I always knew that there was a supposedly better layout for the keyboard than the standard QWERTY. I never payed much attention to this, as I knew it would take weeks before I was able to type at a pace that was fast enough to keep up with my current work. Well, since it was Easter holiday, I decided to try. what would I stand to loose? if it didn’t work out, I would slow down a little with QWERTY, but I would regain that quickly. This java applet was the selling point for me:
(Click to enlarge)
Well, I got myself a typing program called stamina. I like it a lot, especially since it is free, and the creator has a sense of humor. You can have playlists for music when you’re practicing, you can change all sorts of neat stuff, the help file is really funny, and you can’t beat the price. I’ve never used this type of program before, so I don’t know how this compares to others. I must say, it does have a pretty nice interface, and it helped me a lot to learn where all those letters are. I’m not writing this post in Dvorak yet, as what I’ve written so far probably would have taken 30 minutes. However, I know where every letter is mostly, and I can type at 11 words per minute. Not very fast. Hopefully, by the end of next week, all future posts will be written in Dvorak.
Now if you want to know why Dvorak is better, here is some info.
- In Dvorak, the characters used most are put on the home row. Why does QWERTY have a semicolon? I don’t think I’ve ever used that at all in my posts.
- In QWERTY, the letters that you use quite a bit are farther away. If mark twain wrote his book”Roughing It” in QWERTY, his fingers would have traveled 22,801.9 meters. In Dvorak, his fingers would have traveled 12,885.8 meters.
- It helps reduce the rate of hand related problems, as well as stress and fatigue.
- The same hand is used a less percentage of times Dvorak. Meanwhile, in QWERTY you have to type more words using the same hand, and the same finger as well. Sure, there are words that the layouts has certain problems with (try Star wars or sweater dresses in QWERTY), but Dvorak has lower instances of this happening.
- A common perception is that QWERTY was made up to slow down typists. Whether or not this was the purpose I am not sure of, but it is one of the many arguments towards learning Dvorak.
Now to see whether or not Dvorak is any good, I’m going to post my with QWERTY and Dvorak:
I can write 63 words per minute with QWERTY
I can write 7 words per minute with Dvorak
It took me around 3 hours to learn by memory where the keys are. I can type without looking at the keyboard.
This was an informal test, and there a many factors that could have affected this, but it seems pretty close to what it really is. As I practice more and more, I’ll have to stop using QWERTY, as this will slow me down. I’ll be posting my results later on throughout this and next week. For those willing to switch to Dvorak, here are some useful resources:
keybr - I used this to see how fast I was at typing. Not that great for learning where the keys are, but it seems useful for practicing.
siteuri - analyzes text and gives statistics such as how often the same hand is used.
colemak - a website with another keyboard layout. Less sophisticated but easier to understand than the previous analyzer.
wikipedia - Background history for those interested.
Stamina - Software for helping you learn and type faster.
