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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?"
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.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I probably would switch, if there was a simple way to reconfigure my keyboard. Alas, laptops are not exactly amenable to keyboard layout switches.
DVORAK is comparable to Monster Cables. Most or all of the improvement is from the placebo effect.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Look out!
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.
... 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)
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
Just my 2 cents
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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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
- 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.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.
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.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
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)
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.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
What's cool about what you do is that it's probably easier on your wrists than touch-typing.
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.