RSS feedAlternative keyboard layouts - a waste of time?
Now when I saw what this guy had to say about Colemak, my initial reaction was that he was being a jerk. Four days is nowhere near enough time to come to a reasonable conclusion about whether or not you’re going to get anywhere with an alternative keyboard layout, as even the most diehard fanboy would admit. Colemak actually has a lot going for it — it is easy to learn, and well supported by a vibrant online community, which comes in handy when you’re doing something as off-beat as using a different computer keyboard layout to everyone else.
But you can’t say the same thing about someone who draws exactly the same conclusions after having been at it for several hours a day for four months — by that time you should certainly be able to tell whether it’s going somewhere or whether you’re wasting your time. And in the past week or two, I have done exactly that.
My switch back to qwerty was partly prompted by our recent recruitment drive — as part of the interview process I’ll be wanting to do a little pair programming exercise with potential developers, and this is the kind of situation where an alternative keyboard layout would get in the way. However, much more significantly: I have found that Colemak has failed to meet my expectations.
My top Colemak speed of 71 words per minute may sound pretty impressive, but when you consider that my top qwerty speed on the same test was 90, the picture looks quite different. My typical results for Colemak have stuck stubbornly in the 62-64 range without budging an inch in three months, occasionally even dropping down into the 50s.
I’m sorry, but a net speed loss of 20% must be some new meaning of the word “fast” of which I was not previously aware.
I haven’t noticed any significant difference in comfort or accuracy either. Colemak initially gives the impression of being more disciplined and comfortable, but after four months of it, I was still making just as many typos and mistakes, and when switching back to qwerty, I did not notice any difference in long term comfort whatsoever.
Psychologistst talk about something called “cognitive dissonance.” This is where you get into something at considerable personal expense, then eventually, further down the road, it begins to dawn on you that you may be barking up completely the wrong tree. At this point, what many people do is to start rationalising their decision, and even defending it vigorously — the classic attributes of fanboyism. I sometimes wonder if this is what we see to a certain extent among devotees of alternative keyboard layouts, leading to the advantages of their layouts and the disadvantages of qwerty being exaggerated. They certainly would have you believe that qwerty is a total disaster area. They love to quote statistics about how much less your fingers travel on their layouts, how much more you use the home row, and so on. Frequency usage diagrams are all very well, but to be honest, that’s just theory, and unless you can demonstrate that this translates into a clear and obvious advantage in practice, which outweighs the disadvantages involved in using a non-standard layout, these statistics become no more meaningful than lines of code as a metric of developer productivity.
There have never been any scientific studies that have demonstrated significant advantage to alternative keyboard layouts, and even those that demonstrate relatively minor advantages are disputed. “The Fable of the Keys” by Liebowitz and Margolis is the well known paper here: its bottom line was that there were conflicts of interest behind wartime studies showing an advantage to Dvorak, and while it has seen one or two rebuttals from Dvorak fans, these don’t seem to have been given any serious consideration whatsoever by ergonomics researchers.
To be honest, I think this is why alternative keyboard layouts simply aren’t going to take the world by storm. Colemak is probably about as close as you’re going to get to attaining that goal, and sure, it’s easy to learn, and yes, its lively, friendly online community is fantastic, and yes, it’s maybe better than Dvorak, but its advantages are simply not sufficient to present a convincing case for its widespread adoption.
So sorry to disappoint any of you alternative keyboard fans out there. If you’re already a satisfied Colemak user, don’t let any of this put you off, of course. If you’ve found that it works for you, that’s fine — it’s just that it hasn’t worked out for me as I’d hoped.
Nothing personal…
(Update 4 June 2008: added a note on cognitive dissonance. Hat tip: Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, who discuss the topic in their latest podcast on stackoverflow.com.)
Posted at 08:07 in Typing 
Welcome to my website. My name is James McKay and I am a
web developer from Horsham, West Sussex, UK.
18:20
Hi James,
I am not disputing your leaving Colemak. Only you can tell if it’s not working out for you. However, I find it a little disconcerting that you change your mind so often, and then you present a litany of arguments to support your most recent change of heart. If one looks at your history, it’s a dvorak - no dvorak - dvorak - colemak - no colemak progression. Indeed, the paper you quote I can see you most ardently arguing against on the colemak blog you maintained during your latest fancy. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, but I am left feeling you should perhaps try and stick to a decision a little longer to properly evaluate it, and to be a little more gray and a little less black and white.
