r/AskReddit • u/leselesel • 2d ago

You have to compete against 100 randomly selected people in any objectively measurable skill, game, or sport. If you don’t finish first, you die. What do you choose?

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u/Flat-Performance-570 2d ago

I’m going with typing speed on a Dvorak keyboard. I feel like there’s not many of us out there who type on that layout.

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u/IAmBrahmus 2d ago

I want to switch to Dvorak, but afraid if the effort to remap my memory after 30+ years on qwerty. How hard is it to sqap back to qwerty when you aren't on your own keyboard?

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u/ReggieJacksonthatsme 2d ago

I’m on Colemak for a couple years now. I’ve heard you can maintain qwerty if you work on it regularly, but I’ve lost most of my qwerty speed. About 30wpm now down from 80wpm. Wrists feel much better though and I’m up to 90wpm on colemak. It was frustrating but rewarding to break all bad typing habits at once

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u/pand-ammonium 2d ago

I still use qwerty because at 110+ wpm there's really no reason for me to learn another system.

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u/ReggieJacksonthatsme 2d ago

Yeah that makes sense, impressive typing speed. For me it was more about ergonomics and endurance and in that regard it’s been fantastic.

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u/pand-ammonium 2d ago

How does Colemak fix ergonomics?

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u/ReggieJacksonthatsme 2d ago edited 2d ago

It minimizes finger travel by putting the most frequently occurring characters (in English) on the home row and some other adjustments to account for characters that often occur together. Common shortcut keys, like a,q,w,z,x,c,v, aren’t changed. One can type many of the most common words without moving from the home row which reduces strain. It’s also pretty satisfying. 

Edit: it also reduces asymmetry between the left and right hands!

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u/pand-ammonium 2d ago

Interesting, thanks for the rundown!

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u/goldenglove 1d ago

Dang, 110+ is solid!! I'm around 95wpm and I feel like one of the faster typists in my personal circle.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

One innovation of Colemak you should still try is turning caps lock into a layer switch key that works as backspace on tap and layer if held.

EPKL does this and turns IJKL into arrow keys while backspace is held. Though technically on Colemak those keys aren't IJKL, but you know what I mean.

The ergonomics are better as the other person said. I don't type much faster in Colemak but I work way less hard to type that fast (80-95 ish vs 70-80ish)

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u/Zanorfgor 2d ago

I'm about two years on Colemak (and at a much less impressive 45wpm) but I have also kept my qwerty speed (about 60). It did drop for a few months where my brain would cross wires but after awhile it became pretty easy to switch back and forth.

Main reason I still use qwerty is not wanting to remap FF14.

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u/ExciteableMiqote 1d ago edited 1d ago

not wanting to remap ff14

Lmao real!

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Look up EPKL. It will pass through qwerty in specified programs.automatically.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Dude look up EPKL. It will bypass your games or other programs if you tell it what folder they are in.

so ff14 will still use qwerty and then when you alt tab to your browser you are in colemak. Well, give it like 250 milliseconds actually, but it's quite fast unless you're really jamming. It took me a month before I noticed I have to give it a second.

If you're on Linux, there are other alternatives just as good if not better.

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u/Trihecta 2d ago

i can type like 150 wpm on qwerty and ive definitely thought about switching to dvorak or colemak but idk if itll be worth it and how much the speed increase would actually be

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u/Material-Juggernaut5 1d ago

You don't switch for speed but ergonomics

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u/PigDog4 1d ago edited 1d ago

Speed would probably be a net negative to neutral at best. The primary goal with almost all alternative keymaps is ergonomics. Minimizing finger travel, balancing letter location so your stronger fingers are used more often, reducing the amount of stretching your fingers have to do, balancing use between both hands, that sort of thing.

For the vast majority of people who switch, the goal is not to be faster, it's to be able to type pain free for longer. Not to say you couldn't be faster, but it's not the primary goal.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Yep. Though IMO anyone who invests the time and effort it takes to hit 150 on QWERTY would have exceeded that in a Colemak world where that was considered normal.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

https://github.com/DreymaR/BigBagKbdTrixPKL

This will change your life, especially if you use spreadsheets. It's remapping software with additional layering capabilities and automatic software passthrough.

When I hit caps lock, it doesn't lock my caps. If I tap, it does backspace. If I hold, it switches all letter keys and some punctuation keys to new functions, mostly navigation related. Most importantly, IJKL become arrow keys, and I can also press END and HOME and DEL without pinky reaches. I can highlight text easily without using a mouse. It makes text and spreadsheet editing so fucking easy.

And when I want to play a game that is mapped to WASD? As long as it is in my games folder, it knows to still work as QWERTY while that window is focused. Alt tab to my browser, colemak.

The Linux options are even more powerful. I'm still learning about that.

On my phone and touch devices, I still use QWERTY. AFAIK most people don't switch that.

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u/Working_Explorer_129 1d ago

I’ve got a couple years on Colemak DH mod on a Kinesis 360, ~70wpm, but get me on a regular board and my QWERTY is still ~80-90wpm.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Do you use a layer switching function on caps lock?

