I used to average around 90 wpm.with qwerty, and i switched to dvorak in middle school. In a month or two I got back to speed, and now in highschool I easily average over 100. If you want to learn a new layout I think earlier is better.
@Denmire | Of course he's nervous, he's pretty much claiming that the usual explanations provided by most Dvorak, Bépo, Colemak and alternative keyboard layout users and, well, all keyboard enthusiasts, are nothing more than baseless assumptions AND that the first layout of Qwerty simply results from willy-nilly subjective choices of their respective creators that the entire Western world have been learning or teaching for over a century. This is more than enough to call the ire of many touch(y) typists. To be honest, the lack of hard, factual evidence does provide grounds to consider his claims as plausible and I'm keeping an open mind over the keyboard enthusiasts' arguments now. However, the fact is I really need more documentation and sources to really consider Hanno's study as comprehensive enough. At the end of the day, if you just take out the core arguments of his keynote, it mostly consists in telling "this myth is not legitimate enough because X", X being sometimes really questionable. Take for instance the Typewriter brand argument which supposedly cannot be a reason for the Qwerty keyboard layout ‘because the hyphen is missing on that same line’. Uh, ‘I mean, seriously?’ Right on the fly I can think of a good dozen explanations that would justify moving the hyphen out of the way while not even being documented. Besides, claiming a theory is not plausible isn't exactly the same as proving it absolutely cannot be and Hanno doesn't explain how come these (supposedly) fake reasons became more popular than other plausible theories, that's only half debunking the myths here. A little note was also brought by Dvorak himself in his book Typewriting Behavior about the typing speed being increased by… 5%. Not exactly the biggest jump in the History of touch typing. (Source: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZnUBl90tayI.html) The major benefit of Dvorak is clearly in the prevention of RSI, which is actually a very real and underrated corporate problem.
Interesting! But, while debunking the "colliding needles" QWERTY theory the presenter doesn't consider the difficulty of isolating *all* frequently-used letter pairs from one another, as opposed to *most*. It's harder due to constraints imposed by frequent letters belonging to many such pairs simultaneously (e belongs to 11 pairs, a and t to 7 pairs each, etc.) In spite of this obstacle, all but a couple of pairs are, in fact, successfully isolated. Another question is how likely is this outcome with random letter placement? I wrote a python sim script where the 16 letters from these thirty pairs are assigned at random to 45 equally-spaced slots (similar to the slide @6:00). My sim gets these 5-lowest distances between 30 frequent pairs *on average*: {10, 15, 21, 26, 38} (mean=21.93). The actual slide shows these 5-lowest distances: {16, 25, 33, 33, 49} (mean=31.2). This seems significantly higher, and indeed my sim observes a value of 31.2 or higher in just 7% of random trials, which arguably makes this look like an imperfect human effort to separate the letters.
Very interesting and informative talk. I particularly appreciated the way Hanno measured his progress in learning DVORAK and the pros and cons of doing so. Thanks very much!
Excellent evidence-based explanation of the origin of the qwerty keyboard. Great to hear some of the practical justifications for why some keys were moved and how some of the keys have stayed in their original 1868 locations (A, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, V, X, Z).
Thank you very much for this research about the history of typing and the comparison between QWERTY and DVORAK as well as sharing your experience of switching to DVORAK as I am able to decide whether to learn or not learn DVORAK depending on facts. It's really appreciated.
DVORAK myth #1: It takes a year to become proficient in DVORAK. (You get faster when you aren't switching back and forth all the time.) DVORAK myth #2: You forget QWERTY when you learn DVORAK. (Just like you forget English when you learn Spanish, or forget how to tie your shoes when you learn how to tie a tie...)
Myth 2 is actually true to a degree, atleast if you stay on the same keyboard. I've already heard multiple people say that they have difficulties using qwerty after switching to e.g. Colemak, and that makes sense as most of the typing speed comes from muscle memory, and muscle memory can be overwritten if the brain has no way to know when it should use which layout - in this case it's better to use a very different keyboard(e.g. a split ergonomic keyboard) for a different layout like Dvorak so the brain can automatically diffferentiate between layouts just by feel. "Just like you forget English when you learn Spanish" Polyglots actually do have difficulties with e.g. spontaneusly coming up with the right word in a specific language. I can attest to that, it happens regularly that I only remember the english word for something and then need to think for a few minutes to remember the word in my native language again. And the more languages you know the higher the chance you're mixing up some words. Besides, Dvorak/Colemak etc. aren't that great really. You need at least a couple of months to even come near the old typing speed with qwerty and aren't really faster afterwards. Wanna know what's a real upgrade? Stenography. This is proven to work better as it's used for decades in professional real-time transcription, it's healthier for the hands as Dvorak etc. and you can reach speeds beyond 200wpm(in fact the record is at 360wpm).
ive use dvorak for 1 month and still have 10 wpm more to back my speed. someone struggling with the shortcut and they have to switch the layout first to qwerty, so i use custom keyboard 60% to make a new shortcut using custom fn i placed on capslock, and change the layout to dvorak onboard, when i have to use school pc, or office pc, i just have to connect my keyboard to the pc.
