Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nadya | Hacker News Reader

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That is especially true of Dvorak, seeing as much of the 'original research' by Dvorak himself was conveniently lost. I agree most gains are 'marginal' but some are still larger gains than others. Personally, Dvorak did nothing for me - and most gains I see people making is because by learning a new keyboard layout they finally learned how to type which is where most of the benefits actually come from. It doesn't matter what layout you switch to, switching to any new layout and learning to type will improve your speed and comfort.

I knew how to type in QWERTY (140-150wpm) and switched to Dvorak where I quickly got up to speed (130-140wpm) but found very little improvement by any other measure. So I switched to Colemak, which I find far more comfortable than QWERTY and I'm capable of the same speed (140-150wpm).

My biggest problem with using Colemak is nobody else does and I'm not going to convince everyone to relearn how to type. So I use Colemak at home and QWERTY at work.

I have used Dvorak everywhere for about 15 years, including at work (with a hardware-switchable keyboard so others can drive too).

I was around 90wpm on qwerty when I switched and am similar on dvorak. The big advantage in my mind is not speed, but comfort. The times when I've had to type on a qwerty board all day, my wrists and hands ache at the end of the day. Whenever I use a coworker's computer I feel like I'm doing finger gymnastics.

Would you suggest I learn Colemak? How does it compare, comfort-wise, to dvorak?

After 15 years I would say stick with Dvorak. I didn't stick with it longer than a few months, as I was experimenting with alternative layouts. I found Colemak worked better for me; more comfortable and I prefer rolling fingers over alternating hands.

I don't follow touch typing very strictly, for example my left index finger just typed the `y` in `strictly` because it requires less hand movement than moving my right hand from `l` to `y` since my left index was already on `t`.

If you have any blog posts or example of something you type, throw it in [0] this analyzer, which I find fairly accurate. You'll see that Colemak/Dvorak are nearly always on top. In your post, Dvorak wins with a slight edge over Colemak. In my post, Colemak wins with a slight edge over Dvorak. I find them to be pretty equal and it comes down to how you type.

[0] http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer

keep in mind that normal keyboard activity is completely different than typing a piece of text from the first letter to the last letter in one go. being efficient with navigation, moving text around, and so on, is just as important, so invest in learning vim, emacs or any other editor that makes sense for you. unfortunately keyboard layout analysers do not capture those key presses, making the results very skewed.

among some other differences, colemak has better shortcut compatibility. a z x c v are on their qwerty position so "select all", undo, cut, copy, and paste are one-handed shortcuts for which many people have muscle memory.

if you are using dvorak, switching to colemak may not be worth it.

the bottom line is that any layout that is not qwerty will likely be an improvement. differences between alternative layouts are small compared to the differences with qwerty.

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