DEV Community

Discussion on: On Alternative Keyboard Layouts

Collapse
 
jacoby profile image
Dave Jacoby

Before they were as easy to get and set up as they are now, I used to have curiosity about Dvorak keyboards, and in the last few years, have used them once or twice on non-work machines.

My work life involved sending emails, typing Unix commands and coding, and it's striking me that I spend much more time reading and understanding and planning than I do typing, so optimizing for blazing typing speed is a poor use of time.

I believe that wrist placement is a bigger issue with repetitive stress injuries than keyboard layout, and the way keyboards tend to tilt toward you, with pop-up legs aggravating the tilt, being the worst part, so I printed a few wedges to angle my keyboard and trackpad away from me to help me keep my wrists straight.

Plus, formalizing on Dvorak or another non-standard keyboard would keep me from being able to easily use laptops or maintain other people's desktops, which is a big part of my duties.

Not trying to put shade here, and if Dvorak works for you, that's fine. My desktop preferences are trackballs and trackpads over mice, at a standing desk, so I'm already out of the "use all standard stuff" camp. But I don't believe coders should not optimize for WPM.