Now, you mention that Colemak actually slows you down, using your 4.5 months experience versus years of qwerty. First off, it is fairly well known that Colemak isn’t faster than qwerty, but what leads you to conclude it is inherently slower as you seem to suggest?
Your lack of accuracy might reflect lack of accuracy training. Again, you have only been on the layout for a few months.
You put the burden of evidence on the inventors of alternate layouts - fair enough. But made-up metrics aren’t good enough, we need something that translates into a subjective advantage. However, measuring subjectivity would require some sort of grand test with something like a hundred participants, all learning colemak for a couple years. This is too expensive for something that is not funded by NASA. And even if someone did this study and demonstrated these advantages, well, all studies are disputed. The oil peak is disputed. Climate change is disputed. Anyway, I seem to recall that Dvorak himself actually did do studies like these.
The aftertaste I am left with is that you are yourself trying to rationalise your newest decision this way. If you are not finding Colemak comfortable then of course it is not for you, but you are rejecting it with such force, all of a sudden, and it feels a little weird.
All the best,
fanboy Tomas
00:30
So are you saying that four and a half months isn’t long enough to evaluate Colemak properly? If that’s the case, then what on the face of this green earth is? Life is too short to spend a year on each keyboard layout that’s knocking around, and I’ve already experimented enough with different keyboards and layouts as it is. I could understand your point there if I’d seen a gradual improvement over the past three months, but I haven’t — my speed hasn’t budged in the slightest since early February, yet it’s still about 20% short of my qwerty speed.
I don’t think I’m being indecisive here. If anything, I’ve been much more persistent with it all than I really should have. What I have actually been doing over the past couple of years is trying a variety of combinations of qwerty/Dvorak/Colemak with different keyboards, notably the Kinesis Advantage and the Microsoft Natural 4000, and I am now in a better place to come to a realistic assessment of Colemak’s strengths and weaknesses than I was in the initial headrush of fanboy excitement back in January. I’ve found that some things have worked fairly well and other things have been a complete train wreck.
The bottom line is that (a) Colemak is not perfect, and (b) qwerty is not a disaster. I would agree that Colemak is good for some things: it is noticeably more comfortable for typing plain text on an ergonomic keyboard, and it actually makes the Kinesis Advantage keyboard usable rather than a £225 finger torturing device.
However, it is noticeably worse than qwerty for certain other things. Programming is one of them: since it focuses so tightly on the home row, reaching for the numbers and symbols, which are much more commonly used, feels more awkward and a bigger effort. I’ve also been quite dissatisfied with it on a flat laptop keyboard. The same focus on the home row forces your wrists (or it does with me at any rate) into an unnatural angle that I actually find quite uncomfortable, and back last summer when I first tried Colemak I ended up with a considerable amount of discomfort after only two weeks. (I also found the same effect with Dvorak btw.) Back in January my old laptop had died and I only replaced it in mid-March, so this problem was not on my mind at the time.
My conclusion is therefore that while Colemak works better for some things, it works poorly for others and unfortunately it is not a good all-rounder. Qwerty, by contrast, doesn’t particularly shine in any one area, but it is not the train wreck that its detractors would like us to think of it as being, and it works well enough to do a satisfactory job whether you’re programming or writing text, or whether you’re using an ergonomic keyboard or a flat one.
Sorry to disappoint, but that’s my experience and these are my conclusions, and it would be dishonest of me to say otherwise.
17:21
I guess what I am asking is what makes you feel Colemak is inherently slower, and inherently worse for programming? The numeric keys are all in the same place; how can it be more uncomfortable to reach them? Because you are on the home row more? If that is your experience it is hard to argue with, but it does sound strange.
Similar things can be said for comfort. Colemak is more uncomfortable because using the home row more changes the angle of your wrists? Sounds strange - if you touch type qwerty according to the text book your hands should be in the same place. Perhaps analogously, when I first used insoles for my shoes, they were really uncomfortable for a few months. Now I can’t go back.
