I have used dvorak for around 15 years now, and I'm very happy with it. Took me 2-3 weeks to type as fast as in QWERTY, and hands feel way more relaxed and easy.<p>For those who are afraid that it will somehow affect QWERTY typing speed, such fears are totally unfounded, I can type QWERTY as easily as I could before, just with some more strain compared to Dvorak.<p>That said:<p>- for developers, the typing speed is not the productivity bottleneck, so you are unlikely to see any real gains<p>- hotkeys are generally a MESS, especially if you use 2 languages on a system. More so on Windows. Less so on Ubuntu.
The point about programming languages is fairly irrelevant; the truth is that basically all layouts are bad for programmers, since they inevitably put special characters at the margins, which are hard to reach. I have a short pinkie so it's extra hard for me.<p>The answer is to use a meta key to add a layer dedicated to those - CapsLock is great for that. I did that last year [0], although I now wish I had that meta-key available on the right side too (I don't want to mess with the traditional Ctrl and Alt, too many programs have shortcuts hard-bound to those). With that extra layer, you can go to town and use the home row for the stuff you really need in your preferred language(s).<p>As for simple text layouts, I never warmed to Dvorak but picked up Colemak very quickly, and now I just can't look back.<p>[0] <a href="http://blog.pythonaro.com/2020/06/better-access-to-special-characters.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.pythonaro.com/2020/06/better-access-to-special-c...</a>
Seems like a pretty good analysis. I've been using Dvorak for 20+ years also. The keyboard shortcuts thing is annoying, though I hadn't heard about the wrist strain they cause. I didn't see this discussed, but I actually find the fact that Colemak shares more keys with QWERTY to be a problem for learning if you already know QWERTY (even though that might be the biggest strength). Dvorak only shares the "A" and "M" with QWERTY, but typing those letters always confused my brain the most when learning, and sometimes I'd fall right back into QWERTY in a really frustrating way.<p>I switched to Dvorak because of wrist strain/RSI issues. I was in pretty serious wrist pain and now I rarely have any. It probably wouldn't have been worth it otherwise, but that was a huge benefit to me. I'm not sure if other things would've helped since I didn't try a lot of other approaches first.
Xah first wrote this over a decade ago.<p>He’s had some RSI issues, and the real problem is simply typing in any form.<p>I remember reading several of his articles thinking that surely within a decade, we’d have better voice assist for programming.<p>Tavis Rudd’s demo looked promising in 2013:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI</a><p>I’m not sure what’s the best solution. Here are a few that I known of:<p><a href="https://serenade.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://serenade.ai/</a><p><a href="https://talonvoice.com/" rel="nofollow">https://talonvoice.com/</a><p><a href="https://voxhub.io/silvius" rel="nofollow">https://voxhub.io/silvius</a>
I taught myself Colemak last summer, as a pandemic project. If anyone is interested in learning, I recommend the "Tarmak" transitional layouts [1].<p>It's 5 intermediate layouts to transition from QWERTY to Colemak. Each only changes a few keys. So, rather than 1 big change (where you basically can't touch-type for a month) you have 5 little changes that you can learn over a weekend each.<p>[1] <a href="https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1858-learn-colemak-in-steps-with-the-tarmak-layouts/" rel="nofollow">https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1858-learn-colemak-in-steps-...</a>
I've been a happy Colemak user since 2012. One of the first things I do when I get a new computer is rearrange the physical keys, which is a significant advantage of Apple non-butterfly keyboards. [1]<p>Aside from less overall movement while typing, Colemak keeps many common keyboard shortcuts the same. The first few hours are very frustrating, but the overall time-to-competence is short. There's a lot of upside and little downside.<p>I wrote about the process of learning Colemak in my book on skill acquisition, and posted a summary of the process and the tools/techniques I used on the book's website. [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/joshkaufman/status/1334632614368583680" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/joshkaufman/status/1334632614368583680</a><p>[2] <a href="https://first20hours.com/typing/" rel="nofollow">https://first20hours.com/typing/</a>
Do people really type non-stop long enough to make any of the speed gains actually significant? Even when I was writing my dissertation I would rarely type more than a couple sentences at a time and even then I often had to back space because of a typo or something.<p>If you have some kind of RSI and it helps then it would make sense but at least for me it doesn't make sense for the way I type.
I prefer the quantitative approach taken by Carpalx [1].<p>This analysis finds that Dvorak and Colemak are both substantially better than QWERTY, but Colemak has the edge.<p>[1] <a href="http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?popular_alternatives" rel="nofollow">http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?popular_alternatives</a>
As long as you do not use QWERTY, you'll be fine :)<p>I have used Colemak for the last 12 years and have never looked back. I started learning Dvorak, but at the time I was using the ctrl+Z/C/V quite much and Colemak became my compromise. Now that I use Vim, the argument about the Z/C/V is not as important anymore. EDIT: Oh, I also used the Q/W (quit, close window) quite much back then because I was using a mac. Still use these in Sway to this day.<p>I also really like that there is a Norwegian Colemak-layout available in Linux by default. Not sure if this is the case in Windows or macOS these days, but it wasn't 12 years ago.
