QWERTY is the standard not because it’s better. It wasn’t designed to be efficient.
As a computer programmer, I knew I was going to spend much of my life typing on a keyboard. This motivated be to learn a little more about things I could do to improve my ability to type and the experience I have while doing it. It wasn’t long before I learned that the standard QWERTY keyboard was invented back in the days of typewriters. The letters used to be arranged alphabetically, but as typists got faster, they ran into a problem: if letters that are next to each other on the keyboard are typed one after another in quick succession, the typewriter will jam. To reduce this problem, someone designed a new keyboard layout that placed keys that are commonly typed in succession further apart from each other. This layout is still used today.
While the QWERTY layout was great at addressing the limitations of typewriters, we don’t use typewriters anymore. We use computers, and they don’t have any sort of jamming issues. So why do we continue using a layout designed to prevent jamming? Because it’s easier to just keep things the way they are. Better layouts have been invented, but they generally don’t catch on. There are only a few people, such as myself, who take it upon themselves to learn one of these better layouts for the sake of efficiency and quality of life.
While learning about alternative keyboard layouts, I discovered one called Dvorak, which was specifically designed to make it easier to type faster, smoother, and with less finger movement. It places keys that are commonly typed in succession in a sequence, so they can be typed by rolling your fingers towards the center of the keyboard. It’s also designed to reduce the need to hit multiple keys in a row with one finger. It also places the most common letters on the home row and in the middle. It’s even designed to make it more common to alternate between your hands, improving the balance and rythem of typing.
Switching from QWERTY to Dvorak took a few weeks to get used to, but it was totally worth it. Something that helped me learn it faster is that pretty much every keyboard is QWERTY which means you can’t look at the keyboard to remember where the keys are. This forced my brain to actually learn the layout instead of cheating.
You’d be right to wonder how well Dvorak is supported on other computers. I was worried about this too, but I was pleased to find that it’s pretty easy to change the keyboard layout on a Windows computer. Once you learn how to do it, it only takes a few moments to change the layout. Just remember to press Win+Spacebar to change it back when you’re done.
If you’re a programmer like me and have used hjkl keys for moving your cursor, rest assured that Dvorak doesn’t get in the way of that. Those keys are moved, but they stay in a relatively intuitive layout.
Colemak is another keyboard layout with similar intentions. It’s a little newer than Dvorak, and was probably designed a little better, but it currently isn’t supported on Windows, so I wouldn’t use it if I were you.
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