My thinking is that you are competing against 15+ years of qwerty, and 4.5 months isn’t enough time to make a fair heads-to-heads comparison. I think it is especially true for you since you obviously have mad qwerty skills - very few people type at 90 wpm. If however you don’t feel that the investment is worth it that is fair enough. If qwerty is fast and comfortable for you then I don’t see any need for changing.
Two more things I wanted to say. First, I want to reiterate that Colemak is not for speed. Anyone considering switching should do it for comfort. For example, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people with rsi are much better of with dvorak (colemak would probably serve just as well). I myself certainly find it more comfortable than qwerty, on all keyboards, as long as you touch type. Your mileage may vary.
Lastly, the main point of my first post wasn’t actually to contend what you were saying, even though this post contains a fair chunk of just that. It was to tell you that flip-flopping often and then arguing for your latest change of heart instead of presenting it as a weighted article comes across as a little strange. I am sure you’ve done the weighing up yourself but to me it doesn’t quite come across in the pieces you write. I hope I am not being unfair; sorry if so.
All the best once more,
Tom
21:36
I didn’t say that Colemak is inherently slower, I just said that it worked out slower for me and I couldn’t see myself matching my existing qwerty speed any time soon. All things considered, the impression that I am left with is that qwerty and Colemak are much more equal than some people would have us believe.
As far as comfort and the thing about being more tightly bound to the home row is concerned — it seems that quite a few dedicated Colemak users report pretty much the same thing (http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=2999#p2999). I’ve also noticed quite a lot of discussion on the Colemak forums where people propose their own improvements and tweaks to the layout and often end up with something completely different. The fact of the matter is that if you optimise in one particular direction, you end up having to make compromises in other directions, so in the end of the day it’s all swings and roundabouts anyway.
One other thing. The word is not “flip-flopping,” it is “experimenting.”
22:23
Hi James. I think it’s a bit much to criticise alternative layouts for over emphasizing the use of the home row. If most of your typing is done on the home row, as in Dvorak and Colemak, logic would suggest that speed MUST increase, as finger movement, however short will slow you down. That’s why all the most common keys are on the home row after all. What you seem to be saying is that because Colemak makes typing more efficient when typing common letters, it makes you less efficient when typing less common letters, numbers and punctuation which is clearly ludicrous! The key seems to be fluency in all your typing; letter, numbers and punctuation.
As for you not being as fast with Colemak as with Qwerty in four months, this says nothing about Colemak and a lot about you. Lets say you don’t speak French and you start learning it tomorrow. Would you claim French is an inferior language because you are not fluent within a few months? Or would you think to yourself that maybe a few years are needed to truly master a language…?
20:18
Did you read my responses to Tomas above, particularly the first one? Yes, it does sound a bit counter-intuitive that focusing on the home row should cause problems, but it does make it considerably more awkward to reach the numbers and symbols, simply because you’re fighting a lot more inertia, and when you are a programmer, as I am, that matters a lot. This point was also picked up by one commenter on the Colemak forums who noted that a lot of Colemak users find the g, b and j keys more awkward than the corresponding t, b and y on qwerty. It’s the post I mentioned above.
Regarding speed, I’ve said several times that the fact that I didn’t match my qwerty speed after four and a half months is not the issue. The issue is that my speed had not increased at all for the last three of those four and a half months.
Oh, and by the way, I find it rather odd that ardent fans of a layout whose main selling points are that it is “easy to learn” and “fast” are actually undermining those claims by telling me that I haven’t given it a fair hearing by “only” spending four and a half months on it…
20:59
Ok James. A challenge for you. Assuming you are back to full speed with Qwerty, hows about you show us how much your speed can increase in one month, or three months, using Qwerty. If a notable gain is achieved you have correctly concluded that Colemak is to blame.
Another thing. I asked you on the forum how long you had been typing with Qwerty and you didn’t reply. I imagine it has taken you several years to get to that 90wpm. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
23:16
You’re perfectly right — I’ve been typing qwerty for a very long time and I doubt I’m likely to get any faster with it no matter how much effort I put into it. However, I’ve only been using Colemak for four and a half months altogether and it’s in the early days that you see the biggest improvements in speed. After a while it tails off asymptotically and once the curve flattens out, you can generally conclude that without expending a good deal of effort on it, it won’t increase any further, and even if I did put in the extra effort I don’t have any confidence that my Colemak speed will actually surpass my qwerty speed.
