myself, but it would be nice.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know about that one. I wouldn't mind a blank keyboard, but I'd prefer one with nipples on the home keys.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[aliquis]

Yeah, great idea, buy an overpriced keyboard just to show everyone else you don't look at the keys...

I have a microsoft ergonomic 4000, quality seem to suck but it's very comfortable.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can achieve the same effect with a can of spray paint

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[gbulmash]

If you don't touch-type, you will never type fast, regardless of which layout you use.

My right pinky is seriously odd, so a standard touch-typing solution never really worked for me, and it's not like it's an otherwise crippling oddness, so it's not like I or anyonw else felt the need to get me specialized typing lessons. I just learned to hunt and peck really fast. And after 25 years of two-fingering computer keyboards, I can type without looking at the keys (yes, I can two-fingered touch type) but I get my best speeds when looking at the keys.

- Greg

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[gbulmash]

Just FYI - just took a typing test. 53 WPM, no errors, two-fingered... Beeyotch!

- Greg

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Brandybuck]

I almost bought a Das Keyboard. But then I actually used one. The problem with keyboards in general is that the key positions are *NOT* standardized. Really. If you use one and only one keyboard, then the Das Keyboard is great. I switch between several different keyboard layouts on a regular basis: iBook, desktop PC, Thinkpad T60, and UltraSparc. I also note that the "standard" PC keyboard isn't all that standardized either. The differences between these keyboards are things like meta keys and a few symbols. Not much, but enough that I need to occasionally glance down.

The mechanical feel of the Das Keyboard is fantastic, however. If they ever made one with printed keys I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[DrScotsman]

I doubt I'll succeed in convincing you that I'm trying to disprove the great-grandparent as opposed to just showing off, but two-fingered, 89wpm with 2 mistakes. I ALWAYS misspell deceive wrong (other than now thanks to Firefox's spellchecker), and I mistimed the shift key one time.

Okay I guess I was just showing off, but nonetheless, I agree that it's very easy to speedily type with 2 fingers without looking at the keyboard, although I do use other fingers unconsciously for keys other than the letters.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[laejoh]

to have a copy of it on paper taped to your monitor.

I just did, but now I can't read my screen :(

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Dr_Barnowl]

The Das is intrinsically a Cherry keyboard - it's pretty much what they used to sell as a Cherry "Click". I have one of these which I bought some time ago as a result of my personal policy not to skimp on user interface devices (mouse, keyboard, monitor, all of these are very important and should outlast any system you use).

My other keyboard is a '98 vintage Model M made in Scotland. I'm not quite sure which I prefer - both have proper mechanical mechanisms. The M lacks a windows key, which I actually found annoying until I bound some ctrl-alt hotcuts to VBScripts that replace the windows key combos I use. The M is somewhat heavier and noisier, the Cherry is quieter (but still not as quiet as a fluppitty rubber keyboard). The Cherry is at work because it's more considerate than the IBM in an open-plan cubeless office.

I hope the legendary longevity of this type of keyboard holds for me, because Cherry don't seem to make them anymore. They make the keyswitches. They list two keyboard models - one explicitly uses "rubber mat", the other is "affordable" and carefully refrains from mentioning which technology it uses.

Which is absurd - all the stockists I checked have zero stock. It's also the ONLY keyboard to have any feedback in one web shop - 5 stars and two rave reviews. May a million insects infest the underpants of the short sighted accountants who decreed that all modern systems come bundled with a keyboard technology that was rightly regarded with scorn and derision on systems like the Spectrum 128. Who knows how many instances of RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome they are responsible for.

The only ways I now know of to get a proper keyboard are the Das, get a vintage M, or go for a Unicomp Customizer.

*does a little more searching*

I tell a lie - Cherry still list these keyboards, but only on their German website. You want a Cherry G80-3000, and I could find several stockists for it.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Brome]

I absolutely agree. Any person who spend much time on a computer should learn touch-typing. The benefits are so huge that it doesn't look like an option to me.

I first learned US, French and Swiss-French disposition (I live in France, but Swiss-French was the standard in Luxembourg, where I worked). Then I discovered English Dvorak, but I felt no real benefit using it, since most of the texts I had to type were in French. By chance, I discovered that a French Dvorak disposition existed. Today I use the French disposition for basic keyboard interaction, and Dvorak French when I have long texts to type.

I never bothered to buy a real Dvorak keyboard, and just switch the disposition with a keyboard shortcut. Actually, I bought a spray can of white paint, and painted the keys so they're all blank now. The only thing telling me which disposition is currently in use, whenever I have a doubt, is the little flag in my menu bar (I use OS X). Needless to say most of the people who sit at my computer are baffled by this blank keyboard, but I find it more aesthetic this way.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[koinu]

The complaints about there not being many Dvorak keyboards for sale are just silly.

Yes. I agree on this. Imagine your PC boots incorrectly and you don't have the layout installed (for example linux boot prompt). I had lots of "fun" with this after I arranged my keys to Dvorak order on my old keyboard.

I have learned Dvorak (German layout) and I use it when I'm typing longer in german language. It has advantages, because I don't need to look at the keys. On my keyboard is simply QWERTZ. My keyboard is also too expensive. I would not rip the keys out anymore here.

I'm not using Dvorak layout for programming and for other tasks, because programming with a German keyboard (Dvorak or QUERTZ) is totally annoying. All the important keys ()[]{}/$"| are difficult to type because they need "Shift" or "AltGr". I would use a German Dvorak with mods for programming. I have to think about it. While I don't use Dvorak, I have to look at the keys, of course and I use 2 fingers each hand (plus right thumb for space).

I don't understand the argument that switching between two layouts is difficult. There is only one problem. Keys "." and "," are really easy to reach on German Dvorak and it might annoy you a bit while typing on QWERTZ because sometimes it might happen that you press them. There is no way that you mix something up on Dvorak, because Dvorak is simply better.

On to the people who say "it's difficult to switch layouts on a PC"... make a script that swaps the layouts and put it on an icon in your panel. Or, if you work at a terminal use 2 scripts that switch betweeen layouts. The names of the script should by typed by same keys, so you don't need to think about it. I use "asdf" and "aoei" for example.

Dvorak is language and (even worse!) application specific. You can have many Dvoraks. Think thoroughly before using one. I think that typing long texts in German on QWERTZ is annoying, so I use German Dvorak for it. While programming, I still need more to think than type. I can accept both layouts on Vim (they make no difference). English layouts have also a "Programmer's Dvorak" that would be an advantage. I guess, this is what the 7 of 9 programmers used. It's application specific and it's ok, too, if you mainly type programs.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[pcmanjon]

It's OK. I type like you, but I don't need to look at the keyboard at all. Without the constant glancing up and down seems to save quite a few WPM.

Your speed was: 90wpm.

You made 10 mistakes, your mistakes are shown in bold text:

Mistakes included a few spelling errors (7) and the rest were using " instead of '

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

70 wpm easy touch typing. The big problem with hunting and pecking is it takes much more brainpower. I can talk to people while typing (it drives people nuts for some reason). People who hunt and peck can't even comprehend what I'm saying to them when they are typing. They are so wrapped up in typing. Speed is not the only advantage to touch typing. I realize you've convinced yourself it's pointless to learn, but you are a fool. Give it a try for a few months (it's really easy for someone who hunts and pecks to switch), you'll be slower for a little while, but then you'll wonder why you were so pig headed for so long. The peole I know who switched we happy after a few weeks and faster than before switching within a few more weeks, but remember, it's not just about speed.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[jma05]

I doubt that I am raising a point that has not been raised before. I agree that not looking up and down will save time. But that test is significantly biased towards a copy task. Not many of us are document transcribers like classical typists. I type my papers and code. I don't look up and down that much and not being a touch typist never bothered me that much. That said, I do like to touch type. I think it will lower some typos that don't get detected by a spell checker if I am able to look at the screen as I type. I just never enjoyed the practice and it didn't seem to help me much.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking through all these posts whining about not being able to find a keyboard, a specific program does not support DVORAK, or that a computer does not support it. You don't have to get a different keyboard (just like someone else said - print out the layout and tape it near your keyboard), you use the exact same letters in a program as you did under QWERTY layout - the only difference is that the key will be in a different place.
Everyone who is saying that they can't learn it, but they really want to, are just looking for excuses not to try it. Find some sticky paper and print out some stickers if you really need to look at the keys while learning, rearrange the keys to match the layout - just don't whine that you can't do it for some reason if there is a simple way around it.

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, if you misspell something wrongly, does it end up being right after all?

(Or does it just become doubleunright?)

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably weren't taught this. It's easy to remember.

"I before E, except after C."

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[rho]

Heh, my right-pinky isn't odd, but it's seriously underused. Way, way back, on my first "real" computer (286! 20 Meg HDD!), the right shift key went out. I picked up the habit then of only using the left shift key, and I have never broken it. The "Z" key broke too, and I got accustomed to typing "alt-122" too, though that was a very easy habit to break after we got the keyboard fixed.

(Remember getting keyboards fixed rather than buying a new one for $4.99? Good times.)

Re:Buying a new keyboard is pointless.

[MS-06FZ]

You probably weren't taught this. It's easy to remember.

"I before E, except after C." Yeah, when I was a kid my nieghbor taught me that one. It may seem like a hassle to learn all these silly little rules, but when you wiegh them against the embarrassment you could suffer in a professional environment as a result of sloppy spelling, it is surely worthwhile.

Better

[pipingguy]

I sfoj that i tyje msjg bettr with Dviraj layidd.

Stickers might help

[rolfwind]

They have opaque and transparent ones:

http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&S tore_Code=KBH&Product_Code=OV-0658

http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&S tore_Code=KBH&Product_Code=OV-0658.

(There might be better and cheaper ones around, probably, as you don't need to get "dvorak" stickers, afterall, just get regulars ones and stick them in the dvorak formation).

I just change my OS to handle both qwerty and dvorak.

FPS games

[everything_X3N]

,AOE control scheme? I'll stick with good ol' WASD.

Re:FPS games

[Anonymous Coward]

ESDF > WASD.

Re:FPS games

[Anonymous Coward]

RDFG > ESDF

Re:FPS games

[zippthorne]

You should be custom-mapping your keys anyway. Possibly to the numeric keypad (it puts your keyboard at odd angles, but you actually get more keys, more logically located) and possibly using custom macros to.. say.. cycle through a different, small class of weapons on each of several weapon-switchout keys. Or separating your jetpack from the jump key so you don't automatically do both every time.

Less strain

[MechaBlue]

My personal experience is that strain from typing goes down by 30-40%, which can make a huge difference. I've found that laptop keyboards have a similar strain reduction due to the lower force needed and shorter travel distance. The Dvorak kbs are significatnly more expensive but worth it for desktops. There is little advantage for coding but there is a large advantage for documentation and commenting. A major downside is a productivity hit for a few days or weeks until the new layout is learned.

I'd really like to see Dvorak or dual keycaps for the MBP (I'd be willing to shell out a good $200 for an option that doesn't violate warranty and works with the backlighting). Hopefully the OLED keyboard will make it into laptops soon.

Re:Less strain

[olego]

One of the reasons I really like Dells is that all of their keyboards so far have identical key sizes and attachment strategies. That enabled me to remap the keys on both of the Dells I own with no almost no problems whatsoever. (The Inspiron had a TrackPoint mouse, so I actually had to cut off a piece of the keys.)

In contrast, I've not yet seen a non-laptop keyboard that would let me remap the keys with such an ease. Instead of popping them, I always have to unscrew the bottom; and invariably the letters F and J have a different attachment strategy. I usually have to shave off a bit of the plastic to get them to remap correctly.

So remapping obviously won't work on those split "Natural" keyboards, but I can't use them anyway. So far I've remapped 4 normal and 2 laptop keyboards. The median remap time for normal keyboards is about 20-30 minutes, which is well worth the $100-$200 that I save by not bying a Dvorak-only layout. Even if the keys on the keyboards are sized slightly differently, I failed to notice it in any significant way (unless I tried to feel the keys instead of pressing it).

So to all who want to try Dvorak, I suggest remapping the keys to buying a special keyboard, especially if popping off the keys is as easy as it is on a Dell laptop.

Re:DVORAK will never win cause its too hard to spe

[JimXugle]

What about the French Keyboards where the top row is AZERTYUIOP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout

Insert Mac Elitism Here

[twoallbeefpatties]

1. Use a pencil to pop out all the keys on your Apple keyboard and rearrange them
2. Go to "international" in your systems preferences and add Dvorak U.S. to your languages list
3. Hit shift-option-space to switch between keyboard types
4. Profit!

Now I just need to find a decent free program for learning Dvorak typing in correct order...

Re:Insert Mac Elitism Here

[Falladir]

(2) All modern OSs can use dvorak instead of qwerty. (3) Every OS I have used enables the use of a hotkey for switching between layouts. (1) Moving keycaps around is a crutch; the only (potentially) good thing about it is that it makes people do a double-take when they see the keys. One of the reasons your laptop can do this, while mine cannot, is that yours lacks a nipple mouse. The other mac fanboys should scold you for touting features that aren't unique to your platform. If you're going to act superior, find better justification.

Re:Insert Mac Elitism Here

[russellh]

3. Hit shift-option-space to switch between keyboard types

that reminds me.. back in the Mac OS 9 days (and maybe before also) I used to use keyboard layouts to do passwords. that is, I picked a very easy to remember password by muscle memory on the QWERTY layout, but to type it I would switch to a garbled up keyboard layout . heh.

long ago

[Loconut1389]

I tried to switch long ago- but I got frustrated when I'd go to a lab or anywhere other than my home that didn't have the dvorak layout and all the hard-work I'd done getting used to dvorak went partially out the window and I found myself having trouble typing qwerty and lost some gained proficiency at dvorak.

The first few days were horrible- at the time I liked IMing a lot and I found myself trying to write everything in the shortest way possible and get offline. I went from being a ~120wpm typer to being closer to 5-10wpm. After a few days it wasn't excruciating anymore, but it took me almost two months to feel like I was even marginally close to my old speed.

If you switch, buy a USB hardware dvorak keyboard that you can take with you, otherwise you'll go nuts switching back and forth. If you can avoid it at all, don't use qwerty at all while you're learning dvorak- it really messes up your progress (or at least it did for me).

Anyway, I finally gave up at about 3 months, and I've been wanting to go back now that I really only type at home (work from home).

Did and went back

[pescadero]

A few years ago I went full-blown DVORAK for a few months. I really liked it, but I ended up switching back to QWERTY. Here are the two problems I had:

1) Shortcut keys (control-z, control-x, control-c, etc..) are all over the freaking place in DVORAK.

(If there was some way to do DVORAK for normal typing and switch back to QWERTY when control/alt/command are held down, then that would probably be cool. I don't know of any way to do that though)

2) Other people. If I've been typing DVORAK for weeks, and I try to use someone's QWERTY computer, I turn into a retarded monkey. Similarly, anyone that tries to use my computer turns into a retarded monkey.

But if a wide-spread adoption of DVORAK ever breaks out, I am willing and ready!

