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On April 24 2011 19:04 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2011 02:22 Craton wrote:
Pretty sure the whole "QWERTY is terrible" thing is largely mythology and urband legend. Alot of people just hate stuff because it's popular
Pretty sure the whole "QWERTY is great" thing is largely mythology and urban legend.
A lot of people just love stuff because it's popular.
See what I did there?
Note that pretty much all people who use Dvorak and recommend it on this thread have learned both. Most people who are skeptical on this thread have never seriously tried Dvorak. Yes, learning something takes time, but such is life.
The proponents are not saying that it is good because some study said so -- so refuting said study does nothing to invalidate their point. The old studies in favor of Dvorak have been suspect, I agree.
I've met quite many people who've switched to Dvorak by now (many through work), and the overwhelming majority find it to be more comfortable and efficient to use once you've learned it. I also know one guy who learned it and didn't care for either layout, so YMMV.
Several people who learned it (me included) did so to reduce RSI-related symptoms, and it works well for that, but even after my wrist problems subsided I find it much more comfortable to use in general.
If you don't want to learn it, nobody's got any beef against you, but saying things like "alot [sic] of people just hate stuff because it's popular" contributes nothing at all to this thread. If you've
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Note that pretty much all people who use Dvorak and recommend it on this thread have learned both. Most people who are skeptical on this thread have never seriously tried Dvorak.
That's true. However, that doesn't constitute objective evidence. There's sunk-costs; people will tend to view things favorably that they have invested time in, even if they are objectively not better.
Personally, I won't learn DVORAK for the same reason I won't switch to Chrome.
I'd used Internet Explorer since the 3.0 days. I switched to Firefox 1.something-or-other, because IE6 was absolutely atrocious at web-standards and security, and Microsoft clearly had no intention of rectifying that in the immediate future. I've been using FF ever since then.
I can certainly accept that Chrome is objectively better than FF in certain ways. But the simple fact is this: I do not care that much. Firefox doesn't suck nearly enough compared to Chrome to make the switch worthwhile. Familiarity is far more important to me than startup-time. It may only take me a month or so to grow into a new browser, but that's a month during which time I'm being constantly annoyed by my browser. Will I gain something by it? Yes. Will I gain enough to be worth the effort? No.
And that's how I feel about QWERTY vs. DVORAK. I accept that QWERTY is not necessarily the most efficient key layout. But it's a key layout that I understand and am proficient at. The month+ of time (my muscle memory sucks) it will take to readjust to DVORAK will not be worth the gains from using what may be a better key layout.
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On April 24 2011 19:43 NicolBolas wrote:
Will I gain enough to be worth the effort? No.
How would you know without trying though?
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On April 24 2011 19:43 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +Note that pretty much all people who use Dvorak and recommend it on this thread have learned both. Most people who are skeptical on this thread have never seriously tried Dvorak. That's true. However, that doesn't constitute objective evidence. There's sunk-costs; people will tend to view things favorably that they have invested time in, even if they are objectively not better.
It may not be objective but it does have some merit. There haven't been any highly reputable studies (if you wish to disregard the one done by the Navy) to conclusively determine one being superior over the other, so anecdotal evidence will have to do.
You could take the informed opinion and disregard it, but then I could just as easily take any negative opinion and ignore it as it also isn't completely objective. It's best simply acknowledge the informed opinion, but with a grain of salt if you wish.
For many, their life may in some form, revolve around the Qwerty. To give up ease for a minimal gain in efficiency and speed simply isn't worth it, especially if ergonomics and comfort is a nonfactor.
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I switched to Dvorak a few summers ago. I still use it, and am, in fact, typing this post in it... so I know a little bit about this topic.