Interesting data. I’ll just mention that if you are looking at changing layouts and are concerned about cut, copy, paste and undo, don’t be. Within a year it won’t bother you to be typing X, C and V with different fingers.
I've been using Colemak for 5+ years now. I spent a lot of time researching layouts before I committed to one. My conclusion on efficiency was (1) nobody really knows because everyone types differently (2) raw speed isn't important since most typing I do involves pauses to think.<p>Dvorak and Colemak would both solve a huge problem for me. Qwerty requires a lot of extreme row movements that were causing me a lot of hand pain. Both Dvorak and Colemak move a significant amount of typing to the home row and eliminate a lot of the movement directly between the extremes of the rows. Choosing an extreme, anecdote, a word like minimum alternates between the top and bottom row between every letter on Qwerty. On Colemak, minimum there's only one extreme jump u => m. I've found that this tends to hold true for much of what I type.<p>I personally choose Colemak because I liked the transition process a bit easier. The base layout is closer to Qwerty and you can pick a few keys to transition at a time.
I use Dvorak on keyboards and qwerty on touch screens. I am pretty happy with both, but it doesn’t matter a lot regarding my eventual wrist or tendinitis pain.<p>What’s is important for me is drinking water sufficiently, regular exercise, a good posture, a good keyboard then finally the layout.<p>I picked up Dvorak for no real reason 10 years ago; I kept up with it but would not really recommend it, specially because of its intense reliance on the right pinky.<p>I don’t know much about Colemak.
Learning Dvorak was one of the best decisions I've made in my career/life. It took a few weeks of effort to get back up to parity with Qwerty but it's paid off for <i>decades</i>.
I’ve been happily using Colemak for 10+ years but recently decided to give Halmak [1] a try. Only a month in so I’m still slow, but it feels really good.<p>For programming, though, the best decision I’ve made was to add a numpad and common symbols [2] under a second “shift” key to keep my hands on the home row.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/MadRabbit/halmak" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MadRabbit/halmak</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://andrew.kvalhe.im/+qit9y6o8uodxpiqezpxcaw7css6gtfkp" rel="nofollow">https://andrew.kvalhe.im/+qit9y6o8uodxpiqezpxcaw7css6gtfkp</a>
I used dvorak for about a year and a half. I had a lot of fun, but my old left hand pain (qwerty) became right hand pain, and the right hand pain was worse. I got a split keyboard, and that alone didn't seem to help.<p>Now I'm a couple months into using workman, which notably has a very balanced hand usage. About 50/50, unlike qwerty which is mostly left, or dvorak which is mostly right. IIRC colemak and qgmlwb are similarly unbalanced, as it's not a goal of theirs to fix that.<p>My best speed in qwerty was about 160, I got to the 140s in dvorak, and I'm 100-110 in workman at the moment.<p>I'm not sure if I'll switch again. The balanced hand usage is a rare trait. If not for that issue, I was thinking of trying the halmak layout.<p>I'm a little sad that workman is qwerty-like since I'd already bothered to unlearn that with dvorak, and so I had no qualms about most keys being different. I actually get some weird typos now, like typing "sad" instead of "saw" because of similar placement to qwerty on the left.<p>I also change the layout on my phone with anysoftkeyboard. I've had at least 3 people tell me it's pointless on a touchscreen, but I like the consistency, and the layouts were already made and easy to switch to.<p>If you use colemak, I hear the mod-dh variant is better, but workman solves the same problem, so I'd recommend just using it if you aren't already years into colemak.
I use a modified English Dvorak layout where I put symbols that I use often to a nicer position and added Umlauts so that I can type German. For example Alt+j (the key) produces { and Alt+k produces }. Modifying keyboard layouts is simple enough that I don't see why I shouldn't adapt mine to suit me best. I don't type on other people's computers often enough that it matters that I have to hunt and peck there.
Been using Dvorak full time since 2004, very happy with it, never looked back at QWERTY. I wrote a long self-interview here: <a href="https://www.nayuki.io/page/i-type-in-dvorak" rel="nofollow">https://www.nayuki.io/page/i-type-in-dvorak</a><p>One new point that I haven't worked into the article is the fact that many keyboard shortcuts require a Right Ctrl key or else they can't be done on one hand. At the same time, many laptops on the market omit the Right Ctrl key, to my utter frustration. Manufacturers need to stop messing with keyboard layouts! Even my humble 13-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X220 from year 2012 had a pretty good layout while being compact, while newer machines keep making keyboards worse despite having the same physical dimensions.
So, for RSI, I have an alternative hypothesis. My issues are only with my right hand. I'm pretty sure the problem is not QWERTY, it's just the ]'/ keys. Having that one extra column of keys to reach across in order to get to the enter and shift keys means my right hand experiences a lot more wrist movement and stretching than my left hand does.<p>(I find hitting the enter key on an ANSI keyboard to be irritating enough that I'm frankly impressed that anyone tolerates ISO keyboards.)<p>I'm currently giving an ultra-minimalist keyboard, the Atreus, a shot. I'm still in the adjustment period, but it seems to be promising, and a much smaller adjustment than abandoning QWERTY entirely. Bonus points for not being the size of an aircraft carrier, like most ergo keyboards are.