Re:Did and went back

[pizzach]

(If there was some way to do DVORAK for normal typing and switch back to QWERTY when control/alt/command are held down, then that would probably be cool. I don't know of any way to do that though) You can on Mac OS X. It's called Dvorak (Command Qwerty)

Re:Did and went back

[Junta]

anyone that tries to use my computer turns into a retarded monkey. That's one of my favorite parts. I love when some guy comes by at work and asks to borrow my system, and see their confused look for a couple of minutes "Oops, I screwed up, huh, wait....".

And in a less funny, but satisfying way, it is a great deterrent for people who want to kinda take over something I'm trying to do.

As to working on qwerty, usually for me it is one sentence or fragment I screw up before I realize what I'm doing. Of course I never really touchtyped Qwerty much (was too uncomfortable for me, hunt-and-peck was 'good enough' without the discomfort of touch typing.

Probably the most interesting event was when two of us dvorak users collided. They said, "sure, use my system", probably with the same expectation of amusement I have when inviting someone to use my system for a sec, and then a second after I started typing I realized "whoops, not my system, so I need to... hey, it's coming out right, it's in dvorak!'

Re:Did and went back

[the_womble]

How long does it take to switch layouts on the OS and desktop you are using?

I use KDE and I am trying Dvorak at the moment. If you activate more than one layout in KDE, clicking on an icon in the system tray switches between them. I was also very impressed that if the session is locked, it allows you to switch layouts to type your password in. Very good thinking on someone's part.

I know Gnome also has a layout switcher applet, so there is no problem there either.

Re:Did and went back

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't slashdot taught you anything about security through obscurity?

I did learn, don't like it

[kherr]

I did learn, even went through typewriter class in school. It doesn't work for me. I am, despite your experience, quite a capable coder. I also type well over 60 wpm as a hunt and pecker (heh), although the quality of my coding comes from thinking about algorithms and implementation design and not how fast I churn out instructions.

Re:I did learn, don't like it

[ChronosWS]

I type this way as well, and one thing I have noticed is that it does not produce wrist strain. I'll trade the WPM for lack of carpal tunnel syndrome. Besides, WPM has essentially no practical effect on the speed with which code is written. Yay for never learning how to 'properly' type.

Well, yeah.

[jd]

I far prefer the British English keyboard I grew up on* to the American English one, for example, and most European countries have their own. This isn't a perfect solution - the German alphabet has 27 characters, for example, making either the mappings weird or the number of keys weird - but it's better than a totally pan-galactic standardized solution.

(*growing up on a keyboard is painful, though - the keys are too lumpy)

Nerds!

[drolli]

Excuse me, the statment that you where at an event where 7 of 9 people used DVORAK keyboards IMHO qualifies you as a nerd.

I have never seen a dvorak keyboard before, i do not know anybody who uses it. Maybe i am just to old (32) or something....

Re:Nerds!

[gujo-odori]

I'm in my forties, have been in the computer business since I was 18 and a geek longer than that, and I've never seen a Dvorak keyboard, either. The OP just into a den of Dvorak iniquity, IMO :)

I've never felt motivated to try a Dvorak because:

-
I would have to either carry one with me everywhere or constantly move back and forth between the two, and IMO the only way to be really good at typing on a Dvorak is to use nothing else. When I lived in Japan, I tried using a kana for a while, on the rationale that it would be faster to type Japanese because it would require half as many keystrokes. I only ever met one Japanese native speaker who did that, and he couldn't really say if it helped him or not. I used kana->kanji input for a few months and eventually dropped it and went back to romaji->kanji input b/c not only did it not help me, it was slower b/c of switching issues with typing QWERTY in English and kana layout in Japanese

- It tremendously limits your choice of keyboards or makes you move all your keycaps around

- A large study some years ago found no signficant speed difference between Dvorak and Qwerty users. In other words, I'd spend all that hard work learning to be good at Dvorak, carry one with me everywhere I go, and probably gain little or nothing

I don't doubt that some people see speed and/or ergonomic benefits, but the likelihood of it for most people seemed to low to make it worth my while to try it.

Re:Nerds!

[drolli]

I also prefer to use transliterated input, for hiragana (just learning japanese right now) as well as for cyrillic letters. I would definitely not trade, for the reasons you cited, a hypothetical minor speed advantage for not being albe to use any keyboard. Actually i am switching to US-keyboard also on my home computer, even if I am from Germany.

Re:lying bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

John Dvorak ! ;)

An interesting connection between OS and keyboard

[pizzach]

My home computer is a Macintosh. I use Windows computers at school. My Macintosh has been setup to use Dvorak for a while. I find it interesting that my fingers trip if I try to type on a Mac in QWERTY or a PC in Dvorak. Something about the OS theme makes my muscle memory choose one or the other like the machines have nothing in common.

dvzine.org

[Kataire]

I was first introduced to the Dvorak layout on Slashdot in an article about two years ago regarding dvzine.org.

The propaganda there was corny, but convinced me it couldn't hurt too much to give it a shot.

The first month, admittedly, almost made me give it up. TypeFaster, a good typing tutor program that supports Dvorak, got me past that.

Two years later, and I'm completely sold on Dvorak. I'm a 34-year old career programmer. I've never spent a dime on "Dvorak" hardware, and can't imagine why anyone would. I've used Dvorak on dozens of machines, most of which are shared with people who use QWERTY. (Still, FWIW, I happen to be the only person I personally know that uses Dvorak.)

At this point, I am definitively faster on Dvorak, and feel no pressure to go back.

Simular problem here.

[pavon]

I used Dvorak for about 3 years straight during college, and I loved it. I naturally had my personal computer set to use it, and all of the college computers had floating profiles, so the only thing I ever had to type in qwerty was my username and password. I had formed bad typing habits when I was young, and because of that was never successful in teaching myself to touch-type qwerty. Dvorak provided a clean slate, which made learning to touch type much easier, and after about three weeks I was typing faster than I ever did with qwerty. It was great.

Then I graduated and got a job. At first I mapped my computer to use dvorak, but quickly found that I spent as much time using shared (lab) computers as my own. The switching back and forth was driving me crazy. Typing english was fine, but the keyboard shortcuts were horrible as I remembered those by muscle memory, not by letter. I experimented with using fast-keyboard switching, but after a couple incidents where I forget to change it back to qwerty when I was done, thoroughly confusing my co-workers, I stopped with that. Finally, I just gave up and learned to touch-type qwerty, and haven't used dvorak since. Fortunately, my 3 year reprieve from using it made it easier to unlearn my old bad habits, so I am a better qwerty typer than I used to be, but still not as fast as I was with dvorak.

Happy with Dvorak. Less Painful

[srobert]

I'm not a coder, (IANAC?) but I think that programming languages have selected particular keyboard combinations to handle certain programming tasks because of the ease with which those combinations could be implemented on the QWERTY layout. In light of that, I'm not sure the switch is as useful to coders as it would be to others. But I am a Dvorak typist. I originally switched hoping to increase my typing speed. I never got the increased speed I was looking for, but I did notice that I could type more with less pain in my hands and fingers.
It seldom causes any problems. One would be that an administrator logging into my machine remotely at work will find that as they attempt to login, they will get gibberish until I either log out or remap the keyboard for them, but that's rare. Even using someone else's machine isn't a problem, since, keyboards can be remapped so easily. Just don't forget to change them back when you finish.

Thinkpad!

[Mukunda_NZ]

I was actually talking about dvorak today with someone who just got a Thinkpad and wanted to be able to rearrange their keys to dvorak. It'd be great if Lenovo would start offering this, yes I know that us who use dvorak touch type anyway, but just because it'd look nice. I've been using dvorak for a couple of years at least now. My girlfriend just started using it a few weeks ago and can now touch type, she never learnt to touch type on qwerty.

Not impressed with Dvorak

[jandrese]

Am I the only one who thinks that the speed gains one might experience from learning how to type on a Dvorak layout (and the studies are all over the place on how much speed you actually gain), is not as useful as having the same standard layout everywhere you go?

The last thing I want is to walk up to a kiosk somewhere and discover the keyboard is in some unfamiliar layout.

Best Dvorak Typing Course, EVER.

[Zaurus]

Free. Online. Best typing course in ANY language that I've ever had.

abcd = A Basic Course in Dvorak

http://gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dvorak is great just no so much for coding

[lachesis-jp]

I have been using Dvorak for about one year and I have never looked back. However it can be bit of a pita in some case, especially for coding. You can forget about VIM for example. When writing code, I believe the new layout is not much better than Qwerty in many case. But code is not what you write most of the time and Dvorak is great for typing regular english which i more commonly type than code. One things that make things much easier is the Dvorak-Qwerty layout on the mac. The command+Key shortcut stays as Qwerty so that ergonomically chosen commands stays at the same place. I wish I had a similar layout for windows and linux. Anyway concerning code, what I did is to customize the layout to add a few well placed key for the commonly used symbols. I put {}[]() and others signs on the home row + AltGr on my 109 keys keyboard.

I switched to Dvorak...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on a Kinesis Contoured keyboard (great keyboard) and then found out I could switch between qwerty and dvorak pretty easily after the initial learning period. It occurred to me that if I could still type qwerty then it didn't matter so much that what I used for comfort was standardized; thus I morphed into using my own Dvorak variant, all chronicled here: http://www.interloper.net/keyboard/.

- Bill

lol at You

[geekoid]

DO you know who ran the study on dvorak? give you one guess, his name isn't QWERTY.

The only reason you may type faster is because you worked harder on it, nothing more.

In fact, most keyboard shortcuts are designed for the QWERTY layout.

God, what is it with people that makes themignore relevant studies and common sense to jump on somehting just because it isn't popular.

and for God sakes, your age doesn't mean a thing when it comes to this.

oh, and why would you feel pressure? no one gives a damn about your keyboard layout.
do you think the QWERTY police are out there, looking for you?

gah, I'm out of here.

Re:lol at You

[Kataire]

At least someone put some real effort into trying to make a keyboard layout designed from the start to be easy to type fast.

I don't care who "ran the study" making QWERTY hard to type fast... I'm satisfied that its design goal was met. QWERTY was designed to try to minimize mechanical type-writer hammer entanglement (jams) caused by typing too fast. Anyone who ever used an old mechanical hammer style typewriter has seen how much those jams sucked. As carefully designed as they were to avoid it, get going too fast, and you might even bend a hammer arm trying to un-tangle the mess... then you were out time and money while the rig's being fixed at the shop.

On the other hand, I appreciate that Dvorak's goal was to design something that was easy to type fast with, which is what I need in my line of work. And I appreciate that he did run studies to try to test and/or validate his thoughtful, if not scientific design. It sounds almost like scientific method.

I wouldn't say I put more effort into learning the Dvorak layout, though. I took a class to learn touch typing with QWERTY, and used it heavily & constantly for over ten years, with plenty of "repetitive stress injury" along the way.

I considered learning Dvorak's layout an investigative experiment until I realized that in three or four months' time, my proficiency with Dvorak's layout had at least met my former proficency with the QWERTY layout, if not already exceeded it... no classes necessary. RSI's still happen, but I can push out quite a bit more before I have to take a break.

If you're worried about your typewriter jamming, go ahead... QWERTY might save you some money. But what is it with people who use (and even defend) standards against reason simply beacause they are "popular"?

Diagonally aligned keys worse than QWERTY.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll let typematrix.com and the maltron and kinesis say the rest....

I've converted to a dual dvorak/qwerty layout in a straight grid (this isn't the 1800's and keyboards do not require that mechanical kludge any more), typing in dvorak myself, with keyboard shortcuts (vi/ctrl+C, etc) remapped to my taste, and qwerty available to other users at the push of a button.

I have a typematrix 2020 and 2030 with skin, both dual labelled, and a kinesis contoured. Maltrons are great too but very costly.

Anything else is a second rate solution. If you're an IT professional, insist on decent keys before you wind up with permanent damage. Just cause staggered layouts in qwerty haven't hurt you yet, doesn't mean the damage is not accumulating unbeknownst to you.

Has common sense left the building?

[geekoid]

I suspect knowing 2 keyboards layouts won't be an issue. waste of time sine there is only one Ddvorak study, and dvorak had strong influence in it.

Looking at the casual evidence, if there is a speed increase, then it would only apply to people who type for a living. "Coders" do not type for a living. Typing is part of it, but not the real work. If typing IS the real work for a coder, then they are a crap trial and error coder that doesn't understand how to design. These people are to be avoided.

Personaly I don't care if you use your dick to type with on a keyboard with 463 keys made out of moon rock, as long as you can do your job. I won't share your keyboard though.

Wow, who would have thought all the worlds

[geekoid]

fastest typers also post on /.

I don't think as many people in the world can type over 100 wpm then the people here seem to claim.

You people do know, when they say 100 wpm, they mean other words wesides the letter a, right?

example:
for(; ;) is not 8 words.

Re:Wow, who would have thought all the worlds

[fishbowl]

>I don't think as many people in the world can type over 100 wpm then the people here seem to claim.

I started my IT career in the legal field. Believe it. I thought I was a fast typist until I saw what legal secretaries can do. And that was on Selectrics and Model M's.

Geeky people do geeky things.

[brianlmoon]

Wow, so 7 out of 9 geeks use a geeky thing. Did you ask how many run Linux? I bet it was all nine. That must mean that Linux will be taking over all computing any day now.

I can't talk, I use a Logitech Marble Mouse.

Re:Geeky people do geeky things.

[swimmar132]

actually, probably all of them use macs. Rubyists love macs.

Obligatory

[spiderbitendeath]

"I hope you don't screw like you type."

Re:Obligatory

[fyngyrz]

Yow. A "Hackers" quote. Another great example of why Hollywood can rarely be praised for making movies about technical subjects. Then again, we will always have Blade Runner.

Public Health Warning

[jd]

On no account touch-type on a hot brunette by mistake. Especially if she calls herself Emma Peel.

How to learn. re: If only the cost was less...

[rta]

Wow, i didn't think anyone used Dvorak anymore.  I've been using it for years and i agree with other people here that it's not particularly great for coding.  The right hand pinky gets nearly as much of a workout in Dvorak as it does in QWERTY.

Now, as to how to learn it.  The way i did it was to grab an image of the layout off of the web and i edited it to separate the keys into three groups by column:
The left-most group was everything under keys 1 - 4, the middle column the things that were under 5 and 6 and the right-most group everything else.  Then i put the image up on the screen in a corner and referred to it whenever i needed to hit a key and i didn't know where it was.   I found the spliting it up made it much easier to visualize which finger i should be using for each key since all of the fingers (except for the index fingers and the right pinky stay in their own columns.   Hmm... if i had to do it over maybe i would further separate the extra right pinky cluster.

The first two or three days... it was pretty darned painful, but it got better quickly after that.  (Note, i didn't touch type in Qwerty (and still don't)).