I find Dvorak far superior to the QWERTY in many aspects. It is far more comfortable, and I'm actually faster with it ^.^ I used to type 50-60 wpm with QWERTY but now I type 60-65 with Dvorak. In addition, I now touch-type, without needing to look at the keyboard at all. You see, my keyboard is still a QWERTY, it is just remapped to Dvorak in the control panel. So if I were to look at the keys, it would just tell me the wrong key. Thus, I was forced to learn without looking at the keys, which is very very useful now.
The first week was brutal, as I had a printed out Dvorak chart next to me while I typed. I was under 10 wpm. But by the end of the first month I had gotten the hang of it and was 30-40 wpm. My wpm has consistently increased since then, and I wouldn't be surprised if I break 70 soon. EDIT: Just took a typing test online... 72 wpm 
The only time I don't use Dvorak is when I'm gaming. This is because hotkeys are easier to learn if I can see the actual key that I'm pressing, and also, I'm too lazy to re-map and try to memorize new hotkeys... but it could be done.
On a side note, due to the fact that my school's computers are locked in QWERTY, I can also touch type in QWERTY, probably achieving 40-50 wpm. So while I type slower at school, I can still type at an average speed, and touch type. But at home I can type pretty fast while touch typing.
I like Dvorak and I'm happy I switched. It should take about a month to get used to it but it's not that hard. I'd do it if i were you
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I'd use Dvorak if I was a starter and \ or I was a professional typist, meaning I write ALOT.
Now I only do some mails and I've known how to type touch in QWERTY since I was about 12 so this old dog isn't learning any new tricks :q (27)
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Thanks to those people who have switched and are giving feedback. It's really encouraging. I only used about 3 fingers when touch typing so it is quite challenging trying to type with all my fingers. I guess nothing changes very quickly, a tonne of weirdos like us do it first. I don't need to look at the layout now so that's an improvement. I am about 11 lessons into http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ and it has been very useful.
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Interesting, I didn't use any typing tutors, as I found typing the same letters over and over boring and repetitive. I learned by just Instant Messaging with my friend (who understood that I was using Dvorak, so he didn't get annoyed by my extremely slow response time at first). After you get the feel of where most of the keys are, it really does get easier. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time.
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Hm, I'm sort of interested in this but not entirely sure I understand all the benefits.
I mean, I've read the thread, and understand it's primary benefit seems to be comfort, however I can't say I've ever been typing (using qwerty) and felt uncomfortable? I type a ton, often for many many hours at a time, and have never once felt any sort of discomfort. Could someone please elaborate upon this for me? Or is it just something some people don't experience?
As far as speed is concerned, is there any sort of actual hard evidence comparison that you type faster using Dvorak? It seems like I always just hear the 'qwerty is made to slow you down' thing and that's the end of the expalnation. I'm not entirely sure it's a good standard to look at, but is there any sort of 'fastest typers in the world' comparison between dvorak and qwerty? How do the fastest qwerty typers compare to the fastest dvorak typers?
The most useful posts here seem to be from the people that have actually ventured to learn both, thanks for those! Hopefully someone can help elaborate upon the comfort/speed thing for me. I don't necessarily plan on switching or anything, but I'm quite curious about it.
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The fastest typer in the world was Barbara Blackburn who used a Dvorak keyboard to achieve 212 wpm at her very max ^.^ (she could consistently type 150 wpm... for 50 minutes straight).
As far as comfort goes, I wouldn't necessarily say QWERTY has a lack of comfort, as much as I would say that Dvorak has more noticeable comfort. This is mainly because you move your fingers about half as much as you do with QWERTY, and your wrists pretty much don't move at all. I feel almost as if the words type themselves, an experience I never felt with QWERTY.
There aren't any reliable studies to show that Dvorak increases typing speed. I honestly think it's effects vary on a person-to-person basis. Some people already type so fast with QWERTY (I'm talking 80-100 wpm) that even if they learned Dvorak to the degree that they knew QWERTY, I doubt it would have a huge effect on their wpm, as your hands can only move so fast. On the other hand, people like me, who had 50-60 wpm have a lot of room to improve, and Dvorak may be able to help more.
