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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?"
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.)
Look out!
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.
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.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
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...
Just junk food for thought...
Nice link. Perhaps you'll be interested in another post from that site?
Charming.
Mod parent "+1 VIM pun".
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Just FYI - just took a typing test. 53 WPM, no errors, two-fingered... Beeyotch!
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
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
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.
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.
"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.
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..