There seems to be a misconception that I am saying that Colemak is worse than qwerty overall. I’m not. I am saying that qwerty’s flaws are overstated and the gap between the two layouts is much narrower than qwerty’s detractors would like to make out. I found that Colemak is more comfortable if all you are typing is plain text and you are using an ergonomic keyboard, but in my experience it loses those advantages completely if you’re programming programming or if you’re using a flat laptop keyboard, and with that in mind I just don’t see much point in promoting it.
21:06
I wasn’t going to post on this subject again. But… I have to completely disagree with this:
“I found that Colemak is more comfortable if all you are typing is plain text and you are using an ergonomic keyboard, but in my experience it loses those advantages completely if you’re programming or if you’re using a flat laptop keyboard, and with that in mind I just don’t see much point in promoting it.”
I have found the opposite to be the case. Typing Colemak on a standard keyboard, or especially on a laptop, is a much more pleasant experience than with Qwerty for me. I know your thoughts about stretching from the home row, but I actually find those stretches are much easier. So much so that I have for years, hated, touch typing on a laptop because my errors are so much higher.
21:09
Sorry, pressed enter accidentally.
??:
In fact, I think that the comfort of Colemak on regular keyboards is it best ’selling’ point.
11:53
Each to his own, I guess. I find it puts an extra strain on my wrists, but that’s why I’m such a fan of ergonomic keyboards. Have you tried the Microsoft Natural 4000? If you like Colemak, you’ll love it.
16:53
I was thinking of getting either a Microsoft Curve 2000 or a Logitech Wave. After trying them both at PC World, I decided against it. They seem very overpriced, and as I said, I find typing quite comfortable on any keyboard now. Also, I thought it may affect my typing on a plain ol’ board. If anything, I’d like the ultimate geek board - an IBM Model M. Sheer class.
08:56
As a neuroscientist, I feel it’s necessary to point out that it’s actually incorrect to assume that in learning a complex motor skill that you were actually on an asymptotic curve from a few months.
“After a while it tails off asymptotically and once the curve flattens out, you can generally conclude that without expending a good deal of effort on it, it won’t increase any further,”
You could have simply been stuck on a plateau and depending on how you were training because how effectively you were training yourself is a factor, a month or two down the line small factors could have coalesced and you could have experienced a sudden jump in speed. It’s IMO by no means clear what your ultimate speed on Colemak is without taking the experiment out over a two year period.
Two years is consistent effective training in a complex motor task is actually what it takes to reach a high level of skill. That’s not what we want to hear in our hurry up, I got to be a master now modern world but it’s the actual reality for the average person. From personal experience and teaching, have seen the effects of plateau’s in learning, I have seen it music training and more complex martial arts that require timing and precision motor tasks. Complex dance and speaking language as well experience plateaus in learning because of the involvement of brain areas involved in motor planning.
It’s actually very common to see someone quit on a plateau in learning when no obvious progress is being made. It’s also actually very common to see someone persist and experience significant jumps in performance 6 months later. This doesn’t negate your job related reasons for needing to go back to Qwerty. It just means that the idea that you were on some kind of absolute asymptote after a few months is really more just a rationalization. Cognitive dissonance if actually real could really cut multiple ways here and the problem for one who decides to stop barking down one road is really have they gone far enough and do they have reliable data to know what is far enough. IMO 4 and half months is little better than 4 and half days. Neither is far enough in learning a complex motor task to a high level of skill.
12:24
You guys are a bunch of dorks… actually, sheeps is more like it….
To claim that colemak is more efficient based on “distance travelled by fingers” or “home row usage” or “low same-finger-keypresses” or some other arbitrary factor is ludicrous. That’s like trying to prove the Reimann hypothesis using sticks and stones, and used bubblegum wrappers.
One of the major advantages of QWERTY is that typing with it can be done effectively using only 6 or 7 fingers - pinkies not needed. Can’t do that with a more “balanced” layout like Colemak/Dvorak.
Another major advantage that gets downplayed is the staggered columns - QWERTY users can make VERY good use of alternate fingering techniques. Again, can’t do that with a layout like Colemak/Dvorak that shuts out these “shortcuts” due to the lower same-finger keypresses or a more “balanced” workload.