To clarify what i meant about the keyboard layout... my picture looked something like what's below (but i've added my newly devised separation for the area where the right pinky reaches out to the right from its own column):

1 2 3 4    5 6    7 8 9 0   [ ]
  ' , . p    y f    g c r l   / = \
   a o e u    i d    h t n s   -
    ; q j k    x b    m w v z

Note: if you have a MS Natural keyboard or similar you'll have to hit the 6 with your left index finger, but c'est la vie.

check out this guy's blog entry for a picture one might modify.
http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/CommentView ,guid,5b057212-590e-4ed4-bf53-3b971d3ba60d.aspx

(hmm... maybe i should copyright and or trademark this split keyboard image idea :-) ) 

Ages ago

[kzinti]

Switched to Dvorak about 15 years ago. Never looked back.

Anybody here been using Dvorak longer than that? (I'm sure many of you have...)

Re:Ages ago

[algestam]

I have been using Dvorak for a while. Lately I have been switching to speech recognition and it works surprisingly well! Of course there Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

Change it in software!

[Psykechan]

I agree with your statement. Some people still don't realize that you can configure every modern OS to switch between keyboard layouts quite easily. Others think that they need to view the keys to learn the layout.

When I learned, I did the silly thing of moving keycaps around to create a cheap Dvorak keyboard. I found a problem with this almost immediately; the F and J keys have the index finger guides and if they are moved then it makes it very difficult to touch type.

I personally would still like to have a Dvorak keyboard just because it would help when I am not touch typing. Now I routinely switch between layouts because I simply cannot type single handed unless I use a QWERTY layout. I don't know where the characters are so I need to have both hands free to actually type on the Dvorak layout.

Re:Cussing

[SuluSulu]

Usually they are too busy cussing to look at anything.
Yes, Microsoft has trained people well in the are of cussing.

just a fad

[timmarhy]

dovark is just a fad among wannbe nerds. qwerty always has been and always will be THE best layout

Re:just a fad

[okprice]

I disagree, look at the dvorak stats. It is easier to learn and faster. querty is an anachronism to the 19th century. But I heard that our language has changed since its devolpment. As 'www' is more popular in speech than it was 100 years ago our keyboard should change every 10 years to match our language. Querty is a joke though. Who neads ';' on the home row.

Re:just a fad

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am a wannabe nerd, but that's not the reason I switched. I switched about nine years ago because typing all day was hurting my wrists. If you want to learn Dvorak, this is a nice little site that I used: http://gigliwood.com/abcd/abcd.html It took me about a week before I could reliably touch type, and about a month before I could type as fast as I'd been able to type in QWERTY. I never got much faster in Dvorak than I'd been in QWERTY, but my wrists stopped hurting almost immediately. I'd never go back. But I suppose if, like timmarhy, you can fit two typos into a single sentence, keyboard layouts may not be your primary concern.

Re:just a fad

[_Shad0w_]

C and derived languages programmers, we use it quite a lot.

Oh and anyone who actually knows how to use it in a sentence; admittedly that's not many people now days.

Re:How to learn. re: If only the cost was less...

[Tama00]

(hmm... maybe i should copyright and or trademark this split keyboard image idea :-) )

to late i already did it;)

wanna buy it back off me? $10,000

Coding speed keyboard layout ??

[AllanVanHulst]

I don't think the number of characters you can enter per minute (or any measure for typing speed) is related to the development time of some piece of software. They might be weakly related but having the ability to type lightning-fast will not help you make the deadline.

Re:How to learn. re: If only the cost was less...

[doom]

rta wrote:

Wow, i didn't think anyone used Dvorak anymore. I've been using it for years and i agree with other people here that it's not particularly great for coding. The right hand pinky gets nearly as much of a workout in Dvorak as it does in QWERTY.

If you're having pinky problems, you should try a Kinesis keyboard, specifically one of the contoured models with some memory for reprogramming a few keys (the idiot Caps Lock key next to the A can do anything you want it to, I suggest making it an additional ESC).

The Kinesis puts all of the heavy keys under your thumbs, including "Ctrl" and "Alt". This is highly recommended for the serious programmer, particularly if you're an emacs abuser such as myself.

It's not perfect -- The key click feel could be better, the outward tilt should probably be a little more extreme -- but overall it's the best keyboard I've come across. (Maltron sucks, by the way.)

As I remember it, it has some features to let you toggle between Dvorak and Qwerty (key caps are not so easily switched, of course), but I've always stuck with Qwerty myself -- as I understand it the superiority of the Dvorak layout has always been something of an urban myth.

4th

[ProfessionalCookie]

Clearly that depends on if you're speaking fourth.

dvorak

[okprice]

I rarely ever comment on slash dot. But I have been using dvorak for about 5 years now. It is a snap to change on most pubic computers and I am glad to be bi-lingual with querty. I can say for sure that dvorak is at least 20 if not 50% faster.

Optimising the wrong thing

[wrmrxxx]

As a software developer, I don't see that a potentially more efficient keyboard layout will help me much. If I was a writer, or perhaps a data entry clerk I'd probably get a lot of benefit because most of my time would be spent typing. For developing software though, I've never felt that the amount of time it takes to type things in was slowing me down. Most of my time is spent on reading existing code and on thinking and planning. Improving my keying time is a local optimisation that will make little to no difference to the total time taken to produce working software. If you really want to improve developer efficiency, try focussing on things like:

• Ensuring that code is as clean, simple, and easy to understand as possible;
• Having very fast and high quality feedback cycles (i.e. fast running tests, continuous integration, frequent client involvement, etc.)

One of my work colleagues uses a Dvorak layout, and having seen the code he produces I wonder if he'd be better off with a data entry system that slows him down long enough so that he can think a little more. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but I remember being very careful about my coding back in the days of paper cards.

what about the semicolon?

[YenTheFirst]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I prefer Dvorak for coding, because the punctuation marks are laid out better. in C++/Perl, the semicolon is off to the side and easier to hit. the important punctuation marks, like ''' '"' ',' '' are also all right under your left hand, where you can hit them easily, instead of trying to curl your right hand under. '_' is right next to the other big consonants, which is what it acts as with underscored_naming_schemes. '/' '=' '+' '\' '|' are all grouped together., and '-' is right under them. the big complaint I have is that the Windows keystrokes ctrl-C, ctrl-X, and ctrl-V are no longer next to each other, and don't make as much sense. also, windows tends to occasionally 'forget' what I had my keyboard layout set as. I didn't even know there were dvorak keyboards you could buy. I figured it was just an OS level thing.

CAPS attack!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are so many people writing DVORAK in all caps? That's like saying that my computer is a MAC, or I use a WACOM instead of a MOUSE.

Re:CAPS attack!

[Anonymous Coward]

People are doing that. See how people, just over the past 2 or 3 years, have started writing LINUX, SONY, PLAYSTATION, etc. It seems to be just computerey people doing it to computerey terms, so it'll probably die out soon enough.

Counterexample

[VE3MTM]

I don't have Asperger's, yet I've used Dvorak for maybe 4 years now, I'm a programmer by day and a big geek by night.

This is wrong, I use US Dvorak layout in Norwegian

[Velmont]

After considering switching for a long time, I finally made the jump. I had an image of the layout on-screen and used only that for learning where the keys were. After a week, the speed was OK, after two weeks I was at my former Qwerty-speed but with much less finger- and hand-movement. I tell you; Norwegian and the other Scandinavian languages work great with US layout Dvorak (of course with beloved extra characters (æøå for .no)). Anyway, if your language is further away from english - then you should have your own layout. French has it own Dvorak layout, so they can still type with less strain on hands. And to people saying it's an urban myth, well - they're wrong - you might not be a better typist by switching, but you do move your hands considerable less and that is really nice. I type much text, if I use Qwerty - I can feel how much quicker my hands get weary.

I like it, but it's subjective for me

[Lalo Martins]

Although I'm a very satisfied dvorak user, I can't really tell from experience whether or not it's more efficient than querty. The thing is, I never learnt to touch-type on qwerty (very shameful thing to say for someone who was a programmer for 15 years before making the switch). I was a bad typist, 2 fingers, 4 in a good day, but I was so fast that way that I could never be bothered to learn to do it properly. So I decided to go dvorak; since I'd need to learn to type all over again, I could take the chance to learn touch-typing. Not that I needed to be faster (although I actually am now), but most importantly, I was getting pretty serious RSI. So now I'm typing at twice my previous speed or more, my fingers don't hurt so much anymore, and my wrists don't hurt at all. That was reason enough for me to switch. But is it all because of dvorak, or just because I relearnt everything? No clue. And I don't care either :-)

-1, Zealot

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using the same characters, you are using different keys. If you are using the same keys, you are changing the shortcuts.

Speed may not be the point of dvorak, but that does not mean speed is irrelevant.

YAKL; Asset keyboard

[5pp000]

I use a layout I invented in 1992:

Q W D F J Y U K L P
A S E T G H N I O R
Z X C V ; B M

(Please imagine the second and third rows slid to the right appropriately; I don't see how to get Slashdot to indent them.)

My design goals were very similar to those of the Asset keyboard, and as you can see I came up with a very similar layout. I call it YAKL, for -- you guessed it -- "Yet Another Keyboard Layout".

I would never go back to QWERTY; YAKL keeps me on the home row much more, and is accordingly more comfortable and (I'm reasonably sure) faster. But I don't know that I would recommend YAKL, or Asset, to anyone else. There are two reasons. First, as I discovered, learning a new layout isn't just about learning the location of each key individually; it's about learning digraphs and trigraphs. Since the whole point of YAKL was to get more frequently used keys onto the home row, as it turns out, almost every common digraph and trigraph uses at least one letter that has been moved. Bottom line: it still took me a long time to learn the new layout. I don't think it would have taken much longer to learn Dvorak.

And the advantage of Dvorak over YAKL (or any other homebrew layout) is that it's standardized, and you can select it from the layout menu on all the major OSes; you don't have to go through the contortions of creating custom layouts.

Success story

[MattskEE]

I have been typing in Dvorak for about 2 years now. Before I managed to fully make the plunge, I made 2 attempts that I chickened out from after a few days.

It was a difficult transition, but made easier by doing it during summer break from school. It was about 2 weeks before I could type comfortably, and probably 2 months before my speed was up to my previous QWERTY speed.

Here are the good things about switching. It forced me to learn touch typing, which has lead to an increase in typing speed and ease, simply because I never look at the keyboard anymore. Your fingers don't have to move as far from their baseline position as much, and you tend to alternate between right and left hand much more, which is much more comfortable on the fingers. Having the _- key so close at hand has been very handy.

Here are the bad things about the switch. I technically could have learned touch typing on QWERTY and achieved a similar speed increase. The windows computers in the computer lab I frequent have the settings locked down so I cannot change the keyboard layout, though I solve this by using the linux computers at almost all times. The 'c' and 'v' are less conveniently placed for coping and pasting. Typing on other peoples computers, which I must do on occasion results in a few minutes of awkwardness while I readjust. It is harder to type one-handed since I use a mapped keyboard layout, and must therefore remember the key locations rather than just looking.

Ultimately I am glad that I made the switch. There are some benefits to my typing abilities, and the inconveniences are not too great. I also take a certain amount of pride in it, like being an early adopter of metric units in a time when everyone is still using imperial.

More than two people using Dvorak

[Velmont]

I'm from Norway, and yes there is a norwegian Dvorak-layout. They found out norwegian most used letters were so close to english - that it would be beneficial to use the same layout (only with some minor arrangements).

You only say it to provoke; but there is many people who are using Dvorak. It is not unheard of at all. I knew 4 people before I switched, now I know many. A few days ago a guy in my computer society at the University tried my computer, and quickly switched to Dvorak when he saw echo became .jdc.

And fast typing isn't why I use Dvorak. It's because it puts much less strain on the hands, that's the best part of Dvorak (most Dvorak-users agree).

Ctrl Keys

[human_err]

I'm using this mod for keeping the ctrl key shortcuts where they are in qwerty. There is no mod for alt key combos as far as I know. :(

In Windows, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to switch back and forth between layouts. I've got my computer to default to qwerty, switch to Dvorak on shift-alt-3, switch back to qwerty on shift-alt-2. I use Dvorak for prose, email, and chatting, and I use qwerty for everything else, i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash. That way I don't have to remap keys.

It helps to maintain both layouts if you do switch to Dvorak because being a retarded monkey is embarrassing at a job interview. It's really not that hard to switch hit if you practice a little.

Overall, Dvorak has been a fun little brain teaser for me and sure feels nice, but I probably should've spent that time learning piano.

How 'bout

[edmicman]

[Dr. Evil]How 'bout....nooooo....[/Dr. Evil]

Finger-Distance

[holophrastic]

I've been using Dvorak for about a decade now. Still happy with it. And I do use qwerty every time I use someone else's machine -- and I seem to switch instantly. Which is just plain scary.

Why I switched:
    - ages ago, I found what may have been the first mouse odometer. Basically measured the distance that you physically moved the mouse on the mouse pad. 10 years ago, I found the same for a touch-typists fingers. I ran it for a few weeks, and found that my fingers were traveling over ten kilometres every day!
    - On dvorak, it's way way way less than half the distance -- closing in on a quarter. Something crazy like 65% of english is on the home the row. It's scary. So while any skilled touch-typist can type just as fast on any layout, the effort required is much less on a dvorak (for english of course).
    - take it with a grain of salt, but (so I heard) early qwerty salesmen demonstrated how easy computers were by typing "typewriter" really quickly. It's all on the upper row. Great marketing.
    - another grain, qwerty was designed to slow people down so as not to jam typewriters. True or not, the most common letters are all together, and on weaker fingers.

Some help switching:
    - "dvortyboards" makes "switchable" hard-wired borads. So a simple button switches between dvorak and qwerty. Keys are double-labelled. This made the first few weeks easier, as I would switch back to qwerty when I was frustrated and needed to get work done. I haven't hit the button in nine years, but it's great when someone else wants to use my machine.
    - "The Typing Of The Dead". (period)
    - I program, and I hit F5 about seventy times each hour. My natural layout (still dvorak) has the first five function keys together. That took more getting used to than anything else.
    - correcting type-o's requires a new skill. Assuming right hand on the mouse, you want to adjust vowels (all on the left hand - aoeui) not the qwerty equivalent - asdfg.

Yes I recommend switching.

arensito

[IDK]

Some people have said that coding with dvorak is hard, but there are alternatives. Arensito is the strangest and coolest layout I've seen (I've even done a 'port' to Windows (which isn't online, but if you give me some replies I can put it on my website)). You have the cursor keys, home end pgup pgdown, alt altgr shift and space under your thumbs, and since you're using another finger, you'll type even faster. Arensito is also arranged so it allows faster typing than dvorak (but this doesn't really matter). It feels like the fingers are locked at arensito when I type... And the main reasong, arensito is a lot better for coding than dvorak.

Using Dvorak for privacy

[KlaymenDK]

On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard.
Fancy that, neither have I. You (i.e. I) touchtype dvorak. The only value you'll ever get out of looking at the keyboard is because it's fun to look at yourself typing on a keyboard with the keys marked wrong, and you can't do that with a dvorak keyboard. Oh well, I've made a Calc sheet with the caps, printed, cut, and stuck to my keyboard. I find it too confusing otherwise.