Hi, I’ve been learning ColemakDH for the last couple of months. I am interested why one would go for dvorak and not colemak. According to the heatmaps colemac should be better. So why not go for what seems to be objectively better?
I wonder if you've gotten any faster since you posted this video... The Dvorak system seems more efficient. Have you tried Colemak? I'm hearing a general consensus that Dvorak is preferred for programmers (symbols and underscores) and Colemak might be better for people who type mostly words, like transcriptionists. Also, Dvorak alternates hand use while Colemak makes your fingers roll.
Right now I'm exactly as fast on DVORAK as I am on QWERTY - which was my main goal all along. I can still use both, but QWERTY makes my fingers hurt in less than 5 minutes. With DVORAK I can go on for hours without any discomfort. I have never tried Colemak before, but from what I've heard it not that hard to learn for a QWERTY typist. Perhaps I'll try it some day.
Surprising talk about the DVORAK keyboard layout. I didn't know these things. Not sure if I'm ever going to learn DVORAK. Don't have a year to crank up my typing speed.
Only took me 3-4 weeks to learn DVORAK in my 30's. I had no choice - my fingers were killing me from typing. (I'm 60 now) To say it takes a year to get your speed up - I'd call that an exaggeration. Maybe for some but not most. My fingers haven't bothered me since the switch, and I'm faster as a side bonus.
Agreed. I thought my career in software engineering was over. I had SO much pain, wrist rests, etc... After learning Dvorak, it's all fine. 6 years now of painless typing. If I *have* to use QWERTY for any reason then it's contrived and involves twisting and excruciating finger positions.
Learn Colemak, it was invented in 2006 and can be learned in much quicker time than Dvorak, because only 17 keys change places instead of Dvorak's 33. It retains QWERTY's bottom row (mostly) which makes it programmer friendly. The more people we get using it the more likely it will become a recognized layout. You won't know how good it is until you find yourself gliding over words without even moving your fingers off of home row.
Bollocks. Dvorak is endlessly superior to Colemak. Through the years there have been world championship WPM records set using Dvorak and THOUSANDS of people saved their typing careers using it. The whole basis for Colemak is WRONG.
Surely the fact that he has tested the distance between letters in the cage and they are close together doesn't prove that jamming prevention wasn't the reason for the layout, it may have just been poor implementation
Glidden did make the suggestion that it should be designed to prevent jamming, other than that there is no evidence. I think QWERTY was a mix-match of several influences. This video doesn't talk about Denmore, who was their financial backer. He had his own input on how the layout should be and even hired a stenographer.
@Leandro Ricardo Qwerty 80WPM Dvorak 3 days 10WPM How long does it take to get into rhythm as if you were using qwerty? I already know where all the letters are by heart and without looking. But to put together sentences it took a long time.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Dvorak. The elitism is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical key placements most of the complexity will go over a typical typist's head. There’s also Dvorak's methodical outlook, which is deftly woven into it's characterization- his personal philosophy draws heavily from the Typewriting Behavior literature, for instance. The superior typists understand this stuff; they have the finger agility to truly appreciate the depths of these complexity, to realize that they’re not just superior- they say something deep about ergonomics. As a consequence people who dislike Dvorak are truly sub 160 WPM peasants- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the complexity in Dvorak’s existential catchphrase “ " < > P Y F ” which itself is a cryptic reference to Reddit's hentai-loving, neckbeard-scratching, fedora-tipping, intensive breathers, and phaggots who don't lift users. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as August Dvorak’s genius wit unfolds itself on their keyboards. What fools.. how I pity them.
None. Dig a bit into the topic, check the leaderboards for the fastest typists in the world, and you'll see that most of them use QWERTY, with a tiny handful of Dvorak and Colemak somewhere in the rankings. The simplest logic: if these layouts were actually superior to QWERTY, the average Dvorak typist would destroy any QWERTY typist with basic effort, or at the very least, every "fastest typer" scoreboard would be dominated by Dvorak or Colemak users. Spoiler: it's not the case. Conclusion: thankfully, we have a range of choice regarding keyboard layouts, but don't make the silly mistake of thinking that using either of them will make you a faster typist. It's all preference.
They used QWERTY to remove the problem of typewriter's needles colliding into each other and thus slowing down writing speed. They spread out most used letters in order to minimize them colliding into each other