A third major advantage of QWERTY is that a lot of the most common digraphs/trigraphs/suffixes/prefixes found in the most common english words are near to, or next to each other in superblocks - “ASDWERT”, “YIOUL”.
A fourth major advantage of QWERTY is the high same hand typing of letters. Colemak replicates that, but Dvorak doesn’t, which is also why a substantial amount of effort is required of the Dvorak typist in learning to coordinate the hands in proper sequence.
What the alternate layouts do have is the ability to simplify typing for those who are not capable of learning and taking advantage of QWERTY’s “hidden secrets” by allowing all the fingers to participate in a more balanced manner and keep a better rhythm.
Distance traveled by fingers have almost no bearing on speed or comfort for those who have the aptitude to master QWERTY. Neither do most of the other “features” given as advantages over QWERTY. If that were the case, then QWERTY typists would be upto 50% slower, with broken wrists compared to those on alternative layouts. But that is simply not the reality.
The reality is that humans are VERY adaptable. Give them any serviceable layout and they’ll be able to type more or less at the same speed with enough practice. QWERTY has gotten a bad rap by people who don’t understand (or don’t take the time to understand) the mechanics behind touch typing.
Most of the fastest QWERTY typists achieve their speed by specializing their typing habits to take advantage of the strengths of QWERTY. It is therefore not at all surprising that JammyCakes, a highly specialized typist, was unable to retrain his typing habits to adopt a more balanced and rhythmic typing style in just 5 months.
On a more personal note, I was a QWERTY touch typist for 10 years. My typing speed was just shy of 100WPM. On Dvorak, I achieved 100WPM after 1 years. On Colemak, I achieved 80WPM after 1 year. Now, I’m back to QWERTY because typing is actually FUN with QWERTY.
Oh yeah, and the best part?… I just achieved 120WPM after 9 months on QWERTY.
PS - Craig KBS aka “Neuroscientist” - umm…please learn BASIC biology first, yeah? I can pretend to be “uber-hacker Neo” on the intarweb too….sheesh.
13:10
FlapJack: Your comments and info are interesting (if a little overdone) but I don’t think they prove your points. If anything, they illustrate that switching layouts isn’t necessarily done in a jiffy. I don’t see why the techniques you describe couldn’t be used by Dvorak and Colemak typists as well given some years of typing experience. Typing with only 6-7 fingers could well be done in Colemak as far as I can understand, and those fingers would probably have less dexterous jumping around to perform too. But it wouldn’t be something you picked up in a year unless you’re somewhat of a typing genius I think.
Switching between layouts seems to be a quite individual experience. Your 100-100-80-120 progression doesn’t sound unlikely but others have reported very different results. It depends on a bunch of factors and no new situation will be the same as a previous one. If you’re having more fun with QWERTY then good luck with that; I’m having more fun with Colemak so I’ll stick with it. My QWERTY speed was never as high as yours; maybe that’s one of the most important factors in this. And maybe it’s something else entirely; who knows?
P.S.: Did Craig get any basic biology wrong? I couldn’t spot any mistakes.
14:34
Um, I don’t know about Craig’s biology — I’m not a biologist, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Actually FlapJack makes one or two very good points. It’s probably killing a sacred cow or two to say this, but some of the optimisations that alternative keyboard layout designers make aren’t all that beneficial. My biggest bugbear is actually with the optimisation that you’d probably naturally think of as the most prominent one — the focus on the home row. On a conventional flat keyboard, it is actually a rather bad idea.
In case you don’t believe me, just try this little experiment. Sit down with a laptop (or another flat keyboard) and, keeping your fingers, hands and wrists as relaxed as possible, rest your hands on the keyboard, with your index fingers on the F and J keys (T and N on Colemak). Don’t aim the other fingers for the rest of the home row though. Chances are that your hands will come to rest on QWEF and JIOP (Colemak: QWFT and NUY;) rather than on the home row themselves. If you then move all your fingers onto the home row, you will notice that your wrists are forced inwards and it is noticeably less relaxed.
This is why split ergonomic keyboards are designed the way they are — and why I found Colemak OK for text with my Microsoft Natural 4000 but I don’t like it at all on my laptop. Incidentally, the first time I tried Colemak I was only using it on my old laptop at home in the evenings and after only a couple of weeks I found it so uncomfortable that I had to give up on it.