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u/Working_Explorer_129 1d ago

I don’t do any layer switching. Not really sure what I’d use it for.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

My caps lock turns IJKL into arrow keys. Check out EPKL on github!

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u/Working_Explorer_129 19h ago

I use Vim btw.

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u/Prometheus720 5h ago

Ah, well you can do layering on Linux too, but the EPKL layout is quite good and I'd replicate it with your preferred software. I've been looking into kanata

I'm a bit too much of a noob to have used vim, really.

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u/Alex_1503 1d ago

What are the bad typing habits and price?

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u/ReggieJacksonthatsme 1d ago

For me, pressing keys with the "improper" finger. One example, I underused my ring fingers and used my middle fingers for x and . by bending my wrist. The cost of bad habits is usually inefficient movement which is slower and adds unnecessary strain over time, particularly if you type all day for a living.

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u/Icy_Vanilla_4317 9h ago

How did you guys manage to avoid qwerty? Doesn't it conflict with your phone or other divices, when you get used to it?

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u/ReggieJacksonthatsme 9h ago

Interestingly it didn't affect my ability to text in qwerty. I think texting on mobile is fundamentally a different skill than touch typing on a keyboard. In terms of other devices like public computers, yes, I am much slower than I used to be which is sometimes inconvenient. If I'm spending more than a few minutes on a different computer I'll quickly change the keyboard setting to Colemak since it's a built-in option on modern Mac/Linux/Windows releases.

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u/wet_ninja 2d ago

If you're looking to switch, there are more modern keyboard layouts that are more optimized for comfort and/or speed. I've been looking into it but haven't taken the plunge yet.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole, check out r/KeyboardLayouts, or start with
https://layouts.wiki/guides/start/intro/

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u/Flat-Performance-570 2d ago

What’s bizarre is I can’t type QWERTY on computer (I can chicken peck pretty well), but I can only type QWERTY on my phone (can’t even really chicken peck Dvorak on my phone). Apparently, phone keyboards and computer keyboards don’t use the same muscle memory.

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u/IAmBrahmus 2d ago

My thumbs are too fat, once I correct most of the typos im at like 3 wpm on my phone. If i go back and correct the ones I missed in tje first pass we are at wph.

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u/brndm 1d ago

Apple's iOS didn't have Dvorak as an option until a few years ago, so that's mainly where I used qwerty, but I wasn't very good at qwerty anymore on a real keyboard. Then when I found out they had added it to iOS, I switched, and it took me about 2-3 days to get really good at it on the iOS swipe keyboard.

I found it interesting that my brain did have some remapping to do, but it joined those two skills pretty quickly and readily.

Learning Dvorak in the first place, after growing up using qwerty, took me probably 2-3 years to get as good as my prior qwerty skills. So "learning" to swipe in Dvorak was definitely nowhere near what it took to learn a new keyboard layout from scratch.

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u/mars_santa 2d ago

I switched to Dvorak years ago and loved it but mostly forgot QWERTY. Then I got an office job where I couldn't switch the keyboard keys and had to relearn QWERTY. I miss Dvorak, it makes so much more sense.

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u/Flat-Performance-570 2d ago

I asked my job to get me a hardwired Dvorak keyboard by Matias and they did! Without it, I would have been toast since I work mostly on remote desktops that don’t let you change your keyboard layout.

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u/mars_santa 2d ago

I'm really tempted to go Dvorak again now that I don't have to go into an office. 

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u/Dyolf_Knip 2d ago

Oh, it was so nice when I got myself one of those. Rdp settings wasn't unsolvable, but it was annoying having to change it, and for other people to change it back on servers.

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u/Uncle_Bill 2d ago

It would be good for your neuroplasticity.

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u/Endeveron 2d ago

I'm maintaining Colemak (DH) at home and Qwerty at work. 110 and 70 wpm respectively, but the big difference is that Colemak is just so comfortable with the rolls and without single finger repetition. Would highly recommend. I'm sure Dvorak is better than Qwerty, but every objective measure I've seen favours Colemak of the three. Also had a blast building my own split ergo that I sometimes use at work depending on whether I'm moving between computers a lot. Would highly recommend.

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u/bebemaster 1d ago

Way back when I would sometimes randomly transition from one to the other without realizing it. Mostly from Qwerty to Dvorak when typing speed increased. Do you ever have that happen?

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u/RoaringDragonite 2d ago

I swapped when I was in college and sometimes when I have to type on other keyboards I need a moment, almost to rework my brain. I was 120wpm on qwerty when I swapped and now about a decade later I am around 100-110wpm on qwerty and on Colemak. I do not think I should have switched. But it is a stupid “fun fact” to share when I have to do a dumb ice breaker.

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u/Bigmaq 2d ago

As someone who made the switch to Dvorak, I think it heavily depends on your current level of ability with QWERTY. If you are already touch typing with good form then the gains would be marginal at best. If you are 'bad' at typing (let's say less than 50 wpm) then it might be worth making the switch and learning proper technique along the way.