There's still just too many reasons not to switch, and only 1 to switch: It's supposedly quicker.
Most reasons against switching are false; about the only one worth listening to is that lots of people use your computer and/or you use lots of computers. A very good reason, certainly, but still only one. Actually, it's a neat privacy feature. Not security, because it's only a matter of trying, but privacy because most people would rather just go away and use somebody else's computer, leaving mine to me. :) The keycaps help scaring them away without even trying.

Re:Using Dvorak for privacy

[zsau]

No-one would want to use my computer anyway, after trying it. Me and my computer have grown around each other so that nowadays, no-one can understand my computer any better than they can understand me :)

Also, completely irrelevant, but what is a "Calc sheet"?

Re:Using Dvorak for privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably, it's a spreadsheet written in OpenOffice Calc, rather than Excel. Nerd cred and all that.

Re:Using Dvorak for privacy

[KlaymenDK]

Right you are. :p

Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[KlaymenDK]

And the purported benefit of dvorak is that it's more ergonomic. This results in it being a little faster, but it's not the point. That's why if you do want to buy a dvorak keyboard, you'll find that almost none of them have the standard physical arrangement. But I do certainly notice the benefits of dvorak with my regular-format keyboards. Here's a fun comparison: Enter some text (using any layout), and have stats shown for Dvorak and qwerty. I have a page about Dvorak, and the distribution of characters on that page come out thusly:

• Home row -- Dvorak: 66%, Qwerty: 32%
• Top row -- Dvorak: 24%, Qwernty: 49%
• Finger movement (arguably less scientifically 'hard' piece of data) -- Dvorak: 367m, Qwerty: 602m

In other words, Dvorak gets you the same result with 39% less effort.

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[Wdomburg]

The thing about those comparisons is that it assumes that you use the stupid "home row" keys in the first place. I never understood why anyone would need one of those weird curved ergonomic keyboards until I tried typing that way on a lark.

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[Provocateur]

* Home row -- Dvorak: 66%, Qwerty: 32%
        * Top row -- Dvorak: 24%, Qwernty: 49%
        * Finger movement (arguably less scientifically 'hard' piece of data) -- Dvorak: 367m, Qwerty: 602m

You left out:
        * Coworkers leaving your computer alone due to DVORAK layout -- priceless

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[KlaymenDK]

Funny response. :)

But yes, that actually does happen frequently. And I like it. And, they think I'm all weird because of that [as well, heh].

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[jmpeax]

Now just a minute - most users can't be convinced to change word processor because they're scared of how different it will be, so how the hell will they ever be convinced to learn a new keyboard layout?! Seems like a lot of effort for little gain, especially considering it is unlikely to ever become widely adopted.

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[Phaedra]

Coworkers leaving your computer alone due to DVORAK layout -- priceless

Actually, on this note... I use an HP48G at school and once my classmates got a look at that monster, the RPN input and the lack of an "=" they didn't bother asking to borrow it again!

Hurray for products for the 2% of us that are different! (or here on /., the 98% that are different!)

Re:Dvorak ergonomics statistics

[mollymoo]

The thing about those comparisons is that it assumes that you use the stupid "home row" keys in the first place.

Too rite. Te ome row iz uze1ezz, I never uze mine n everyone cn ree|) my writin o|<.

Re:This is wrong, I use US Dvorak layout in Norweg

[Jotii]

There is actually a Swedish version of DVORAK called SVORAK.

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

if it works don't change it.and querty works.dvorak...just an illogical piece of junk if you ask me.

I use AZERTY!

[Anonymous Coward]

qnd it is FQST!!!!

Touchstream w/modified Dvorak layout

[26199]

I use a Fingerworks Touchstream keyboard, with a customised layout based on the Dvorak layout.

Customised in that I use two-finger chords for all numbers and symbols (except tab, which has its own key). This means I never have to reach for a symbol; my hands never move from the home position.

The Touchstream is so incredibly better than a standard keyboard, it saddens me that they're not more widely used. (And that they're no longer made, obviously). The whole world could be more productive and less RSI'd.

Re:Touchstream w/modified Dvorak layout

[Thrip]

I tried a Touchstream for a while, but never got even close to efficient with it. Even the manufacturer admitted that most fast touch-typists would never achieve the same speed with it that they got with a normal keyboard. But the main issue for me was that it messed with my muscle memory. All of the dozen or so passwords I use every day are committed to muscle memory -- I probably couldn't write one down to save my life. Not only could I not enter them with my Touchstream, but after a few tries, I'd gotten myself so messed up that I couldn't enter them when I put back my regular keyboard. I had to drive home to get my password store.

Re:Touchstream w/modified Dvorak layout

[26199]

It's true that there's a big time investment. I switched from QWERTY to Dvorak at the same time as learning the Touchstream; that probably helped. (Part of the reason I switched was because none-home keys cause your hands to drift on a Touchstream; Dvorak layout maximises the use of the home keys).

As for typing speed, I could hit 100WPM on a standard QWERTY keyboard; on a Touchstream I can manage 80WPM. So, no, it's not as fast for raw typing.

For text editing -- and particularly code editing, which involves lots of symbols -- it's much faster than a standard keyboard. Simultaneous use of keyboard and mouse makes moving blocks of text around and navigating through your codebase much faster. Quicker access to all symbols, as well as home/end and custom macros, is invaluable. You've got to customise the Touchstream pretty heavily to get it optimal, though. (I have symbol chords for == and !=, for example).

For things like CAD that involve lots of keyboard shortcuts and mouse use anyway, I can see it giving even bigger productivity improvements.

(You can also move the key positions on a Touchstream; I've moved the bottom and top rows in towards the home row, reducing the amount of finger movement required to switch row to a few millimetres. It really is effortless typing compared with a mechanical keyboard.)

Re:Touchstream w/modified Dvorak layout

[Thrip]

Now you make me wish I hadn't sent it back, but trying to make the adjustment was literally hurting my brain. I did love the chord idea and have it somewhere on my (nearly infinite) to-do list to find a way to define your own chords on any keyboard.

9 people

[miscz]

That's a really big sample!

Re:9 people

[mattwarden]

They counteracted the effects of the small sample size by only selecting Ruby developers with nothing better to do on a Wed night, and then generalizing the results to all of humanity.

Corporate support ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a company laptop. I bet if I asked for a DVORAK keyboard'ed laptop I'd just get laughed at. So I'd end up having to learn to touch type on two keypads and alternate between DVORAK at home and QWERTY at work.

Not worth even considering IMHO.

And no I'm not going to change jobs just to get a company that support alternate labelled laptop keyboards.

And no I'm not going to take all the keys off and rearrange them.

I hate these sort of conversations. It's like saying "hey, 7 out of 9 F1 drivers drive Ferraris at home. Are you considering buying a Ferrari?". Stupid question that's only applicable for 10% of the population.

Stupid slashdot.

Dvorak vs. better ergonomics?

[Darth Liberus]

Existing QWERTY users are probably better off buying a better keyboard and rearranging their workspace than forcing themselves to learn a whole new layout. I'm too lazy too look up my references right now, but once upon a time I had a severe case of tendinitis and seriously considered switching to a Dvorak layout... then I did some research and discovered that the benefits of Dvorak over QWERTY are quite small.

So I abandoned that road and bought myself a split QWERTY keyboard (the Microsoft Natural, although there are other good designs), and trained myself to mouse with my left hand (I'm a righty). The tendinitis went away quickly after I made those changes and hasn't returned since. Maybe I'll never type 212+ wpm - but I don't get paid to type fast, I get paid to think :)

Re:Dvorak vs. better ergonomics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way I found to reduce or totally get rid of wrist pain is to stop typing. Going from 8+ hours of typing a day to maybe 4 a week, really helped my symptoms.

There and back

[countach]

I actually used Dvorak for about 10 years, and I'm a programmer. But a few months ago I actually switched back. The reason was I was tired of having to adapt to qwerty when I found myself at someone else's keyboard. Another reason is I have a Macbook pro with the illuminated keyboard, which is a waste of time if I'm switching layouts, and I couldn't be bothered finding out how hard it would be to switch keys. Besides which the little bumps on F and J don't work when you switch.

So what do I think? Yes, Dvorak is definitely a better layout, and it does help in real life. On the other hand, unless you're a secretary typing pages and pages, I'm not quite sure if it is worth it with the hassle of always being the odd man out. It might be worth it, kind of a toss up, but I'm not planning to switch back to Dvorak any time soon. Besides which, new layouts like Colemak might be even better than Dvorak. If you're going to switch and go through the hassle, it might as well be be the best layout, right? The L on Dvorak is rather poorly placed and Colemak retains the Qwerty cut and paste keys.

French/English layouts

[mattr]

I don't Dvorak though have thought of it. Probably no point since I type a lot of Japanese, but I would consider just using it late at night. I find if I have to pull an allnighter my hands are a bucket of pain the next day (just bought some bandages at the Sports Authority and logged into a cafe for five hours to try another keyboard).

However I suppose the experience is probably similar to when I had to use French. (this is an RH9 machine so maybe newer OS's have better facilities.) My linux laptop is set for English and Japanese, so the keyboard is missing French characters. Had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get them in. Finally I ended up using a multilingual keymap switcher as a WindowMaker app box and a keymap from that gigantic X keymap site to check what the keys were supposed to be. French is wierd because a few keys are swapped (A and Z for example) and the numbers are all shift with their symbols not requiring shift. But after a while I memorized it and had little problem.

The main problem I see is once in a while I want to lean over the keyboard from a standing position obliquely and without seeing the keys its hard to know which one to peck.

Re:French/English layouts

[clgoh]

You should try a French-canadian layout. It keeps the QWERTY layout.

Re:French/English layouts

[mattr]

Wow! Thanks, that's a fabulous idea. And I just started working with the government of Quebec too..! Will try it. Merci!

Increased Productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Dvorak keyboards allow you to produce more errors per hour than a Qwerty keyboard!

Personally I have always spent more time _thinking_ what to type than actually typing it...

Used it for a while...

[neerolyte]

I used Dvorak for a few months. I found it tedious to learn but great once I started to adjust.

I had to rearrange the keys a few times because I found at some point I learned that the key labelled s was an o in Dvorak etc.

I gave up like many other people because I could not justify maintaining skills with both Dvorak and Qwerty. Interestingly after switching back to Qwerty I have now actually learnt to genuinely type without looking at the keyboard. I'm not really much faster than when I started but I am more reliable because I'm looking at the screen and just touch typing. I don't touch type conventionally I just let my hands "roam" and hope they are over the correct key when I press one... seems to work most of the time.

I would recommend changing your home qwerty keyboard around so you can't look at it. Most keyboards I have pulled apart have a different "f" and "j" key slot, a nice arrangement that works with these different slots is "DON'T BE SLACK", just a little reminder for when you do look at the keyboard :)

Why the caps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is IT that PEOPLE have recently started using CAPITAL LETTERS for NOUNS THEY are not completely familiar with? It's Dvorak, not DVORAK. Likewise for LINUX, SUN, SONY, etc

Cherry G80-3000

[Dr_Barnowl]

Nope, it's a Cherry G80-3000

I'm glad this discussion surfaced, because it helped me find what I thought was an extinct model - I have one of these and I dread the day it dies because I'd hate to have to go back to horrible fluppitty rubber keyboards.

7 out of 9?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the Seattle Dvorak Users Society call itself the Seattle Ruby Brigade?

Best is Dvorak on a Qwerty board

[ooloogi]

I don't know why the comments of people having troubles finding a Dvorak keyboard... if learning Dvorak, it is better not to have one. For me, switching to Dvorak had two distinct benefits. One was the reduced finger movement, but the other less expected one was that by retaining a standard Qwerty keyboard and not moving the key caps was it would force me to touch type properly with no cheating. Its best just as a software key remapping, and for the past couple of years that has been easy on the major operating systems / windowing environments. In my experience, the only downside is when you need to use one-hand hunt and peck when holding something in the other hand.

I'd suggest that the best use for a keyboard with physical Dvorak layout would be to learn to touch-type Qwerty.

I have, and then back to QWERTY

[porneL]

I've switched to DVORAK for a moment (typing with 3/4 of my previous QWERTY speed), but then I gave up and returned to QWERTY:

• Keyboard shortcuts in applications are designed for physical QWERTY layout. I couldn't be bothered to remap them in every app.
• DVORAK loses it's advantage in languages other than English and English is not my first language.
• Windows' built-in DVORAK layout is a typical Microsoft's almost-standard-but-annoyingly-not-quite, so I wouldn't be able to comfortably use any Windows machine.

Re:I have, and then back to QWERTY

[thsths]

I switched about 10 years ago, and I have never looked back. I agree that a few things can be inconvenient:

* Cut & pasts under Windows is not quite as easy (C-C, C-V)

* Languages which more letters (such as most European languages) can be difficult to set up. At least non-latin letters tend to be rare, so it does not slow you down.

* Unless you have a Dvorak keyboard, you have to touch type, even for a single key press. Looking at the wrong keys just ruins the experience.

But apart from these issues, I am very happy. The layout works well for me in English, German, Dutch and French, although it is probably best for the English language. And getting a basic Dvorak layout is possible on just about any OS nowadays. (DOS used to be difficult, but that is kind of through now :-) )

The Dvorak Advantage

[Kamiza Ikioi]

DVORAK, the #1 best excuse for not letting anyone else use your computer. DVORAK, the quickest way to deflate geek posers who want to grab your keyboard while your using it to "show you something cool real quick".

DVORAK, trusted by obfuscaters, hated by everyone else who uses your computer. Mac users say, "It's the best thing to foul up 'l33t' poser wannabes since the one button mouse!"

Forget QWERTY & Dvorak, go with ABCDEF

[jbx]

This whole thing is stupid. The time you save by going from Qwerty to Dvorak is always going to be tiny compared to the time you lost in the first place by learning the Qwerty layout when you already knew the alphabetical layout.

Keyboards should arrive in alphabetic layout - either ABCDEFGHIJ across the top, KLMNOPQRS in the middle, and TUVWXYZ on the bottom, or ADGJMPSVXZ across the top with BEHKNQTWY in the middle and CFILORU on the bottom. Either way would make it dramatically faster for new computer users / typists.

For the 0.5% of the computer users who would gain productivity by switching to something faster, they can go the Dvorak route, or anything they choose. For the rest of us, the right thing to optimize is the initial learning curve.

Alternately, if we could just change the ABC song so it goes, "QWERT, YUIOPAS. DFG, HJK, LZXCVBNM. No I know my QW, next time won't I sing with U", then that would also lessen the learning curve, without making all those Qwerty keyboards obsolete...

my $.02

[altoz]

I switched about 8 years ago. Here are some observations:

1. Typing speed is essentially the same. For some people it improves drastically, but for me, it didn't.
2. I was comfortable typing dvorak in about 1 month. I can still type qwerty just fine, though mentally, there's a switch to be flipped. I liken it to learning a new language. You don't suddenly forget your old language.
3. I had carpal tunnel symptoms before (pins and needles on the wrists and such), and I made the drastic switch not only to dvorak but to the kinesis dvorak keyboard. In 8 years, I haven't had any more symptoms since. I can't say if it's because of dvorak or the keyboard (I had a normal one at home for a while, typing dvorak), but it certainly worked.
4. It is a great security device for your computer against non-dvorak typers. I almost always end up "driving" when people are congregated at my computer and most people get confused when trying to type on my keyboard and simply leave my computer alone. It's nice when you're particular about your settings.

speed or health?