21:45
FlapJack: your very funny.
“The reality is that humans are VERY adaptable.” This is true and a reason that well trained children with the motivation can pick up the various tricks as you mention to increase speed. It’s also true that later in life many seem to experience RSI or “cumulative trauma disorder” and many seem to find relief from alternative layouts (anecdotal as far as I know).
There are however limits to adapting as you age though recently we have come to realize that older adults are much more adaptable than the old dogma suggested. It certainly is not as easy as you get older. I never learned to touch type as a kid, that was a separate class for those wishing to learn secretarial skills. We used slide rules.
Not considering myself a programmer (unless you count FORTRAN 77/C, object oriented languages make my head hurt), and being more of a hard core experimental biologist, I’ll grant you my experience is more with monkeys and invertebrates. Since I consider humans just another cousin of chimpanzees I think I am on safe ground here. When we train macaques, it usually take about 6 months for them to gain high degree of skill at the task (generally after 6 months they far out perform naive humans). Bear in mind these are simple motor tasks, successfully executed result in the thirsty monkeys getting a sip of water or dilute juice. They train nearly every day and for the most are highly motivated to work at it for hours (you know it when they quit working). On simple skills you see general rise in ability over the first 6 months. Typical lab protocols call for 6 months of training because generally the ability is sufficient by that time to begin the experiments, baring being unlucky and getting a much below average monkey that has trouble learning even simple skills in time frame.
Now, an important point, you have to be careful in designing experiments. If you get too ambitious with the tasks, you can end up with training times longer than a year for the monkeys to gain competency. And you do see Monkeys that start getting stuck on plateaus with no obvious improvement for months as complexity of the task increases. This can be a very bad thing if your grant is coming up for renewal.
Mastery of high level motor skills do not IMO come in a few months of training. From what I have read, 90 wpm or above certainly qualifies as a high level for touch typists of any layout. Hitting 70 wpm quickly for Colemak when formerly a Qwerty touch typists doesn’t seem surprisingly because of the gross relation of the skills, but I am not surprised that reaching the highest levels takes learning movement tricks that differ between the two layouts.
Someone hitting 100wpm after years of training (I assume you started as a child under 16) and training in multiple layouts to 100wpm and then going back to Qwerty and training to 120 wpm after 9 more months has just proved the rule that something under 6 months is likely not sufficient for most people.
Meanwhile, I quite happily and comfortably type away using Colemak on my notebook computer keyboard at 3x the speed I was typing. Colemak was novel enough to get me take a wack at touch typing again. baa baa…
07:07
“As a neuroscientist, I feel it’s necessary to point out that it’s actually incorrect to assume that in learning a complex motor skill that you were actually on an asymptotic curve from a few months.”
-WRONG: That is precisely the case in this type of reconditioning. You’re the one making unwarranted and incompatible comparisons.
“You could have simply been stuck on a plateau and depending on how you were training because how effectively you were training yourself is a factor, a month or two down the line small factors could have coalesced and you could have experienced a sudden jump in speed. It’s IMO by no means clear what your ultimate speed on Colemak is without taking the experiment out over a two year period.”
-WRONG: Not only is this highly speculative, it also goes against the anecdotal evidence given by users on the colemak forum. It also missed the entire point Jammy was trying to make - whether alternative layouts are worth this trouble.
“Two years is consistent effective training in a complex motor task is actually what it takes to reach a high level of skill.”
-WRONG: Unfounded generalization. Numerous studies conducted by physiotherapists on reconditioning in similar tasks suggest that rate of development begins to slow within 3 months. An additional 20% functional increase in performance occurs between 6 months and 2 years, while the bulk of results are gained in the first 3 months.
3 months of NO discernable gains for Jammy cannot simply be explained away as hitting a “plateau.” Much more likely, and supported by emperical evidence and experimental research in the field, it suggests that Jammy has reached his peak. The “other 20%” will be a gradual process of specialization, but it is not guaranteed to happen. My guess would be that his specialization in QWERTY methods will limit his gains for years, without any guarantees that he’ll benefit from any of the claimed advantages of alternative layouts. Obviously, Jammy doesn’t find that to be a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.
“It’s also actually very common to see someone persist and experience significant jumps in performance 6 months later.”
