Dvorak And Programmig

Last month when I was talking about cleaning my keyboard, I’ve mentioned Dvorak, a keyboard layout alternative to the common QWERTY. That has sparked some discussion, so I wanted to follow up on the topic.

So what is Dvorak, and why should anyone care?

The Dvorak Zine does a wonderful job explaining the history of keyboard layouts, in a comic format. A very Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby style of approach. Mmm.. chunky bacon!

There are a few problems with QWERTY, the keyboard used by most people. Most famously, the keyboard was originally designed to slow down the typing speed (that was an issue for the mechanical typewriters, circa 1900). It also got a dose of corporate influence and marketing:

It has been suggested the top row was designed to have all the letters for the word “typewriter” so that typewriter salesmen could “peck” the word “typewriter” more quickly and easily without appearing to have to “hunt” for the keys.

For a more practical example, write “starwars” and notice if there’s anything particular about typing out that word

Though Dvorak is not without problems as well. I found Brandon Thomson’s reflection on Dvorak after 7 years of use to be quite interesting:

The real problem was that you cannot always change the layout. I looked like a computer novice in front of colleagues on several occasions when I needed to use a public terminal but had to revert to hunt-and-peck because the keyboard layout was unchangeable. I don’t mind looking stupid, but it does get old explaining to people why you in fact cannot type on a standard keyboard.

I have a similar problem with having to use Windows OS on public terminals.

Dvorak’s main advantage is that it was designed to optimize its use for the English language. Dvorak’s main disadvantage, for me, is that it was designed to optimize its use for the English language. I think DVzine illustrates that point well on page 9:



The thing is – Dvorak’s optimization in favour of English came at the expense of other languages. Namely the programming variety. I do use a semi-colon quite often. In fact, it ends every single line. A typical program uses considerably more semi-colons, than letters “Z”. Similarly, other vital characters “<>.[]{} have been moved further away, as a trade-off to bring some letter keys to more accessible spots.

The problem is highlighted by the emergence of Programmer Dvorak – a modified Dvorak layout, “targeted towards people writing source code for C, Java, Pascal, LISP, CSS and XML”.

The most noticeable difference is that the top row is devoted to brackets and other operational characters, and the numbers must be accessed using the shift key.

Though besides being a non-standard Dvorak flavour, and introducing a plethora of new problems – this simply seems like an ugly hack. Also, any optimization in favour of programming languages would now come at the expense of English.

I think I’m going to stick to using QWERTY for now. Any advantages gained for the English text will not be worth the disadvantages faced by the programming languages. I write code on regular enough basis for this to be a valid point. Perhaps in the future, if I find myself typing enough text to hit QWERTY’s limitations in more pronounced ways, I will try again to master both layouts.