

QWERTY Must Die, by Bryce - kirillzubovsky
http://bryce.vc/post/19344485892/qwerty-must-die

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pkamb
Using "QWERTY" as the noun here instead of "typewriter-like keyboards" is
confusing everyone. He's arguing against physical keyboards, not a specific
keyboard layout.

(Typed in Dvorak)

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sheraz
I find that overly optimistic that qwerty will go away by the time his
18-month-old is an adult. QWERTY has been with us for over 100 years, and I
see little need to throw it out.

It is a good, functional, accessible, and consistent tool for putting words to
screen. I can't understand why so many techies are so eager to throw
everything out the window.

~~~
prodigal_erik
QWERTY has no rhyme or reason and must be laboriously memorized (and I say
this having reached ~80 WPM years ago). It's even been claimed that it's
deliberately _de-_ optimized for our natural languages to accommodate legacy
hardware (pre-Selectric typewriters). If gestures are the future, text entry
should take advantage of the flexibility of virtual keys and offer better
Fitts' Law targets for more frequent letters or digraphs. I like Swype well
enough but I can imagine something derived from pie menus being a big step up.

~~~
sheraz
Yes, it is laborious and must be memorized -- just like our multiplication
tables back in 2nd grade. Learning is not always fun, nor should it be.

~~~
mistercow
Yes, but the difference is that multiplication is a fact about logic, not a
contrived interface to obsolete hardware. Multiplication tables _do_ have
rhyme and reason to them. We don't memorize our 21-times tables because as
soon as we pass 9, we switch to a methodical system with a simple, general
system of rules.

It is pretty hard to swallow that something developed a hundred and forty
years ago for interacting with box of springs and levers is a close-to-optimal
text entry system.

~~~
dpark
Any keyboard will be a "contrived interface". The logical thing would be
alphabetical order for ease of learning, but that would be terrible for speed.
Alternatively, you could go with something like Dvorak, optimized for speed,
but at the end of the day Dvorak feels just as contrived, has the same awkward
learning curve, and the evidence that it's significantly faster than qwerty is
virtually nonexistent except for a couple of old studies whose results have
not been substantiated by newer studies.

~~~
DanBC
Dvorak is not faster, but it is significantly more comfortable.

At least, that's what a lot of people say. I'd love to see some decent
research. I guess it's hard to double blind for things like keyboard layouts.

~~~
mistercow
You could get a bunch of qwerty users/untrained typists and then train them to
use randomly assigned keyboard layouts. Once training is complete, you have
them type some long piece of text, and then fill out a questionnaire rating
various qualitative points like tiredness.

Finally, you do a statistical analysis to determine if layouts with more of
Dvorak's purportedly beneficial features are correlated with higher comfort
ratings. Of course, those features must be rigorously defined beforehand, and
you must properly blind yourself when doing the analysis.

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dfc
Do piano players ever discuss rearranging the keys + pedals on a piano?

(Not troll bait. Honest question.)

~~~
lbk
Yes , two categories :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard> These tackle the problem of
how the normal piano layout requires different motor-memories for the same
interval-patterns at different pitches . Janko and Wicki-Hayden are examples ,
as is layout of the chromatic button accordion .

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_keyboard> These are designed to work
for various other tunings than standard 12-tone tuning ; i think most of them
map some pitch-space to a hexagonal grid .

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shubber
The strongest argument he makes is that there's an impedance to text entry vs.
"tactile computing." Which seems pretty intuitive to me. With a keyboard a
user can generate tons more information (as opposed to raw data) than with
almost any other input hardware.

But you have to think about what information you're inputting. A GUI provides
an ongoing dialog that guides you through the interaction with the computer.
But if there's data that's unavailable a priori to the interface developer, a
keyboard is still the best way to enter it.

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pkamb
> _For the longest time I thought the answer would be speech to text, but the
> more I play with Siri and work around its shortcomings the less and less of
> a believer I become._

Really? You think Siri's (current) technical shortcomings are the major hurdle
for speech-to-text adoption?

Not the fact that no one wants to type out loud in their cubicle or coffee
shop?

~~~
DanBC
There are some specialist niches for speech to text. Medical notes are one
example.

I'm gently surprised that speech to text isn't better. There's so much
weaponisation of sound analysis that I thought the research would be there to
help programmers.

Also, I don't know where you drink coffee but there's a total arsehole in one
local coffee shop who's happy to bellow into his mobile phone.

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VMG
And let's all switch to Esperanto while we're at it.

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rgc5
dvorak