-WRONG: It’s NOT common for someone to experience significant jumps in performance after exhibiting the same symptoms Jammy showed. Where are you getting these bogus statistics? It’s actually common for someone to experience significant gains within the first 6 WEEKS to 3 months. After performance has leveled off, there are INsignificant jumps in performance as the subject starts specializing.
“IMO 4 and half months is little better than 4 and half days. Neither is far enough in learning a complex motor task to a high level of skill.”
-LOL. 4.5 months is FAR DIFFERENT from 4.5 days. In the area of touch typing, a significant proportion (>80%) reach a high level of skill within 3 months. At that point, they achieve roughly 70-85% of their eventual speed.
Regarding your second comment - your comparisons are wholly invalid. Training monkeys to do some odd skill vs. training a human to do a highly repetitive and structured task….and you call yourself a “hard core experimental biologist”???
But, your monkey story was at least somewhat entertaining, although completely irrelevant.
I would post links to numerous sources to back up everything I have written but there is a limit on links per comment and it’s also pretty easy for someone to search through academic journals to find the relevant info.
HTH
07:27
And regarding my personal typing speed. Let’s just say that you assume too much.
To clarify on my personal experience (which should have no relevance to the issue at hand), I started touch typing when I started college. I got up to 60WPM in QWERTY within 6 weeks, and to 80WPM within 12 weeks and stopped practicing. After that my speed kept increasing at a decreasing rate as I learned new shortcuts, until I reached 95-100WPM. Then it stopped increasing completely. A few years later, I decided to try Dvorak. I got to 80WPM within 3 months and stopped practicing. My speed increased gradually over the next 9 months and stopped at 100WPM as well. With Colemak, I hit 60WPM after a month and my progress hit a wall. I only got up to 80wpm after continuously practicing over the next 6 months. Then it stopped completely.
A few months later, I gave up on Colemak and it was a good decision for me. I also learned a completely new way of typing on QWERTY, using non-standard hand positioning and I surpassed my Colemak speed within 30 days. I reached 100WPM 90 days after quitting Colemak. I recently started practicing on a typing-test site where I scored 120WPM.
In my situation, Colemak was the slowest layout.
07:54
Well, your welcome to your opinion, FlapJack
Though anecdotal evidence never has been considered scientific proof of anything.
“Numerous studies conducted by physiotherapists on reconditioning in similar tasks suggest that rate of development begins to slow within 3 months. An additional 20% functional increase in performance occurs between 6 months and 2 years, while the bulk of results are gained in the first 3 months.”
interesting…
mostly that sounds like you are comparing apples and oranges.
I would expect such studies would be focused on answering questions about various therapies to regain function of diseased or injured muscles. If mental deficits are involved due to things like a stroke then another host of questions arise about the nature of neural repair if any is occurring (some studies show recruitment of nearby undamaged reasons in some cases), the extent of the initial damage, etc.
Development due to recovery from injury is a different topic than skill acquisition of a healthy individual. I think that would take some careful reading and much discussion to decide if any of those studies were really relevant.
Yes, I did some looking as you suggested. I was not impressed.
and by the way, the monkeys are doing highly structured and repetitive tasks. Your comment indicates a deep ignorance of decades of research literature, which would be perfectly fine except for the somewhat typically immature combative persona you’ve taken that’s all too common on the internet.
Ok, we get it. You love Qwerty for it’s all around mediocrity.
09:26
@FlapJack (and anyone else concerned): the two link limit is there to stop spam bots. Drop me an e-mail if you want to get round it (you should see my e-mail address at the top right just under the Feedburner widget if you have JavaScript enabled).
21:04
Albeit a little late to the party, I have to comment on the statement that there is no scientific evidence that supports Dvorak.
Most of these studies seems to concentrate on two factors: “speed” and “learning time”; two issues that perhaps is important if you are a corporation paying to have typists trained. Nowhere does “comfort” seem to be an item.
For me, the proof of the proverbial pudding is in the eating: My primary reason to switch was to stop the hurting in my finger joints when typing. The slowest component of the system still seem to be sitting in front of the keyboard.
Full disclosure: Yes, I am the author of an “alternative layout” which is posted on my website in case anyone else can benefit from it, but I couldn’t care if you rather preferred the Inner Mongolian keyboard layout. Really.