[beaverfever]

"And the purported benefit of dvorak is that it's more ergonomic. This results in it being a little faster, but it's not the point."

I seem to recall that the point of dvorak was that it was faster, then that claim was subsequently discredited with force. When did an ergonomic benefit become its selling point? Has this claim of a physical health benefit been tested?

Re:speed or health?

[zsau]

From Wikipedia: "The Dvorak layout was designed to address the problems of inefficiency and fatigue which characterized the QWERTY keyboard layout". So obviously both then, but it's speed isn't the only benefit and not the one most people who I've known to switch have looked at.

I'm afraid I've never really followed what studies have and have not existed concerning keyboard layouts as they didn't influence me. Annecdotal evidence suggests there are some benefits, but this could easily just be "a change is as good as a holiday" kind of things.

As for whether any claim was "subsequently discredited with force", I assume you refer to "The fable of the keys". This itself has been subsequently discredited with some force: IIRC, it was written by two economists who were more interested in proving that Dvorak/Qwerty and Betamax/VHS situations are always due to the quality of the products, not inertia.

7 of 9?

[6Yankee]

So Seven of Nine uses Dvorak? I figured she'd just assimilate the b0xen or something.

Pubic computers

[Eric MB Lard MD]

These sound interesting.. where can I find one?

The null hypothesis

[matt me]

Out of 9 people, 7 used DVORAK and only 2 were using QWERTY. Has anyone else noticed an increase in adoption of DVORAK lately? What is he using, a 50% significance level?

Non-english users.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of using Dvorák is kinda cool for an English person. But I'm from Poland and although I use mostly English parts of the net still I gotta write in my language too. And that means that although on Dvorák I would type a lot faster in English (and that means coding too) I would totally suck at Polish...The switch just ain't worth it.

a fanboy looking for reassurance?

[garutnivore]

Here's the submission:

At a recent Seattle Ruby Brigade hack night someone asked how many people used the DVORAK keyboard layout. Out of 9 people, 7 used DVORAK and only 2 were using QWERTY. I personally made the switch last Christmas, after 25 years of typing with QWERTY. What do you use? Have you switched to DVORAK? Have you been wanting to make the switch? Has anyone else noticed an increase in adoption of DVORAK lately?

How is this any different than this?

At a recent Seattle Ruby Brigade hack night someone asked how many people switched to the furry lifestyle. Out of 9 people, 7 had made the switch and only 2 were not into that kind of stuff. I personally made the switch last Christmas, after 25 years of boring normalcy. What alternative lifestyle are you into? Have you switched to the furry lifestyle? Have you been wanting to make the switch? Has anyone else noticed an increase in furries lately?

Replace "furry" with any kind of marginal lifestyle choice. Still sounds the same, some guy in an environment of Dvorak fanboys made the switch to Dvorak and now thinks that he's at the forefront of a revolution. Dvorak being better than Qwerty is a myth. Wake up and smell the coffee!

Some random thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keyboard arrangement has two primary reasons: 1. construction factors and 2. human factors.

In the past (1) was very important; nowadays it's safe to say mechanics are unimportant and the human side should prevail (if not for consideration, for the economic ergonomic-related consequences).

In our modern world, language switching became more common. I'm a South-American and change daily from my native language back/to English. It's highly probable I'll be dealing with another language in the future.

Human factors take language use into account, so in my case it should be a mix of the languages I use; or, I could have a layout optimized for each language. Clearly this would n't work well.

In the end, if keyboards had the alphabet just in one single line, it would be easier to locate the keys; that is, if you're not typing in Japanese, for instance: they've adopted a table-like alphabet presentation for good reason and it's easier to locate hiragana characters in this bidimensional approach.

Programming uses different key than text=Dvorak:-(

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice applet.
I copied a fair amount of code in there in a few languages.

Qwerty consistently comes out ahead.

Plenty of keyboards and no trouble switching

[Anonymous Coward]

There are PLENTY of Dvorak labeled keyboards out there.

Some popular examples: Happy Hacking, Typematrix and Kinesys.

And making the switch isn't all that hard, particularly in Unix or when using Typematrix keyboards; in Unix, you can generally have some keycombo wired to switching the layout, and with Typematrix, these are part of the keyboard firmware, so you can do it even in Windows.

I first made the switch by doing leisure time activities involving typing, such as chatting and forum posting. Initially, I had printed a keymap to use as reference. It didn't take whole lot of time to get comfortable using it. I was typing at a reduced speed for, IIRC, a couple of months. Now, even as I've been forced to use Qwerty for a couple of years, I'm STILL faster on Dvorak.

That said, I customized my layout further to suit the programming languages I use, as well as my national characters.

programming has little to do with typing

[llZENll]

I would guess less than 20% of my programming time is actually typing, most of it is thinking. And if you switch to DVORAK you are going to be thinking about the keyboard for a long time, when you could be thinking about the work at hand. The thought of any programmer switching is utterly ridiculous IMO. Only if you are flowchart monkey or secretary should you switch.

Heres a guess of my programming time:
60% thinking/viewing
20% testing/debugging
15% typing
5% navigating

Esperanto?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Dvorak keyboards were just for typing Esperanto...

touch typing

[doti]

touch typing != typing without looking

Years of usage can give one the ability to type without looking, but the real touch typing method is more than that.

Re:touch typing

[tomhudson]

touch typing != typing without looking

Years of usage can give one the ability to type without looking, but the real touch typing method is more than that.

The "home row of keys" was okay for 44-key typewriters - its just plain stupid for 105-key keyboards. I'll never go back to the traditional way of typing, just as I'll never go back to a plain typewriter with less than half as many keys. Times change, and so does the meaning of the term "touch-type"

Also, the Drovak keyboard is biased against left-handers: "The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed."

Re:touch typing

[ClosedSource]

"Also, the Drovak keyboard is biased against left-handers: "The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.""

True, but QWERTY was biased against right-handers. The DVORAK is faster either way.

Re:touch typing

[doti]

Maybe that's because most programs I type at use mainly the letters, and the and keys around them: Vim, screen and bash. Hence, the happy hacking keyboards, perfect for those that don't need to move their hands around while typing. If anyone knows where I can by a wireless one (RF, not IR) that has a trackpoint (aka clit-mouse), please do tell me.

Re:touch typing

[tomhudson]

What can I say - I'm a lefty. And I took (and passed) touch typing in high school. But I won't go back to the "home row keys" method - it doesn't make sense on 105-key keyboards, and contributes to rsi by forcing the pinky fingers to do unnatural extensions. Better to shift the hands slightly, and get more coverage with the other three fingers.

Re:touch typing

[Meostro]

Also, the Drovak keyboard is biased against left-handers: "The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed." That's not entirely true... there are Dvorak variations for right- and left-handed only use. These would definitely bias toward one hand or the other, but potentially to the detriment of the other hand and/or overall speed. AFAIK these were developed for people who had lost limbs during <insert war here> and who had trouble with both standard QWERTY and the Dvorak layouts.

Re:touch typing

[Firethorn]

I'd say that they were developed for people without the use of a limb, for whatever reason. Helping those from would be a reason presented to the DoD/congress to get some money from them.

Overall, I'd love to learn Dvorak, but since I'm a QWERTY touch typist and work support(IE I'm frequently on other people's machines), I don't want to have to switch back and forth.

Re:touch typing

[tomhudson]

Interestingly enough, there's no hard studies showing that dvorak is better overall ... and since most of us can probably type more or less as quickly as we can think anyway (hey, how else do you get a frost pist in soviet russia with old koreans and hot grits :-), there's no real advantage to switching, unless you're into "stream-of-conscience" blogging on myspace :-)

If dvorak really were that much better, I'd expect more people to have made the change, since the barriers to change are so small (just change your keymap). But switching to dvorak won't make me code any faster - its not my typing speed that limits my output, but my thinking speed.

Re:touch typing

[brianosaurus]

I never took touch typing, and I've never had wrist problems or rsi or carpal tunnel or any problems, really. I sort of developed my own typing style (if you can call it that), evolving from hunting and pecking.

I can pretty much type without looking (I don't call that touch typing), but I mostly use my index and middle fingers, the ring fingers gets some use, and the pinkies rarely. I still start on the "home row", for reference (especially in the dark... find those little bumps on F and J, then good to go), but I don't stay there. On some keyboards I'll press the control key (in the lower corner, not in the classic caps-lock location) using the edge of my palm right below the pinky, so there's no need to stretch a finger that far. I type fast enough for me, and faster than plenty of people I know (certainly not as fast as some), with no injuries.

I've thought about switching to DVORAK, but the thing that always stops me is using someone else's keyboard, which will still be old-style QWERTY. Do people who have made the switch have trouble using QWERTY keboards in the wild?

Re:touch typing

[Ltar]

As I was reading your post, I had to check my memory if I had posted in this thread or not.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I, Too, am an unorthodox touch-typist, utilizing my ring, middle, and index fingers on my left hand, my pinky is only for shift and control, etc. on my right hand, it's the same story, and only my right index ever hits space. My space bar has a cool, totally-smooth depression worn into it from use. Also, neither hand seems to have control over the middle columns of letters, whichever hand is closest hits t,y,f,g,h or b- tending towards left-hand dominance. We should start an odd-typists awareness group.

Re:touch typing

[oldosadmin]

A kid (16 year old genius-type) broke his wrist, and used right hand dvorak. Now he's moved to full dvorak and liking it.

Me? I'd get too annoyed switching between QWERTY (for helpdesk stuff) and DVORAK (for my own laptop/compy).

Re:touch typing

[KlomDark]

I type pretty much the same way you're talking about.

Question: Do people give you crap for typing too loudly, asking if you're angry or trying to destroy the keyboard? I get teased about that all the time. I type very fast, in a strange way, and it's loud.

Re:touch typing

[Pope]

I've found the best way to avoid stretching on left pinky is to use the first knuckle of it to operate the left Control key (mainly for ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-s, etc.)

It's either that or I find a job that lets me use a Mac! :)

Re:touch typing

[pAnkRat]

I pretty much type the way you do (and some others as I read here),
but I also learn Dvorak atm. and switching between the two is not as hard as I have imagined.

It is a bit like switching spoken languages (I am Dutch, living in Germany, but I read and watch a lot in English)

The Dvorak switch might be easy because my typing style in Dvorak is "home row" and qwerty-style is a very fast-flying hunt and peck.
Switching between english and german keyboard layout is not that that hard either. (Happens sometimes when I Vnc/Rpd into another computer)

Funny thing is, the more often you switch around, the easier it gets. (keyboards and languages)

Re:touch typing

[alphamugwump]

There's a left-handed dvorak layout too, I think. It's probably a mirror image.

Re:touch typing

[Anonymous Coward]

The DVORAK is faster either way.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support this claim. No independent studies have ever been carried out.

The most likely reason for the large number of anecdotal claims that Dvorak is faster is that most of the people making those claims were not good QWERTY typists in the first place, and are genuinely faster with Dvorak solely because the time they made the switch was the first time they ever actually tried to learn to type well.

My reasons not to switch:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Everyone uses qwerty where I come from, so using something different will just piss co-workers off.
2) How often do I actually type full-speed... not a lot, coding involves a lot more thinking, moving around and jumping back-forth though lines for me, so where's a different keyboard layout going to help there?
3) It was invented by a twat.

toggle between Qwerty/Dvorak

[illiteratewithdrawal]

I found that some school computers block access to the keyboard layouts. If this is true for you, Dvorak Assistant is a free Windows program that allows you to toggle between Qwerty (or current layout) and Dvorak without administrative access or modifying system settings. Just be sure to toggle back to the default before exiting the program because otherwise the computer will be stuck with the Dvorak layout until this program is run again. Just search http://www.google.com/search?q=dvorak+assistant.

DVORAK and musicians

[mungurk]

I switched to DVORAK about 2.5 years ago, and I have been extremely happy with the results. I have a music background, and am therefore very used to transposing music in my head. From what I can tell, it is essentially the same mental process to type in DVORAK and transpose from C to Bb major. For that reason, I think, I have no problem at all switching back and forth from QWERTY to DVORAK and back again, depending on what computer I am on. The settings are very easy in Windows...Linux it's there too, but just not as consistently documented. When installing a new distribution, many Linux OS's offer a keyboard layout, but my own experience is that the setting does not take hold unless I edit the keyboard layout config file myself post-installation.

I usually remove the keys to the keyboard with a screwdriver and arrange them in the DVORAK layout (my co-workers think it is crazy, but I swear by it). I have found the Microsoft keyboards do not allow the letter "J" to pull off (maybe some of them do, but I have not found one yet), so I have had the best success with Keytronics and HP (though right now I am using an old Packard Bell keyboard - yuck).

Dvorak is not capitalized.

[mnemonic_]

It's the man's name, not an acronym.

The keyboard shouldn't matter anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Get a keyboard macro utility. There are many. For programming in particular this is very handy - you can build macros for loops, case statements, block-ifs, comments, and any "boilerplate" code you use a lot. I've measured keystroke savings approaching 50:1 with this method. Block-ifs are especially useful, I hit a button and it throws in the whole structure, with some cursor arrow keys inside the macro to leave the cursor blinking right where I need to type inside the curly braces.

2. Get some dictation software. I use Dragon and it's the best I've found for emails, manuals and docs, and so forth. It's amazingly fast, not perfect of course but neither was my typing anyway so a quick pass to correct homonyms and spellings and it's done. Much easier than pounding away at the keyboard. Don't try to use it for code though...

IMHO, worrying about keyboard layout is pointless in 2007.

riposte

[mnemonic_]

Learning Dvorak:

Utilities
Dvorak Assistant - Lets you change the Windows keyboard layout without administrator access. Useful for school lab computers.

Free Dvorak Tutor Software
KP Typing Tutor (Windows)
GNU Typist (*nix)

Online Dvorak Tutorials
A Basic Course in Dvorak - No frills tutorial, just make sure you repeat the lessons until you're actually proficient. You won't learn anything drilling through them only once.
dvorak.nl tutorial - Very slick, remaps the keys for you if you want (convenient if you can't use Dvorak Assistant). Non-english languages available. Works better for experienced Dvorak typists.

Performance:

Dvorak is a more efficient layout. This comes not from the user's effort, but from the layout of the keys minimizing finger travel when typing english words. This has been proven repeatedly:

• Java Demonstration of Dvorak and Qwerty Finger Movement Distances
• Letter Frequencies in the English Language - How many of the more frequent letters are on Dvorak's home row, and how many in Qwerty's? Did it ever seem completely stupid that "e" isn't on the home row in Qwerty? That's because it is, and Dvorak fixes that.
• Words Possible on Certain Rows - One snippet: in Dvorak, using the home row alone one can type 99 of the 1000 most common English words. Qwerty's home row allows for only 15.

