Wow, that article makes Dvorak users seem like raving lunatics. I switched because I'm diagnosed with repetitive stress injuries and Dvorak helped a great deal. (I'm actually a bit slower with Dvorak than I was with QWERTY.)
But if you're doing most of your typing on a smartphone, you'll quickly have more pressing RSI issues...
I have no doubt that Dvorak works better for you, but I wonder if it's not so much the layout that makes a difference, but rather learning to type all over again while paying close attention to your hands allowed you to break bad habits.
I took a few typing classes in school as a kid, but of course didn't pay attention. Like a lot of people I learned qwerty by osmosis, not through proper training, and so I accumulated all sorts of terrible habits: reaching across, shifting with the same hand, etc. I got to be really fast but this was just amplifying the damage. Right about the time things were getting really painful I picked up vim. For me at least, it wasn't so much that vim (or Dvorak or whatever) really makes all the difference, it's just that it forces a clean break with your old muscle memory. And because the pain is the reason you're willing to put in the effort to re-learn, you're damn sure to learn it properly this time. That's all it took for me. No pain since, still on a standard rectangular qwerty keyboard.
I've been on Dvorak for a while now. Honestly, typing QWERTY on my iPhone isn't particularly difficult, as the muscle memory for the tiny on-screen keyboard seems to be different than that of my laptop keyboard. But it would be nice for Apple to offer a Dvorak option.
Agreed. I type in Dvorak and have an iPhone. The brain doesn't see desktop and mobile typing in the same way. I actually type faster and much more naturally in QWERTY on the iPhone than on a proper keyboard.
I'd love to see Apple ship a Dvorak layout with the iPhone, but I think one of the big barriers is how the iPhone keyboard is normally laid out.
Dvorak has two extra letters on the bottom row and more punctuation on top. In QWERTY they get rid of the punctuation on the bottom row and put shift and delete in the extra space.
Same here. On a keyboard, I touch type with ten fingers, and on my phone, I use two, which is pretty much how I stumbled along with QWERTY before I decided to learn Dvorak, so it really doesn't bother me at all.
I used Dvorak for two years but got tired of the mental context switching when working on other people's computers. That being said, after a while it definitely was faster. From that I learned something important: programmers rarely need to type fast.
There's plenty of things smart phones don't provide. If you want one of them, make it yourself. If you can't, get a more open platform. If you don't know how to program, pay someone who does. I don't think there's a device in existence that has every feature I want. Companies don't have time to put in everyone's pet feature. Your two options are 1) get over it and 2) do something about it.
Not quite -- there are plenty of other layouts designed for modern use, some of which were designed via genetic algorithm: <http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization>. Colemak is, however, one of the best I've seen which maintains most of the "standard" keyboard shortcuts.
I touch type Dvorak and I have no idea what the keyboard layout looks like. I use standard QWERTY keycaps. My fingers know, so I don't have to.
On the iPhone you're not using the home row and touch typing, you're peck typing either with one finger, or two thumbs on a soft keyboard that can reconfigure at will and guess what you're typing, but that has no physical feedback on position. Clearly something other than Qwerty or Dvorak, something designed for this technology is the way forward.
I think studies have shown that for simple touchscreen or stylus keyboards a simple A-Z grid outperforms Qwerty. I'm hoping the Android approach lets some innovation happen here.
With software keyboards it would make sense to offer alternative keyboard layouts. For physical keyboards the cost of producing different keypads is probably just too high for the small number of people using English non-QWERTY layouts. If someone wants to pay the premium though more power to them. The last time I took a typing test about a year ago I was doing 160WPM on QWERTY so I cannot accept there's any inherent limitation in the design that prevents fast input.
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I don't type with my fingers on the home row, but rather floating over the keyboard.
With querty the keys are far enough apart that I switch between hands, so while one hand is pressing one key, the other is getting the second one ready.
With dvorak I would sort of mentally "jam", since you can't get the next keystroke ready while typing the first.
I know I don't type in a conventional way, but I type very fast.
That's odd. Dvorak is specifically designed to make you alternate between the two hands, so that one hand can get ready to hit the next key while the other is typing the previous one.
This is achieved mainly by having all the vowels on the left hand, and the most used consonants on the right. Natural languages take care of ensuring a good alternation between consonants and vowels.
I've never tried DVORAK but from what I know, QWERTY was specifically designed so mechanical typewriters don't jam due the speed of typing. And if true, this reason alone means DVORAK is faster. Anyone can confirm or debunk this theory I've heard?
QWERTY was designed to prevent jams, but did so by physical separation of the keys, not by slowing the typist. In fact, separating keys increases typing speed by distributing the load over both hands -- try typing "fewer seats are west" to see how annoying placing letters together is.
It's been de-bunked before. The only studies suggesting that DVORAK was faster were done by the people who created the DVORAK layout. Their study was apparently also flawed.
The only people who don't like talking about why better solutions failed in the market place are free market fundamentalists. The source of all this alleged debunking was an article by economists:
I use Colemak, and I find that I can type on smartphones relatively easily.
I think when you switch to Colemak or Dvorak you probably want some base competence with QWERTY still just so you don't look like an idiot when you use other people's computers or whatever.
But if you're doing most of your typing on a smartphone, you'll quickly have more pressing RSI issues...