Keyboard Layout: Dvorak vs Colemak: is it Worthwhile to Improve the Dvorak Layout?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:21:53 -0700, Elena wrote:

> On 13 Giu, 06:30, Tim Roberts <t... at probo.com> wrote:
>> Studies have shown that even a
>> strictly alphabetical layout works perfectly well, once the typist is
>> acclimated.
> 
> Once the user is acclimated to move her hands much  more (about 40% more
> for Qwerty versus Dvorak), that is.

The actual physical cost of typing is a small part of coding. 
Productivity-wise, optimizing the distance your hands move is worthwhile 
for typists who do nothing but type, e.g. if you spend their day 
mechanically copying text or doing data entry, then increasing your 
typing speed from 30 words per minute (the average for untrained computer 
users) to 90 wpm (the average for typists) means your productivity 
increases by 200% (three times more work done).

I don't know if there are any studies that indicate how much of a 
programmer's work is actual mechanical typing but I'd be surprised if it 
were as much as 20% of the work day. The rest of the time being thinking, 
planning, debugging, communicating with customers or managers, reading 
documentation, testing, committing code, sketching data schemas on the 
whiteboard ... to say nothing of the dreaded strategy meetings.

And even in that 20% of the time when you are actively typing code, 
you're not merely transcribing written text but writing new code, and 
active composition is well known to slow down typing speed compared to 
transcribing. You might hit 90 wpm in the typing test, but when writing 
code you're probably typing at 50 wpm with the occasional full speed 
burst.

So going from a top speed (measured when transcribing text) of 30 wpm to 
90 wpm sounds good on your CV, but in practice the difference in 
productivity is probably tiny. Oh, and if typing faster just means you 
make more typos in less time, then the productivity increase is 
*negative*.

Keyboard optimizations, I believe, are almost certainly a conceit. If 
they really were that good an optimization, they would be used when 
typing speed is a premium. The difference between an average data entry 
operator at 90 wpm and a fast one at 150 wpm is worth real money. If 
Dvorak and other optimized keyboards were really that much better, they 
would be in far more common use. Where speed really is vital, such as for 
court stenographers, special mechanical shorthand machines such as 
stenotypes are used, costing thousands of dollars but allowing the typist 
to reach speeds of over 300 wpm.

Even if we accept that Dvorak is an optimization, it's a micro-
optimization. And like most optimizations, there is a very real risk that 
it is actually a pessimation: if it takes you three months to get back up 
to speed on a new keyboard layout, you potentially may never make back 
that lost time in your entire programming career.



-- 
Steven