Dvorak was designed sensibly, reducing finger movement distance and frequency. Typing feels like drumming your fingers, noticeable even at basic Dvorak proficiency.

dvorak

[DragonGolem]

I switched a few years back to only Dvorak. It took maybe 3-4 months before my Dvorak speed surpassed Qwerty (not by much - even today it's no more than 15% faster). The biggest improvement has been with ease of typing. In terms of coding, what was annoying for a while was the rearrangement of /=[]{}, but eventually that became touch-typable. On my mac laptop I have the layout set to Dvorak with Qwerty commands, which I find a little faster then having to think of the remapped letter, *then* hit the command. (Also it leaves things like command-C and command-V on one hand.)

There's a handy little app called DVAssist http://www.clabs.org/blogki/index.cgi?page=/Comput ersAndTechnology/DvAssist that allows switching the layout on the fly on windows machines without needing admin access. Great for at work when someone needs to type on your machine and you need to flip it back to Qwerty for a sec, or when I need to use a different machine. I can still do Qwerty respectably if needed, but not by touch anymore - though I haven't tried to switch back for any appreciable length of time.

never seen a Dvorak keyboard?

[tuc]

"On top of that, I've -never- seen a Dvorak keyboard."

I own several with PS2, ADB, and even AT (which has been all but useless for two decades now) interfaces.

However, I have never seen a _USB_ Dvorak keyboard. If they existed, I would probably pick one up. In the meantime I opt for software Dvorak layouts on qwerty keyboards.

btw, if I could do it over again I would probably learn left-handed Dvorak instead of "reguar" Dvorak. That would leave my right hand free to remain on the mouse.

Re:never seen a Dvorak keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

On 90% keyboards you can just pop the key caps off and re-arrange it, then just switch the keyboard layout in the operating system.

Re:never seen a Dvorak keyboard?

[KlaymenDK]

Err, they're not hard to come by. Google for "Fentek" (or just USB dvorak keyboard"...) and you'll end up in an online shop. Ta-dah.

Or, do what I did: on one keyboard, I've put custom-made key cap stickers to make it look like a dvorak, and on two other keyboards I've swapped around the actual key caps. One of them even was curved, but now it's more, um, bumpy, and it doesn't affect typing like I thought it would.

Only things you need to look out for are those tedious keyboards where the sockets for U and H (oops, F and J) are different than for the rest; and keyboards with a "clit" in the middle, for which you'll have to hack up the caps for I, D and X.

Re:never seen a Dvorak keyboard?

[jobenjo]

I use a dvorak/qwerty switchable ultra-ergonomic keyboard ( http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ and check out their "contoured" USB advantage ) and I'm quite satisfied with it. Seeing the keys isn't important, but sometimes it's nice to see the symbols, especially when coding.

Also, I don't have trouble switching back to qwerty when using public terminals (and vim shortcuts weren't hard to adjust to).

And I agree that's it's mildly faster, but noticeably more comfortable. Any shot I have to avoid RSI, I'll take.

I'd recommend it to the bold and principled, as long as you have a month to type very slow. Check out http://dvzine.org/ for a great dvorak primer comic.

How fast are you?

[galimore]

I did a bunch of research into QWERTY vs Dvorak a few years ago and I could never find anybody who was actually a speedy typer with both QWERTY and Dvorak... It sounds like some of you are, but it doesn't look like anyone is displaying their typing speeds.

So how fast are you with each set?

I can currently type upwards of 90WPM (Above 95% accuracy) with QWERTY. I'm only up to 35WPM with Dvorak.

So how about it? Are there any people out there who can type equally well with both QWERTY and Dvorak? I've seen a lot of articles about people complaining that they could never get the hang of QWERTY, but they type way faster with Dvorak, so I'm skeptical of the supposed speed improvements. ;)

I use Dvorak stickers. $14.

[beetlenaut]

I look at the keys once in a while because I am not touch typing all the time. Sometimes I'm using a tablet or mouse and need to hit one key. I use Dvorak stickers. I have them on my desktop and laptop. I got them from a company called Hooleon that also sells custom keyboards with any layout you want. I like my keyboard though, and stickers are cheaper. On either keyboard you have to look pretty closely to tell that there are stickers on the keys. Most people don't notice. (I learned that you do have to push down the corners of the stickers carefully. After about two years the "E" and "K" stickers peeled a little at the corners so it doesn't look as nice. I did a better job with the laptop and there are no problems.)

Asperger's -- not just for geeks anymore!

[freeweed]

Oh dear god...

Being an introverted egomaniac asshole is not a disease. It's not a disorder. It's a buzzword, as you actually pointed out.

For the 0.0001% of the population that is truly and utterly incapable of emoting to any other human being, I apologize and you have my deepest sympathies. To the rest of you who use a crutch like Asperger's as your defense for not being remotely civilized - grow up.

Re:Asperger's -- not just for geeks anymore!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me: Would it be more proper if I felt insulted because you called me an "uncivilized introverted egomanical asshole" (because you believe that I only use aspergers as a crutch - and why exactly do you feel that being introverted is bad?), or because you claimed that I could not "emote to any other human being" (because I actually have aspergers/autism, as my psychologist could tell you)? Probably both, I'd guess.

Aspergers (and at least lighter forms of autism in general - about the others we can't say anything because you don't want to try and communicate with them) is not inability to "emote to any other human being", it is feeling emotions and thinking in a different way than anyone else. In fact, it is you "normal" people who are unable to "emote to any other human being", because you have the preconception that everyone thinks like you, therefore can't conceive of people being different. Indeed, you assume that "incorrect" behaviour is due to malevolence instead of seeing the necessity of thinking about what might going on in the mind of the other.

Also, it is about 1%, not 0.0001%.

Typing speed doesn't matter that much

[ClosedSource]

When developing software, it's the speed of thinking that is usually the limiting factor, not the speed of typing. Quality code can't be written contiguously at 100 WPM.

I use both daily

[gregger]

Yeah, you just can't get out of using QWERTY. So, on my laptop I'm still QWERTY, but when I dock my laptop, I am Dvorak.
Reasons why you have to switch back:

• Remote Desktop to other machines you don't own means QWERTY
• Visiting customers, other cubes, etc. and having to type something
• Doing tech support for your parents

So, I switch back and forth. I'm almost a touch typist on Dvorak (I still look down), but maintain most of my speed on QWERTY. After working on Dvorak for some time, here's what I've noticed:

• Acronyms (almost all we type on computers) are still awkward, but now in a different way
• Typos are way different... different enough that people in IM sessions can't guess what you meant
• After a long day of typing, my hands still hurt... but in different places
• Common words (like stuff you'd write for an English paper) are easy, but tech words aren't
• Punctuation is the hardest to re-map

Here's how I started the experiment... I took an old keyboard that IT didn't have a use for anymore, popped of the keys and did some minor modifications in order to put the keys in the right order. The problem is that even your vanilla keyboard has slightly "ergo" tilts and shapes to the keys so the resulting keyboard looks like a misshapen mess. You can feel it when you type. Also, the effort in typing goes way up and your fingers will hurt a lot.

So, I took my trusty ergonomic keyboard and a Dymo label machine with clear tape and punched out the keys, cut them out, and then affixed them on top of the letters of the keyboard. This has worked quite well and only cost me a foot of Dymo tape (I was afraid of making the commitment to a dedicated keyboard and I hate not recycling stuff).

What's odd is that the brain switches easily. I use my laptop as the primary screen in my 2 monitor desktop, so I get access to the QWERTY keyboard. When I remote desktop to another computer, I just move up to the laptop keyboard. When I'm on my regular keyboard, I'm in Dvorak.

Here's the biggest problem (and it got a little better in Vista and Office 2007)... if you live this dual life and switch between layouts, Windows does it on a per-app basis, not the whole OS. So, each application will have to be switched to Dvorak mode after it opens. This can lead to a lot of aggravation when you're typing and not paying attention to the screen. It comes out like frg dak. br ugjtcbi ce.a ,day frg-p. yflcbi. So that can be frustrating (yes, that's real Dvorak on a QWERTY).

Tools:

• Convert to and from Dvorak when you don't want to re-write what you just typed
• Try out some text (warning... Java) to see how much you save in movement
• There's Firefox add-in called l33tkey that purports to help, but I haven't found it useful yet due to Windows' locale behavior

TTFN

Viva la Dvorak!

[legomaniaboy]

http://dvzine.org/

Yup I do Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

Have done so for about 10 years now. I started in Uni when I was doing a lot of typing.... I don't necessarily think it is faster but it is a lot more comfortable - my hands feel a lot less tired after a long typing session.

I touch type so there is no real point to rearranging the keys. I do most of my work in KDE... and I switch keyboard layouts a lot...
Dvorak for typing, Qwerty for everything else (CTRL + ALT + K) gets used a lot...
Most of my friends have learned how to switch the keyboard back.

And I can still touch type in QWERTY it just takes me 10-15 mins to get warmed up
and I still occasionally have a brain fart.

Dvorak? Really?

[Morky]

I can't believe coders are buying into Dvorak. Haven't we had enough of his intentionally inflamitory punditry?

I can actually touch type in both layouts

[Canthros]

I switched to Dvorak four or five years ago. (I actually use a Das Keyboard II at work, but I have a remapped Model M here at home.) It takes a little time to reacquaint myself with QWERTY any time I have to really use it (i. e., whenever my login passowrd changes), but that's because I haven't used QWERTY significantly in multiple years. When I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home, it always took a few minutes to sort out, but only a few minutes. No biggie.

Truth is, the thing that screws me up the most is actually the caps-lock key, since I usually remap that for use as a Ctrl key.

I quit using Dvorak

[OrangeTide]

There seemed to be no appreciable difference to me. It took about a week to bring myself up to touch type on Dvorak as fast as Qwerty. But there was no difference in typing speed or comfort that I could notice. One nice thing was that with Dvorak a lot of words were typed mostly on one hand or the other, while Qwerty seems to alternate between hands a few times in a single word. I can't say one way is better than the other.

When I learned Dvorak it was not that easy to add the alternate input to OSes out there. You would typically need the Win95 install disc, which people rarely had available when I would borrow their computer. Now days it's quite easy to add the input map to an arbitrary, so I could see Dvorak finally catching on. I think the only barrier to its acceptance is that it's not revolutionary and therefor not worth putting up with any inconvenience.

I would recommend doing hunt-and-peck on QWERTY after you learn Dvorak, switching between them has a negative impact on your typing speed (it will take a great deal of practice to support two mappings in your brain at the same time). And I would recommend you leave your keyboard with the keys as QWERTY and just carry a slip of paper as a cheat sheet while you're learning. Do not get into the habit of looking at your keyboard, it will only delay learning to touch-type Dvorak. Put your little cheat sheet near the monitor, or open up an electronic cheat sheet in a window when you need it.

Laptops?

[Graham J - XVI]

As soon as I can find a MacBook with a DVORAK keyboard I'll give it a try ;)

(sic)

[remmelt]

"Qwernty"

Re:(sic)

[KlaymenDK]

Heh, got me there. It's not like they're all in a row, you know. :-p

However, "a thousand nude deadheads sustained hideous headstands as studious atheists dissented and seethed", is. Wow.

Marry the two

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that it should be a requirement to use DVORAK with Linux (or alt os) and QWERTY with all Windows Machines. Besides, if DVORAK is really better, then why downgrade the experience with a QWERTY keyboard when you are running Linux.

Microsoft = QWERTY
Linux = DVORAK

Problem solved.

Learning Curve

[haroldnjoe]

My expierience with the Dvorak keyboard was that after about a week of practice, I was "ok" with the layout, but my accuracy on Qwerty had suffered. Because my job demands so much keyboard work, I couldn't afford the slow-down during the learning process.

Re:Programming uses different key than text=Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Dvorak is optimized for English. There are Dvorak keyboards that are designed for other languages.

I switched about 10 years ago.

[YoungHack]

A friend and I decided together to switch about 10 years ago. So one April Fool's day, I made the plunge. It seemed a very auspicious day to begin. I did it exactly the way that I learned to type (i.e. single-letter lessons, then digraphs, etc.).

I disagree with those folks who claim they keycaps are unimportant though. I don't look at the keys, and I never did when I was a QWERTY typist either, but if you accidentally look down and they keys are wrong it is very jarring for your brain. I pretty much use IBM keyboards exclusively and either pull off the keycaps, or add stickers with both layouts. At home I've used the stickers so the other layout is on there if my wife has to use the computer.

I can't believe how expensive it is to get a generic keyboard with dual-printed keycaps, so I've never bought one. One advantage of the stickers is the little bumps that help you find the home row are still in the right place. If you move the keycaps, you will definitely miss those little guys. I regularly set my hands down off-by-one on keyboards where I've moved the caps.

My friend and I both found something similar in our experience. We tend to touchtype Dvorak but hunt and peck QWERTY. That's pretty handy when you sit down at someone else's computer. I just do sort of fast hunt-and-peck typing.

As for learning time, it took a few days to be more-or-less capable. It took a month to regain my QWERTY speed, and it took about a year for it to be really comfortable (my criterion for "really comfortable" may be higher than other's). One of the things that prompted me to change was left-wrist discomfort. That did not improve right away, since it was hard to relax while concentrating on the new layout. At the one-year mark it occurred to me that my wrist hadn't really bothered me in some time, although I don't really know how long it had been.

Like others, I found the VI keys to be the worst. Somehow, in your mind 'dw' aren't keys the same as when you are typing. They are 'delete word'. So even when my keys were right when typing, my Vi was abysmal. Over time that went away, but it was distinctly harder. I never used a lot of Ctrl-X, C, V but I imagine that heavy users of those will feel the same way. You're not really thinking about the letters when you hit those.

If I were to do it today, I don't know if I would choose Dvorak again or one of the other alternatives. Today was the first time I'd ever heard of Colemak for example, and it seems to have some merit. I might choose Dvorak because it has a greater number of users, and it's plenty fringe enough. On the other hand, it is so far from mainstream that maybe you ought to just make your best estimate of keyboard quality and try to pick what you think is actually the best.

Re:I switched about 10 years ago.

[rta]

Hmm... I hadn't heard of Colemak until you mentioned it here; just looked it up. I don't see what the point is really. Learning Dvorak isn't THAT hard and Colemak doesn't do anything for punctuation so it won't be any better for programming.

If I had to do it over again... I'd probably still go with Dvorak though i think the real boon will be if someone ever comes up with a good 1 handed, mobile chording entry method to replace the thumb typing on blackberries and similar. That's the next text input frontier. Maybe i'll try out the Bat again. I bought one a long time ago and never learned how to use it...