Another factor is how well you initially "learned" QWERTY. I could never touch type with QWERTY, as I never had the discipline to never look at the keyboard. I knew the general position of all the keys, so I would just glance in the area of the key I needed and find it. Because I never even had this solid foundation with QWERTY to begin with, I decided it'd be best to just scrap it and relearn typing from the ground up, using Dvorak instead.
So, if you already have solid typing mechanics with QWERTY, I really see no reason to switch. But if you were like me, and your mechanics are sloppy, remapping your keyboard to Dvorak forces you to learn to type using perfect mechanics, as you have no accurate key labels to look at. And it just so happens, that you will be relearning using a more efficient layout
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Unless you really want to be cool, or just have a ton of time for it, it's not really worth it. I definitely noticed an improvement in comfort, and my mechanics are better on Dvorak, but it really is a decent chunk of time. The problem is you can't really switch back and forth when you're learning, so the first couple weeks you can barely type anything at all. For a lot of people, that's just too much of an investment. In terms of typing speed, it really is negligible, and I doubt you can find any hard evidence to prove either way.
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I used to be able to type in Dvorak, but eventually I realized that every other computer I would ever use besides my own would be in QWERTY so I just switched back. Some people I know prefer to be able to type well in both, but to me I just see it as pointless given that I have over 100 wpm in qwerty.
It kinda seems similar to being able to speak Esperanto or Latin to me... good if you're getting a doctorate in languages or something, but not much else  But to each their own.
For the record, I noticed no significant speed upgrade in my typing when I was typing in Dvorak, and I've been able to touch type since when I first started using computers (8 or so). Although I did have a lot of fun rearranging keyboards in my highschool computer labs into Dvorak layout probably the best thing I gained out of learning it. There's this look of horror that comes across a peck and hunt typer's face when they realize that the keyboard is completely rearranged...
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I feel the need to revive this topic because it lacked some analysis and died with a lot of conjecture. I have been proficient at the QWERTY layout since I was a child and consistently achieved typing speeds over 100 wpm. I know that is nothing stellar, but it is far faster than the average typist. A little less than a year ago, after using QWERTY for my entire life, I began writing my thesis. Within 2 weeks of near non-stop typing I developed a crippling carpal tunnel flare-up (it had fleeting appearances for years). I decided to use this opportunity to attempt a hard switch over to Dvorak per recommendation from one of my friends. I typed about half of my thesis on QWERTY and the other half on Dvorak. I quickly learned the only thing that is easier to type on a QWERTY keyboard is the word “QWERTY” itself and my carpal tunnel did not have another flare-up while typing.
I mainly want to address
On April 24 2011 02:22 Craton wrote:
Pretty sure the whole "QWERTY is terrible" thing is largely mythology and urband legend.
As well as the misconceptions about the benefits of Dvorak.
In my personal experience, I gained no tangible typing speed benefits by switching over to Dvorak—with the exception lying in long sentences consisting of a lot of “the that their” and other simple words, which I can peak at over 150-170wpm on Dvorak. It appears the main advantage is that I am now able to type at “cruise speeds” for a much longer stretch than with QWERTY. Additionally, I no longer have the stout burn in my forearms following a 3min typing speed test.
This is about enough of my anecdotal evidence. I copy/paste my 104-page thesis into a great typing analyzer found here: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/ and these are the results. Also, this document contained MANY special characters and unusual words; this needs to be considered, as it actually skews the results in favor of QWERTY because the simplified keyboard layouts are optimized for common letter combinations. I decided to include Colemak due to several mentions in this thread as well as its improved practicality with use in Windows. I may add the images of the graphs later. I am behind an Imgur-unfriendly firewall at the moment.
