Comment by eggie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eggie | Hacker News Reader

The author doesn't even learn dvorak before deciding that it doesn't work for them. They mention don't like how it behaves on the consonant-heavy, qwerty-optimized commands used in unix. (I have to say this is a fair evaluation, but in practice the layout somehow doesn't encourage RSI despite the apparent awkwardness of typing unix commands on it.)

In result they don't seem to understand that the dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands (they do mention this) and inward rolling motion (they don't seem to understand this). You can really feel this when typing, and it makes typing downright enjoyable.

I wouldn't be surprised if much of the added distance relative to colemak and workman is probably reaching for the "i" with the left pointer finger. These are the easiest movements to make repeatedly, and in my experience the home row horizontal movement that they try to optimize out of workman isn't really important.

People should be free and encouraged to make their own layouts to beat RSI. But, scientific measurement of what is better seems basically impossible...

In the author's defense, I came to the same conclusion using Dvorak when I was a teenager learning unix and programming. I switched back to QWERTY for a while, but around 8 years ago I learned about Colemak and switched and have been very happy with it since.

One thing I like about Colemak is that it is close enough to QWERTY that I can still type on QWERTY by looking at the keys and not look like a complete fool. Dvorak is so different that it completely rewires the brain and it's very difficult to switch between it and QWERTY. That's been my experience at least.

After switching back and forth between Dvorak and QWERTY for multi-hour work sessions maybe three times I found that I could do so instantly. I learned touch typing on QWERTY very young so maybe this is why it was easy for me. I often use a keyboard without any labels on the keys so it's always touch typing no matter the layout I pick. Also, I don't really get anxious about things that slow down my text entry, so I tolerated my own interface experiments without worry. I've coded and done data analysis using my thumbs on a cell phone. Switching keyboard layouts really isn't so bad by comparison. To each their own.

I find it surprising that much of the current effort in keyboard layouts is in finding things that are better than QWERTY but similar enough to it to not be scary. I am completely unmotivated by this. If someone could convince me that their layout was a kind of super-Dvorak, and scientifically enhanced the same features that I enjoy about it then I would try it out in a heartbeat.

> dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands and inward rolling motion

True; Dvorak seems to always score worse on tests that don't weight distance by ease.

Yes, that was my impression too. I find Dvorak so natural, with the alternation and the inwards rolling motion. Plus it's already supported by every OS ever.

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