Colemak user since I taught myself one summer (2012) by spending the first 20 minutes after waking up typing in vim-tutor. I made the switch because I could not stop looking at the keys on QWERTY keyboards no matter what I tried even with blank keys I would look down out of habit. I tried Dvorak and it felt so unnatural. The common key letters for commands were completely in foreign places that I could not get used to at all. After 2 wks of barely getting past 30 wpm on Dvorak I switched to colemak I was able to beat my QWERTY typing speed after only 2 wks of studying and now I can type 200+ words per minutes with over 90% accuracy thinking about spelling slows be down more than anything else.<p>If you are under 30 I suggest you give an alt keyboard layout a shot. Older than that and the time to learn Colemak/Dvorak vs just improving your QWERTY speed/accuracy might not be worth it.
Xah Lee’s site and videos were really handy for me, i fired a few $$$ his way to say thanks for his efforts.<p>My journey went:<p><pre><code> 1. Qwerty
2. Dvorak (liked the left right alternation, the fact its available on all OS’s, disliked the common keys on weaker fingers)
2. Colemak mod dk (don’t like rolling, alternating is just more natural, easy to go faster)
3. Halmak - favourite of the lot
4. Halmak + home row mod keys
5. Qwerty + gacs
6. Qwerty + gasc - just worked better than gacs for me
</code></pre>
Then there was the detour through hardware, zsa moonlander was the most interesting. Very nice key caps.<p>The bad news is that it’s all been for naught. I’m back to touch typing qwerty on a g915.<p>I am using AHK and mimicing Xah Lee’s external keypad idea with the num lock toggle - undo, redo, cut copy paste, all single key actions rather than chords.
I use Colemak and agree with the bias towards rolling on single hand (Colemak) vs alternating hands (Dvorak). Rolling doesn't feel natural to me.<p>However, Colemak was much easier for me to learn though (I tried Dvorak first), and the ZXVC in same spot without tweaking shortcuts is a plus.
Good to discuss, but I'm not 100% sure about some of the points here.<p>- The `h` problem is purely about moving your index finger, so I don't think it makes sense to talk about the bigram being popular. The relevant number is just how many `h`s people have to type in general<p>- Shortcuts staying the same: saying that there exists a variant of Dvorak created to do this too is a huge point in favour of Colemak. The point is so good that people modified a 70 year old layout to match it! How popular is this variant?<p>- Saying that Colemak is bad because of Vim, then saying it's good because of CapsLock/Backspace BUT that doesn't really count because you can also do this reprogramming with Dvorak: can you not also change Vim? Maybe this is much harder
Does anybody have recommendations for a layout that works well for a split keyboard (Moonlander, in my case, as and when it arrives)? Learning a split configuration will require work, so may as well learn a better layout at the same time.
I used Dvorak for a couple years before switching back in the mid-2010s. Back then my QWERTY speed was about 120 wpm, and I never got close to that on Dvorak, but really the only time I can even think at 120 wpm is when arguing on the internet so maybe that's not altogether a bad thing. I was never as fast, but typing was a lot more comfortable in general. I ended up switching back due to work computer restrictions (grad student) at the time.<p>I just switched back to Dvorak, and while it's been a solid six years, it's coming back reasonably quickly :) I forgot how much I enjoyed this layout.
[I don't use either layout and don't have much wrist strain / any RSI]<p>I wonder how much of the benefit from using these alternate layouts is due solely to the layout, as opposed to some combination of the layout and better awareness of correct ergonomics, using stretching and warmup techniques, etc.<p>Hard to quantify of course. Would love to hear from anyone that switched to one of these layouts but didn't make any other changes in their wrist health otherwise.
I'm a happy user of Colemak for over a year. Although it took me a few months to get used to it.<p>One disadvantage though is, now I have trouble typing on QWERTY.
I've been using Colemak for 6 years now. Although not faster, it's much more comfortable, especially in the wrists. Along with frequently switching between mousing, a tented+split keyboard, and remapping programming punctuation on a third layer with QMK, I'm very glad I made the investment to reduce the chance of developing an RSI.
I'm a happy colemak user of 3 years. The h argument is pretty interesting. As an English only writer and a programmer, I did not personally find the remaining arguments compelling. But, this goes to show how complicated the selection process is, and appreciate the analysis nonetheless.
As dictation technology gets better I suspect the keyboard will not be as relevant for entering English text.<p>One area where dictation does not work well is writing code.<p>Question: Is there a keyboard optimized for typing programming languages rather than for typing English?
> There are Dvorak with QWERTY-shortcuts layout, that comes with Linux<p>This is not accurate really. This used to be the default but at least with Ubuntu/Debian you need 3rd part software. Which means this statement holds true for windows also.
My suspicion is that whatever efficiency gains are possible are going to be wiped out by the difficulty of learning a new system and then also not being able to readily have your preferred layout everywhere.
It would have helped if they compared Dvorak to Colemak mod dh variant. It addresses many of the issues raised here by moving D below T and H below N, and moving the more rare K and G as left-right motions.