30 replies to this topic

[flux00]

Hi, I was wondering what devs think about using non-standard keyboard layouts for their programming.

I just switched over to programmer's dvorak because although I knew qwerty was flawed, I recently found out there are modern layouts developed by genetic algorithms, and that's just badass.

Lessons...
http://gigliwood.com/abcd/lessons/

[JarkkoL]

Typing speed has very little influence to how fast you program, so I don't think it matters which layout you use once you get past the learning phase.

[Mihail121]

JarkkoL said:

Typing speed has very little influence to how fast you program, so I don't think it matters which layout you use once you get past the learning phase.

+1, I'm using QWERTY for most of my work, QWERZ (ze germanz) for ... uhhh... typing German and bulgarian layout for bulgarian. German layout is PURE terror.

[alphadog]

I don't think layout matters for programming. Writing? Yes. Coding? No.

Honestly, sounds scary that some of you are spitting out code so fast that an optimized layout would make a difference. I don't know whether to be scared for me because it doesn't matter to me, or for the industry because it doesn't matter to many of you...

[flux00]

It's really not so much for speed as it is for comfort.

And awesomeness.

One regrettable downside is that keyboard shortcuts are usually designed for qwerty.

[JarkkoL]

I think for true awesomeness you should check this site or if you got the balls you could even go as far as this (:

[alphadog]

Actually, the absolute coolest keyboard I've ever seen is this one.

With OLEDs for each key, once that GA pauses in its generational scanning and finds a new optimal minima for a programmer's keyboard layout, you can easily remap and type 0.001 words per minute faster.

But, at $1.6K ea, it's once pricey keyboard...

[monjardin]

JarkkoL said:

Typing speed has very little influence to how fast you program...

I strongly disagree and Steve Yegge explains why.

[alphadog]

Of course. Yegge nails it. You can always recognize a quality developer by the length of their Reddit posts...

[Nick]

monjardin said:

I strongly disagree and Steve Yegge explains why.

I agree with Steve but also with JarkkoL...

The choice between QWERTY and say Dvorak has very little influence on the development speed of a programmer. You do, however, need to learn how to touch type.

Personally I love QWERTY. And that's mainly because it's the layout used when programming languages were born. All the symbols used in a C-based language are quickly accessible. I actually learned to touch type on an AZERTY layout, which is the 'standard' in Belgium. But really it's the French standard and there's no good reason to use it in Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. Programming on AZERTY is horror. You frequently need the 'Alt Gr' key to access a third character on some keys, and you need the Shift key to type numbers. The only reason the French needed their own layout is because they have some letters with diacritics on them. That was an understandable argument for mechanical typewriters, but on a computer with a QWERTY keyboard configured for International use, you can easily type those with a simple key combination.

Just my two cents.

[.oisyn]

Nick said:

But really it's the French standard and there's no good reason to use it in Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. Programming on AZERTY is horror. You frequently need the 'Alt Gr' key to access a third character on some keys, and you need the Shift key to type numbers. The only reason the French needed their own layout is because they have some letters with diacritics on them.

Did you know there is an official Dutch keyboard layout, too? Pretty much nobody in The Netherlands uses it


And I feel very sorry for the Quebec residents. I was visiting Eidos Montreal a couple of months back, and it turned out that they had to ask the local government permission to buy us some US qwerty keyboards, which was fine because we were foreigners. But otherwise, Quebec companies are prohibited to use any other keyboard layout than Canadian French.


Now that's just sick.

[JarkkoL]

monjardin said:

I strongly disagree and Steve Yegge explains why.

If it was about typing speed, I could write the entire code base I have spent around ~2 man-years making in a month. Most likely even in much less time. So based on that fact you could say that I spend <4% of my time in typing code thus improving typing speed wouldn't make much of a difference.

And you cropped the obvious part from my post, because I continued "...so I don't think it matters which layout you use once you get past the learning phase"

[Nick]

.oisyn said:

Quebec companies are prohibited to use any other keyboard layout than Canadian French.

:surprise:

[Nick]

JarkkoL said:

If it was about typing speed, I could write the entire code base I have spent around ~2 man-years making in a month. Most likely even in much less time. So based on that fact you could say that I spend <4% of my time in typing code thus improving typing speed wouldn't make much of a difference.

All typing done during development involves a lot more than just typing the finalized code. Experimenting, debugging, refactoring, etc. all involves a lot of typing. So the faster you are at that the more likely you'll end up with high quality code in less time.

Anyway, I totally agree that for development the actual layout has very little influence, once you learned how to touch type on it.

It's also worth repeating that Dvorak was optimized for typing English, not C...

[JarkkoL]

Nick said:

All typing done during development involves a lot more than just typing the finalized code. Experimenting, debugging, refactoring, etc. all involves a lot of typing. So the faster you are at that the more likely you'll end up with high quality code in less time.

There are way more important factors to speed up development and improve the quality of code than learning to type faster. Typing speed is the least of your worries and improving it from moderate typing speed isn't going to show up as a noticeable improvent.

[JarkkoL]

.oisyn said:

And I feel very sorry for the Quebec residents. I was visiting Eidos Montreal a couple of months back, and it turned out that they had to ask the local government permission to buy us some US qwerty keyboards, which was fine because we were foreigners. But otherwise, Quebec companies are prohibited to use any other keyboard layout than Canadian French.

While I was working at UbiSoft Montreal I don't recall we used such a keyboard layout but maybe it has changed since.. I recall there was something about having to install Windows initially with French settings though or something weird like that. Quebecians are pretty protective of their language ;)

[alphadog]

One word: Intellisense.

Another three words? How about "automated code generation"?

Another place Yegge and ilk is wrong? Comments are mostly useless and documentation is mostly auto-generated.

More? What about all the compound keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts? Those interrupt the normal, "home row" position and use drastically. Ever seen someone with "EMACS pinky-itis"? It ain't pretty.

The list goes on.

You spend more time thinking and less time typing, relatively, when coding. Coding != writing an English essay where length (a.k.a. bulls**t amount) matters almost as content.

WPM rates mean absolutely squat, except to developers who a) spent time learning how to touch-type fast, and feel pathologically compelled to justify to other developers the time spent thereof. It turns into "everyone must suffer like I did, else I suffered for nothing!" syndrome.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a hunt-and-peck type, I just not affected by above.)

[JarkkoL]

Yeah, picking the right tools for the job and learning to use those efficiently is much more important. Or learning to use other techniques to speed up programming. Or learning to strike better balance between designing and refactoring. Or learning to design in the first place so that you don't have to refactor all the time (: Also when you move towards higher level programming typing speed becomes even less of a factor (more thinking in relation to typing).

[monjardin]

JarkkoL said:

And you cropped the obvious part from my post, because I continued "...so I don't think it matters which layout you use once you get past the learning phase"

That's because I didn't disagree with that part! ;)

[monjardin]

alphadog said:

More? What about all the compound keystrokes and keyboard shortcuts? Those interrupt the normal, "home row" position and use drastically. Ever seen someone with "EMACS pinky-itis"? It ain't pretty.

Being a vim user myself, my pinkies are fine. However, Yegge is an EMACS guy and he suggests swapping the ALT and TAB keys for that very reason.

alphadog said:

Disclaimer: I'm not a hunt-and-peck type, I just not affected by b) above.

The hunt and peckers (;)) are the ones I'm talking about. I can't take a programmer seriously that has to search for keys or only uses his two index fingers. You really need to observe someone with this problem to appreciate the horror. JarkkoL and yourself are taking this personally when in all likelihood you both already type adequately.