Dvorak keyboards

[Weasel Boy]

I understand your attachment to your keyboard. I'd probably sell my soul for a good IBM Model M. You could die of old age trying to find a Dvorak keyboard. Fortunately, you don't have to. Mac OS, Windows and better Linuxen all include a Dvorak keymap that simply reads your standard QWERTY (off topic: it is weird typing 'qwerty' on Dvorak) keyboard as though it were Dvorak. [Side note: Windows, in its retarded glory, assigns the keyboard map per window, not GUI-wide. If you change the active key map, existing windows will continue in their original mode.]

Some keyboards let you swap around the key caps, but you can also just print out a template. If you ever get disoriented, use the nubs to place your hands on the home keys, look away from the keyboard (at the screen or at your key template), and start typing. After a few days of Dvorak, you will learn to associate QWERTY key caps with Dvorak characters.

It took me about six weeks to become comfortable with Dvorak using a template. (If I ever saw a real Dvorak keyboard, I'd probably turn into a quivering blob of jello.) After a year, I was equally fast with QWERTY and Dvorak, about 85% of my former QWERTY speed due to keyboard confusion. Now, I'm back to my former peak or better on both methods. But it really doesn't matter because my gating factor is thinking time, not typing speed.

The main reason I switched to Dvorak is not speed, but comfort. I got some painful RSI once from using a crappy PC mouse for only a couple of hours (yes, it was that bad, Compaq if you must know, and took weeks to heal). In response, I switched hardware (to IBM KB+mouse) and started typing Dvorak exclusively in the office and QWERTY at home. The different hand motions gave the aching tissues a chance to recover.

Funny thing is, like so many other mental activities, keyboard use appears to have modal qualities. I basically can't program on a QWERTY keyboard. But I can't play an MMO on Dvorak. Go figure. And VI (or NetHack) navigation on Dvorak is just plain bent. Use the arrow keys. Which reminds me of a third, and possibly the best, reason to use Dvorak: security. Most people cannot mess around with your computer. You will never again have impatient coworkers push you aside, saying, "Here, it'll be faster if I just type this for you."

Brackets

[Weasel Boy]

For most brackets, it's very simple. You can look at the QWERTY key caps, because the two symbols on the same key generally remain the same. You just have to know where it moved. The []/{} keys move to the top row, next to ().

Dvorak Rocks, but causes pain for others

[MijaDeus]

It took me a few years to completely switch over. I started in 2000, with a number of lapses back. But I'm completely there now.

Network people hated me. Windows only gives you the standard keyboard at bootup unless you modify some obscure registry setting.. I got the informal "troublemaker" label at 2 of my jobs, so I switched back to be nice.

At my most recent job (Working for the State of Oregon), they asked me on my first day if I needed any specific keyboard accomodation. I told them dvorak, and an extra keyboard for the network types. I put the "language toolbar" prominently on the lower right of my screen so net admins can switch it back when they need to mess with my computer. But thats less of a problem, nowadays. since they usually just VNC right in (or whatever tool they use). They don't touch my computer any more. They just run back to their computer & remote in..

Remote admin uses your keyboard settings, but VMWare does not. So my vmware machines piss off other people. (though VMWare server solved that, as you remote into those...)

I bet those deals above are the main reason that people can stay switched now.


Now for some uncategorized observations..
- you get strange typos like "warked", "thay", "pormission" & substituting most 'o's for a & e, and the reverse. - i get more typos now. mostly in the vowel department..
- I am finally able to touch type in both layouts. (after 7 years!) , but i have to look away to do qwerty. I still do some micro-cheating with dvorak. It helps that I have it at home & work though. For a time there was a "wig-out" phase where i couldn't type on qwerty.
- Brain remapping feels weird. It has a slightly insane feel to it. Don't worry, it will pass..
- it is weird how your brain compartmentalizes. I hadn't messed with DOS in years (after 2000, never needed to), then lately, I've switched to Ubuntu. and all those 2 or 3 key commands you fire off, like:
cd ..
dir/w
etc.. I couldn't type! c is now on the right side of the keyboard & d is in the middle! what the hell?
- you get to know all your passwords in their qwerty mapped equivalents..
- Ubuntu Feisty now does dvorak at the login screen. :) Edgy did not.
- it seems like everything moved from the left side of the keyboard to the right. For a long time I felt like I couldn't take my hands off the keyboard to mouse! What was actually happening though, is that both hands were now being used equally...
- it took me a long time before i could eat chips while typing again.
- I have carpal tunnel. It helps. If it is psychological, don't tell me, and don't read up on it. If it fools me, it can fool you.
- Wife hates it.
- Co-workers no longer try to "drive" on my computer. They throw up both hands & silently curse me.
- m & a are in the same places.
- while learning, there is the "flourescent light" syndrome, when you switch to the other style in the middle of a sentence. disconcerting.
- other people try to switch & fail. Its like watching someone quit smoking.
- I re-map ctrl-c to be ctrl-j & ctrl-v to be ctrl-k & of course ctrl-; will now undo. don't take those positions away, I need that! (autohotkey for windows). I have not figured it out for Ubuntu yet.
- games hate you. If you are lucky, they dont support dvorak, because they think hard about their key positions.
- old programs hate you, BIOS won't support you, I'm gonna eat some worms.
- Friends think that you are cool but stupid
- I like the " being next to where it used to be on my old commodore 64
- Makes you want to look into other weird typing styles, like Chording, etc.. I tried my own keyboard layouts, but work wont let me install the program onto my computer, so I stay with dvorak
- I might just go left-handed dvorak just to piss them off & to free up my right hand to mouse. Though honestly, the more my hand is on the

You must not do COBOL

[Deedo]

... or perhaps a data entry clerk I'd probably get a lot of benefit because most of my time would be spent typing.

Coding COBOL, data entry -- pretty much the same thing.

Except...

[KlaymenDK]

Yeah, I've wanted one of those black keyboards, for the sheer look of course. But, when you're writing prose in three languages and code in four, the locations of all those pesky |\'`{&]^ (heh, half the symbols won't even make it as far as the preview screen) become rather hard to keep track of. I must confess I do some hunt-and-pecking in between my touch typing... :-/

I don't know about the rest of you ...

[ScrewMaster]

but in the twenty-seven years I've been coding I don't think I've ever encountered a Dvorak keyboard user.

Plenty of folks that read his column though.

Love it

[kd3bj]

Switched a year ago. Best decision I ever made, computing wise. I now type faster than I ever did qwerty. I touch type
with no bad habits. My wrist pain is gone. Total cost: about one month of agony.

Re:This is wrong, I use US Dvorak layout in Norweg

[KlaymenDK]

True, using Dvorak_NO is just fine for Danish as well.

(But you seem to be writing nynorsk, which is unintelligible anyway! :-p)

I'm not a coder, but...

[wheatwilliams]

I'm a professional writer of prose.

I learned to touch-type the conventional way circa 1979. I switched to Dvorak in 1988 shortly after I got my first Macintosh. I've also used Dvorak on Apple II, MS DOS, and all versions of Windows from 3.0 up, and any Linux distros that I've ever gotten my hands on.

With the standard keyboard layout, I could never do better than 35 words per minute. Within a year of switching to Dvorak, I was typing 90 words per minute, and experiencing less stress in my wrists, hands and fingers.

But as far as an increase in popularity of Dvorak, I haven't seen that. People are always clueless and incredulous whenever I try to explain to them what Dvorak is and why anybody would care.

Convert your keyboard in less than 30 seconds

[Solokron]

It is actually quite easy to convert your keyboard to Dvorak with most operating systems in less than 30 seconds. Check out the following website: http://www.dvorak-keyboards.com/ Most OSes already support it with no additional software needed. Check out the following page on conversion: http://www.dvorak-keyboards.com/Change_qwerty_keyb oard_to_Dvorak_in_30_seconds.htm

true hardware-dvorak [was:never seen a Dvorak?]

[tuc]

I believe Fentek once did sell (non-USB) hardware Dvorak keyboards, but if you look at their current line-up you'll see that they are all "Software Activated." This means they are plain qwerty keyboards as far as the firmware is involved, just that the keycaps are arranged for the dvorak layout. It's the same effect you get by just rearranging the keycaps of a standard keyboard, which I have done a few times.

The PS2, ADB, and AT Dvorak keyboards I own are different. For example, the code sent from the keyboard when the user depresses the key to the right of the 'A' key corresponds to 'O' (not 'S'). The Dvorak mapping is applied in hardware before the host's keyboard driver plays any role.

btw, my ADB Dvorak keyboards (which were sold by the KeyTime company) are hardware switchable for dvorak/qwerty/left-handed-dvorak/right-handed-dvor ak. The keycaps are marked Dvorak on top, but qwerty on the front-facing side.

There are a few USB keyboards on the market that are "hardware Dvorak switchable," which means they have qwerty keycaps but can be switched to send the Dvorak codes. But AFAIK they all have unusual "ergonomic" key positions, such as the two-bowls Kinesis and the aligned-columns TypeMatrix. I may look into these some day, but in the meantime I'm still looking for a "regular" hardware Dvorak USB keyboard.

Re:true hardware-dvorak [was:never seen a Dvorak?]

[KlaymenDK]

Ahh, I think I misread your point. So with the hardware keyboards, you'd keep the pc set up to use qwerty, and it gets it right in the Bios etc? I would like that.

Re:true hardware-dvorak [was:never seen a Dvorak?]

[tuc]

So with the hardware [Dvorak] keyboards, you'd keep the pc set up to use qwerty, and it gets it right in the Bios etc? Exactly. And it gets it right on devices that don't have layout preferences (PlayStation3??) or for which one doesn't have permission to change the layout preference.

DAS Keyboard?

[sc0ob5]

Last year I purchased a "DAS Keyboard" http://daskeyboard.com/ which is a keyboard with no letters on the keys, I was wondering if anyone else had purchased one of these. I am using the qwerty layout at the moment and never tought how to touch type but I can type at around 80wpm with very good accuracy. I thought about switching to a dvorak layout many years ago when I heard of the benefits but never got around to it. Anyways I was wondering if this keyboard would be a suitable match for those of you that are having a hard time getting a dvorak board.

Also for those that have made the switch but aren't touch typers and just magically your fingers know where the keys are, does it take a long time to "learn" and can you switch back between them without hassles?

Dvorak is easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand what everyone's talking about.

I've never seen a Dvorak keyboard. I just select Dvorak from the system tray menu, on Windows and Mac, and that's it. Takes about 3 seconds. Then I'm typing away in Dvorak mode.

It took about 2 weeks to switch from Qwerty.

Dvorak has been great for me as a programmer

[billm02]

I switched a few years back because my wrists were slowly bothering me more and more over the years. I started out by just switching to Dvorak via software, then eventually bought a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. This is hands-down the best keyboard I've ever used, and my wrist pain has completely subsided since the switch. I started to get annoyed by a few aspects of Dvorak and eventually started morphing it into my own variant to make typing 'ls' under Linux easier, to move punctuation used in coding around to be easier to get to, etc. For those interested in the speed aspects, I'm probably typing now at around 75-80 wpm on my Dvorak variant; similar to what I did before on Qwerty (I can still do probably 60-70 wpm on Qwerty, strangely). I'd say Dvorak isn't faster, but is definitely more comfortable--if you are really worried about your wrists and ability to work, have the patience to work through the several weeks/months it'll take you to get close to normal speed again after switching your format, I highly recommend considering switching to Dvorak or a Dvorak variant on a Kinesis Contoured keyboard; I did and haven't looked back since.

- Bill

P.S. - I put up a web page years ago when I did the switch with loads of detail about the whole process since I learned so much from other people's web pages at the time. It's not 100% up to date now, but here it is for those interested:

Adventures in Ergonomic Keyboarding

Optimised for English or code?

[Refenestrator]

I use Dvorak, but I find it a bit odd that I'm typing code in a keyboard optimised for English. Are there any layouts optimised for any programming languages? I can imagine what the Common Lisp and Perl keyboards would look like ...

Re:Optimised for English or code?

[TheOtherChimeraTwin]

Lisp

QWERTYUIOPASDFG ( ) HJKLZXCVBNM -+.*/

Perl

!@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]:;"',.?/ abc

If you want numbers, you should be using FORTRAN

Citadel BBS typist

[underwhelm]

I learned to type while I was a regular of several Citadel BBSes. They were room-based and had keyboard mnemonics that encouraged me to hold my left hand over S, F, G, N and my right hand over P and the spacebar.

I still type with my hands offset like that today, with my left hand responsible for more than half of the keyboard.

Remap easily with DVAssist

[Anonymous Coward]

To remap the keyboard, which others may expect to be QWERTY, I use the DVAssist tool. It is available for download from http://clabs.org/dvorak.htm and additionally it leaves a handy reminder of what is current on the toolbar.

Not using DVORAK = example of resistance to change

[cjellibebi]

When training managment consultants, an often used excersize is to discuss switching to the DVORAK keyboard to illustrate the difficulties of change. See this part of the Wikipedia article on Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

Ugh, please...

[WinBreak]

DVORAK is the same thing as Linux - a LOT people use it for bragging rights, not because they genuinely like it better. I'm not saying that's the majority - but there's no denying that people out there just do it for the attention.

Mistaken assumption about what it optimizes

[Anonymous Coward]

For developing software though, I've never felt that the amount of time it takes to type things in was slowing me down.

This seems to assume that the (only?) benefit of Dvorak is speed. I've found that not to be true at all: I can type pretty much the same speed with any layout. The difference is that my wrists don't start to hurt from the pain of the contortions.

Ensuring that code is as clean, simple, and easy to understand as possible;

I've found that I tend to write functions with human-readable names, and write more docstrings, than any of my QWERTY-using colleagues. They tend to avoid writing any docstrings at all, and try to abbreviate identifiers as much as possible, often by leaving out vowels (... and consonants), so I end up trying to parse crap like "uncoStrLtBr". (Coincidence?)

One of my work colleagues uses a Dvorak layout, and having seen the code he produces I wonder if he'd be better off with a data entry system that slows him down long enough so that he can think a little more. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but I remember being very careful about my coding back in the days of paper cards.

I remember being very careful when I wrote in assembler, hand-assembled it, typed in raw binary opcodes, and had no debugger. Was I a better programmer then? No, just a lot slower. We could make everybody use the world's crappiest tools in order to try to make them "think a little more", but bad programmers would still write bad code, and good programmers would be frustrated.

The DVORAK myth

[xixax]

The key data used to promote Dvorak was collected by Dvorak.

Here's a URL from the last time Dvorak was discussed on /.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29944.html

Xix.

Slow news day dept

[franksands]

I think it is very interesting to find that even the editors know that this is a "slow news day"kind of thing.

Dvorak not DVORAK

[InakaBoyJoe]

People.

Dvorak isn't an acronym, it's the guy's name.

Just like Mac (the computer, as opposed to Ethernet address) is not an acronym.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I type as fast as I can speak anyway using the standard QWERTY layout. I just don't see the point in going out of the way to "increase efficiency" when it comes to typing since it would more than likely just increase the amount of stress my beaten to hell and back again hands are under in the first place.