Overall Travel Distance of the Fingers:
+ Show Spoiler +QWERTY: 4347.2 Meters
Dvorak: 2999.9 Meters
Colemak: 2808.6 Meters
Here we can see the massive difference Dvorak or Colemak will make over a lengthy period of typing. The graph (I will likely post later) for QWERTY is atrocious. The QWERTY distances traveled by the fingers of the left hand (weaker hand of most people) far outweigh the distances of the right. Dvorak and Colemak are the reverse of this.
Repetitive stress injuries could be aggravated by increased use. Increased use is bad. QWERTY increases use (distance traveled) of nearly every finger; therefor one could make the logical leap that QWERTY is a bad layout to use if you have repetitive stress injuries.
Other Categories:
+ Show Spoiler +Home Row Usage (the easiest row to use):
QWERTY: 24.7%
Dvorak: 50.0%
Colemak: 52.7%
Top Row Usage:
QWERTY: 35.7%
Dvorak: 19.7%
Colemak: 13.0%
Bottom Row Usage (most difficult row associated with longest response delay):
QWERTY: 20.9%
Dvorak: 11.9%
Colemak: 15.6%
Consecutive Finger Use (one finger used in succession-same letter presses excluded):
QWERTY: 5.8%
Dvorak: 2.8%
Colemak: 1.9%
Consecutive Hand and Thumb Use (how often a hand types more than one letter-same letter presses excluded):
QWERTY: 31.4% (HOLY !@#$)
Dvorak: 18.0%
Colemak: 27.1% (still kinda bad)
Conclusion:
+ Show Spoiler +QWERTY appears to be outperformed in every “stress” category. I cannot make claims that Dvorak or Colemak will make you a faster typist, but I can support the claim that it will impose less stress on you if you are a typist—and it can even help ease your repetitive stress injuries as it did mine. If you do not type much, making a switch will likely not benefit you at all.
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Here is an interesting read on the subject, from Reason.com:
http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors/3
The article basically demolishes the arguments that QWERTY won by luck or by being the first mover, as well as taking to task the assumptions that Dvorak is highly superior
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^^ This post really did nothing but reaffirm my bold statement. The article listed a few studies that compared speeds only. It did not involve incidence of repetitive stress injuries with either layout with long term use, nor did it disclose fully the methods used in the studies. I realize that these types of studies would be incredibly difficult to standardize and control, but that is something that needs to be acknowledged on both ends. "Financial stake" is also not an argument, as it applies to everyone and not just to Dvorak.
Here are the logical connections I am making: excessive finger movement aggravates repetitive stress injury, therefor QWERTY is bad because it maximizes finger travel into absurdity.
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On May 09 2013 06:34 GeneralStan wrote:Here is an interesting read on the subject, from Reason.com: http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors/3The article basically demolishes the arguments that QWERTY won by luck or by being the first mover, as well as taking to task the assumptions that Dvorak is highly superior
The first study on the page you linked is horrible. How is that guy a scientist?
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I switched to colemak about a year ago. I'm up to 100+wpm, my peak with QWERTY was ~120. Colemak is probably the best for reduced stress as it's designed specifically for reduced finger movement. Most functional keys remain the same so you don't have to relearn ctrl+c/v etc.
You can't expect faster speeds with any layout vs one you've been using your whole life unless you commit a substantial amount of time to it. I switched due to hand a wrist pain, and since I've had a much more comfortable experience when typing. My QWERTY speed has dropped significantly, ~80wpm, so I try to never use it. I take a portable version of colemak with me to school so I can use it there when writing papers, etc.
Imagine the speeds you could hit training on Dvorak/QWERTY from the start. We all learn QWERTY growing up so switching becomes bothersome. It's really unfortunate that we don't teach kids a healthier method of typing.
I think it would be interesting to try some of the really crazy configurations available. I did quite a bit of looking into them when deciding what to switch to. Part of the draw to Colemak is that it keeps in mind people coming from QWERTY and leaves the most common shortcuts as is, making it just a little easier to learn. Maybe I'll switch to something full blown in the future, I don't know
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EPT