I mean seriously, there is no challenge to typing 100 words a minute on a normal keyboard. You just need to chat online a bit and you'll eventually get there since it becomes nice to be able to write at a comfortable conversational pace.

Now to the real point of it. I know that my hands are moving all over the keyboard and that I get roughly equal stress/strain to each finger using the QWERTY layout. Since I'm a programmer and type about 7 hours of each day, this is probably a good thing. Using the Dvorak layout places the stress on a few key fingers that are used to moving a bit quicker than the others. This means that you'll place a few fingers under a greater stress using Dvorak. In fact the dvorak keyboard should almost cause your left hand to fall off before too long since it's going to be used far more than the right since vowels will always been needed to be hit.

Well... good luck with your dvorak layout... I hope you don't find yourself disabled from it.

I do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, this is awesome. I've been using Dvorak for years, even at menial office jobs, in Windows. Just change keymap settings and you're free at last. The other day I had to take a typing test (LOL!) and the machine had no access to the control panel, so I was forced to try to remember qwerty, and only got a measly 55 WPM. And man did my wrists hurt from having to contort my fingers into weird positions to go into all these awkward maneuvers just to type basic English. Dvorak makes typing so much more comfortable on the tendons.

DVORAK Keyboard is overrated...

[dzfoo]

I do not care much for DVORAK keyboards. While using Windows, for years, I preferred using the THURROTT keyboard better; I found its gratuituous endorsement of Microsoft's technologies and strawman arguments against competitors much more productive while coding, than DVORAK ever was. Plus, every once in a while, my DVORAK keyboard would just burst into flames whenever I use any GPL'd source.

Now that I'm a Mac user, I dumped the THURROTT *and* DVORAK keyboards altogether. I feel so much more at home using my newly discovered ERAN keyboard. Coding is such a cinch, and I am so fast, efficient, and productive without all the annoying and pointless distractions.

          -dZ.

Re:An interesting connection between OS and keyboa

[zsau]

Oh, yes! I know exactly what you mean, although for me it was GNU/Linux versus Windows. By now I largely switch based on gibberish; I don't consiously know what layout I'm using except by the feel.

Using a buggy rss-feedreader

[Polly_Morf]

I am using a quite buggy rss-feed reader that I made myself, in which all the article titles are in lower-case chars. So, instead of reading DVORAK and thinking "Ah! The keyboard layout!" i read dvorak, and thought "John Dvorak??? Yes, when hell freezes over!". Well, I know he criticized apple when they included mice with their computers, but I consider this was out of stupidity, not of 1337-nes

Colemack?

[mikehoskins]

I noticed from http://colemak.com/ that there are two backspace keys....

Any reason, such as more mistakes, maybe?
    http://colemak.com/wiki/images/8/80/Colemak_layout _2.png

Re:Colemack?

[shadroth]

I think Shai just didn't want to move a regular key from a familiar space.
The regular backspace key is non-optimal. I'm considering removing it from the mapping altogether, so I don't use it by accident.
I find I make less mistakes on Colemak, because I really know how to touch-type with it - I have to, because my keyboard is still QWERTY, it's just the mapping that's changed.

Sixteen Miles A Day

[jman.org]

Switched with the aid of Mavis Beacon v5 back in '89, haven't looked back since. Splurged for a Northgate OmniKey Ultra with the extra set of keycaps, but once learning touch didn't need to look anymore, so these days use a plain old MS Natural. Have heard good things from other manufacturers (Kinesis, TypeMatrix, others), but do a lot of support at different sites so have learned to just use whatever POS keyboard is in front of me.

There's also a unit out of Austin called DAS keyboard which sounds intriguing - though I haven't actually laid hands on one - having no markings of any kind on the keycaps. Talk about an extra layer of security!

Admittedly a chicken & egg problem, one thing I do NOT like is that most login screens are set up for Qwerty, unless of course it's your own machine in which case you could have loaded it up to be Dvorak all the time. On 'doze machines at sites I maintain, have it set up as another language (Swedish, as the tray icon "SV" is close to "DV", and trained staff that if they accidentally start seeing gibberish when they type, to try ALT-LEFT-SHIFT & look for "EN" instead.

Odd that these days Mavis will teach you Spanish, but not Dvorak. Have asked them a few times over the years, usually get some boilerplated response that indicates they don't care to have real discussion on the issue. V5 was the last time she taught Dvorak.

One of the stats from the old Mavis docs were that the average Qwerty typists fingers move sixteen miles a day, while with Dvorak it's just one. That really appealed to me back then, and now, going on 20 years later, I'm glad my hands aren't falling apart.

Back in the DOS days I'd use two batch files to toggle between Qwerty & Dvorak, one KB.bat, the other TX.bat. Reason for TX was it was the Dvorak representation of KB. Guess I could have also gone with VN (Qwerty letters which would spell out 'KB' for keyboard when in Dvorak mode), but back then was still thinking in Qwerty.

A good resource for Dvorak is altkeyboards over at Yahoo, and of course Marcus Brooks' page (mwbrooks.com)

Happy typing!

Typing faster than you think

[Tofystedeth]

There's probably other ways to interpret this, but I would imagine he means types faster than he can form his own words, or consciously think. When I'm writing a paper or something, it takes longer to phrase my sentences than to type them out. But if I am say, quoting text from a book, since the words are already there and I only have to move them, they go very quickly.

Interesting. I've never met a DVORAK user.

[Richard Steiner]

The folks I work with, my friends, etc., are all standard keyboard users as far as I know.

Why should dvorak be better for coders?

[TheLink]

1) AFAIK the dvorak layout is based on statistics for "normal" English, not code. I doubt it makes { or } easier to type. Or the various other brackets and special chars that many computer languages like, and then there are also IDEs with autocompletion etc.

2) While the layout might make it easier to type comments in "English" (yeah right...), the main thing is coders are not typists - they shouldn't be copying stuff with minimal thinking or taking dictation etc.

3) Higher quality thinking = lower quantity typing. Typing time shouldn't be very much, unless you are somehow using notepad to write code in a verbose language like Java ;).

Dvorak

[Kancept]

I started using the dvorak layout a few years back. I bought a TouchStream in a Dvorak layout, and never looked back. All my laptops are rearranged, and at work, I've changed the keycaps an a nice HP keyboard (its' not all weird heights on this one). I can type faster on my dvorak layouts, as I use them more, but I can still type well on qwerty. Noone comes in my office to use my keyboard. The only drawbacks I have encountered is when you hurt your hand and have to type (more travel to type) or when you say get booted to KDL in MacOS X or BeOS, as they revert to a qwerty layout (BIOS kinda thing maybe). I have to say it's one of the more drastic things I ever did computing-wise, but I'm happy with it.

DVORAK layouts with QWERTY commands

[codeonezero]

I've seen DVORAK layouts which switch to QWERTY while ctrl or command or whatever you call it (flower, apple) is held down. I've seen this available on Mac, and Linux. I'm sure you can find something similar for Windows.

A lot of the standard keyboard shortcuts were not designed around menu action names but rather relative to hand position.

I switched to dvorak at one point but quickly realized the futility as most applications and shortcuts are heavily QWERTY friendly. Of course it doesnt help that I was the only one with the DVORAK layout and everyone at work was on QWERTY so when I had to work off their desk I couldnt just switch.

if you're looking for a dvorak specific keyboard I think the closest with conveniences for a programmer (though I haven't tried it myself) is the blank top happy hacking keyboard.

Keymapping

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a DVORAK keyboard, which cost less than $100 and toggles between QWERTY and DVORAK. When I'm using my laptop by itself, I switch to DVORAK at the OS level.

I didn't switch to DVORAK for speed reasons - which is a good thing, since I'm not any faster than I was. I am, however, free of the arm strain that had reached worisome intensity.

Totally unnecessary . . . or is it?

[drachenstern]

I thought it was [move mouse to text] [highlight text] [move mouse to "edit" menu] [select copy] [forget where you are]
 
And here's another (somewhat, okay, not so much) funny thing, I personally created a test account at work named 'luser' for limited... and nobody else gets it.
 
But the point of my post was that I agree with you. Isn't that a sad commentary on the training of computer users in general?
 
How often do you try and "help" people by offering those small tips and they just glare at you and tell you that they don't want to be made more efficient?

It all starts with a

[drachenstern]

Bird, or is it a bee? I can never remember.

So when the flowers get to be about yay'ish high, then the moss starts to sprout, and . . . uh . . .

hrmm, where were we?

Oh yes, the beautiful pubic computer, mostly a single bit binary machine, useful for indicating state. Can commonly be found in the back seats of many cars owned or operated by teenagers after dark, and in locker rooms.

They are also impervious to most liquids, even having been known to thrive in low levels of moisture. The best part is probably the usefulness of being able to use ice (frozen water) for cooling.

Hope this write-up helps.

I adopted 3 taiwanese DVORAK's recently

[definate]

I adopted DVORAK and a few of my mates followed suite. I have noticed it is becoming a lot more prominent. However, I am still forced to use QWERTY at work. But now, I can switch between both, reasonably seamlessly.

Switched, but a hardware solution would be nice...

[Nazo-San]

I actually started the process to switch about two weeks ago. I weighed the advantages and disadvantages and decided that the trouble of making the swich was worth it in the long run. I'm making good progress and my speed and accuracy are almost caught up with before. There's only one thing I worry about, and that's the trouble that can be involved in switching back and forth on other systems or on things like rescue discs (where it's not really feasible to rebuild the images every time just for that one change.) On other systems I'm most worried, because in some rare cases they are pretty locked down for security reasons, so I can't run files from my flash drive to make the switch or when I'm working on someone else's system (I do a lot of problem fixing for people.)

What I really want -- instead of always relying on some software solution -- is just some dirt cheap Dvorak hardwired keyboard (preferably USB) that I can simply plug in and it work in everything (it would take some interesting work to get Dvorak in syslinux or other boot loaders for example, so such a thing has the added advantage of letting you more easily deal with these sorts of things.) Basically all I want is something like those $12 QWERTY keyboards you can find at a Walmart, only hardwired for Dvorak instead (I know that those ubercheap keyboards will give you a massive case of carpel tunnel type pains if you use them more than a few hours, but we're talking about something that would only be used for less than an hour at a time since I can just use my nice normal keyboard on my personal computer with all the software solutions.)

I realize that it would cost more than the $12 Walmart boards, but right now I have been unable to find a hardwired Dvorak keyboard for less than $60, which is a pricerange that is just out of the question for such a thing. I've checked everywhere ranging from the higher quality electronics sites to places like eBay and even more questionable websites, but the most affordable Dvorak keyboard I ever found was just an ordinary cheap QWERTY keyboard with the keys moved so it still required a software solution (and even that was at a ridiculous price for what it was.) Sometimes I just wish I had the ability to create my own circuit sheets to rewire a keyboard to Dvorak in hardware myself, but while it may be theoretically possible for some to do it with stuff they may even have at home, it's just way too much for me.

I can't believe that companies are selling these things for $100+ when just taking the same crappy parts that make up a $12 keyboard, tossing in different circuits (they don't even have to change the chip it uses!) and putting the keys in different places would allow them to market to a LOT of people making the switch (I know that when I first thought about Dvorak a long time ago I assumed I would need a new keyboard and would have bought one if it were reasonably priced) as well as some who already have (not to mention that they could get away with slapping a $20 pricetag on it and make even more per keyboard within reason to offset the difference in the smaller volume.) Not many people are willing to spend so much for a keyboard...

I was wondering if anyone here might actually know of some solution like the recircuiting idea (but more reasonable) or someone selling cheap Dvorak keyboards that I haven't been able to find?

Dvorak is the way to go

[wikinerd]

I do use Dvorak, although not completely stopped using Qwerty yet. There are many ergonomic and health benefits in using Dvorak. By the way, it's Dvorak, not DVORAK.

Same as you (Re:Vim)

[Laebshade]

I know this seems redundant, but I'm in the same boat as the both of you. I took a typing class in high school; started with about 35-40 wpm and ended with about 90 wpm; yet, I only type with 2, sometimes 3 fingers per hand, yet I can sustain much faster than most typists. Please note, mods, that this is not to gloat; only to show that just because I do not, as the others mentioned, type in the traditional manner, it does not mean I cannot match or exceed their speeds. Depending on the speed of my typing, I've noticed my fingers slide from key to key, rather than just switching to the appropriate finger for that key. The one downside I've noticed from this form of typing is increased wrist/arm movement, which over time can lead to RSI.

Coworkers leaving your computer alone

[Mal-2]

If this is the desired effect, you should take it a step further and either put the mouse on the left (with buttons reversed, naturally) or use an alternate pointing device -- something other than a mouse. Even a trackpad isn't much better as a lot of people get used to those. Maybe a trackball or a digitizer. As long as your computer is sufficiently "weird", people tend to leave it alone. (You can keep a mouse out of sight, if required.)

I am not a coder, but I made both the switch to Dvorak and the mouse move to the left for just one reason. I have had a couple incidents where I have almost but not quite broken my right wrist. I might have been better off in the long run if I had broken bone -- it would have taken longer, but it might have healed better. The mouse move is a lot easier than learning to write left-handed (though I can, it's just slow and sloppy) and does a fine job of balancing out the workload. Dvorak reduces the workload on my hands overall. For just about everything but mousing, throwing darts, and poker chip tricks, I remain either right-handed or again balance the load out.

The darts are for the same reason, as I didn't have much to do while out on disability with a soft cast on my arm, so I learned to throw darts left-handed. I put quite a few holes in the closet door working this one out. By the time the cast came off, I did that particular type of throw better with the left hand. I also do most of my poker chip tricks with the left hand, but can do all but one of them right-handed as well. Again this comes down to an accident -- while playing poker and doing chip tricks right-handed, I got cut on a broken chip, index finger right hand. Not really a big deal, I just wrapped it in a napkin and kept playing, but again I opted to switch hands rather than stop doing chip tricks. A few days later when it was comfortable enough to do that sort of prestidigitation with the injured finger, I found my skill to be roughly equal on both sides. Using the left hand is again just one way to help balance the load.

I don't throw anything heavy, or bowl, or golf left-handed. Strength-related activities do not seem to transfer so well. I try to bat from both sides, but the fact is I can't hit from either side worth a damn.

There aren't special "lefty" darts or poker chips or bats, but there are lefty mice. I don't use one. I just have to get one that isn't specifically designed for either hand. Having lefty golf clubs will certainly keep most people from wanting to borrow them though!

Mal-2

Overpriced keyboards

[MS-06FZ]

Is a keyboard "overpriced" just because it costs more than $20? I think it depends on the keyboard. Since we're talking here about a keyboard using actual switches as opposed to the usual rubber membrane system - a new-generation "clicky keyboard" - I think the price is merited. Blank keycaps are just icing on the cake. Now, if only they made one with a Happy Hacking Lite 2 layout...

Troll

[Kataire]

I post my opinion, on topic, adding to a post that solicits opinions. Some troll comes along and blasts me for my opinion, and the troll gets modded "Insightful". (Perhaps they meant "Inciteful".) If this is what Slashdot is, I guess I must have out grown it. What a shame.