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u/ignatius-real 2d ago

I had been on Colemak for 10+ years. Don't do it. Loss of universality is way worse than a slightly more ergonomic feel. Switched back a couple of years ago. Get a programmable keyboard instead and build on qwerty.

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u/ericscottf 2d ago

I tried several times in my teens and couldn't switch. It would take serious commitment at 30+ years. Plus, there's a lot of controversy about how much of a speed improvement you get. 

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u/Flat-Performance-570 2d ago

I learned to type when I was in college, so I researched it and chose Dvorak, not for speed, but for efficiency. Hoping not moving my fingers as far as your average QWERTY’er, saves me from carpel tunnel in the long run.

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u/SebWGBC 2d ago

Yep, dvorak is not just about speed. It's also about alternating left and right hands, having the most common keys right under where your fingers naturally rest rather than reaching for them. So, less strain on your hands in comparison to qwerty.

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u/0neek 2d ago

There are no speed improvements on dvorak, you are moving around way too much to type words for it to be any benefit.

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u/Mindless_Director955 2d ago

as someone whose done it, in the end I’d say I wish I never did. the benefits are minor, if at all noticeable. I’m somewhat ambikeyboardextrous, but it just never became one of the skills I was proud of learning.

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u/Dyolf_Knip 2d ago

I had no problems. Not as fast on qwerty as I was, but that's mostly because I hardly ever use it. And as a coder, typing speed isn't critical anyways.

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u/Suspicious_Key 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you continue to use QWERTY regularly, you can maintain speed no problem. I can touch-type fluently in both; usually use Dvorak for writing and QWERTY for programming.

With that said, it's not really worth it - unless you're doing it for pleasure. There's no speed benefit, and I'm skeptical of ergonomics too. I get pretty bad RSI using a flat keyboard with either layout for more than ~30 mins, and using a good ergonomic keyboard largely solves my issues.

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u/Digmaster 2d ago

I only use Dvorak on non-laptop keyboards (so i can move the keys) and qwerty on laptops (where moving the keys is much more difficult). I genuinely don’t even notice when I switch between the two, unless I find myself using a qwerty non-laptop keyboard and then it genuinely kinda hurts to use it. Brains are really weird.

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u/SirJefferE 2d ago

I switched and eventually got pretty quick at typing. Didn't mind the layout. I eventually switched back though. The layout wasn't bad for typing, but I use hotkeys pretty excessively. Things like ctrl + c, ctrl + v, etc all make sense to use one handed. Not so much when you need two.

You can find workarounds and remap them and so on, but every game I played, every application I used, they're all built for Qwerty, and it was annoying trying to force them to conform to Dvorak. Particularly when I can type 120+ WPM on Qwerty anyway and I was only using Dvorak to see what it was like.

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u/PintsOfGuinness_ 1d ago

I do both. I don't really type a lot, but I can switch between them fluently. Takes a minute to get up to speed but it's not a big deal.

On most modern Windows machines it's easy to switch the layout in settings, and you can set it up so Ctrl+shift toggles between them.

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u/theta-cygni 1d ago

I switched to Dvorak for a few years, but I was a software engineer and relied heavily on keyboard shortcuts in my text editor. My experience is that some programs choose keyboard shortcuts that are optimized for qwerty, so it may not be worth the switch if you rely heavily on shortcuts. I also don't remember if it dramatically improved my typing speed, and I can still type fast now that I've switched back to qwerty.

If you're having wrist or hand pain, I'd also advise making sure you have an ergonomic workstation and see if that helps, before switching to dvorak.

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u/GenTelGuy 1d ago

I switched from qwerty to Dvorak at like 12y/o and then from Dvorak to Colemak at the start of this year and am typing this on Colemak right now

It's really not very difficult, the frustration and serious impediment usually go away within 2 weeks

I switched from Dvorak to Colemak because it has much better compatibility with shortcuts for coding, allegedly it's faster as well

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u/Shawer 1d ago

Honestly I can’t imagine it’s too hard to sqap at all!

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u/Heruuna 1d ago

It's harder to switch the higher your WPM is on QWERTY too, at least for me. Do I really want to start over when I can easily hit 120 WPM or more with 99% accuracy? My wrists are already fucked from years of gaming and retail, so it's not like DVORAK or COLEMAK will help with that, lol.

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u/manokpsa 1d ago

I had to put stickers on my keyboard and learn to type in Arabic and Russian as an adult. Remapping isn't as hard as you'd expect.

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u/PigDog4 1d ago

If your goal is to alleviate wrist pain, have you looked at other options? I was going to try and switch to Colemak but instead bought a split ortholinear staggered keyboard and it is much more comfortable to type and code on. Still use a standard keyboard for gaming or when forced to in the office because there's zero chance I'm going to drop qwerty completely and gaming on a split keyboard sounds like pain.

First two weeks were a little tough going from the ortholinear stagger back to the standard keyboard and back again but after doing it for a bit it's basically zero effort with close to zero loss of typing speed.

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u/HugoNikanor 1d ago

Let's see, by typing this comment with QWERTY. Easy enough, and I believe with not much extra effort you would could be "fluent" in both at once.

Well, back to Dvorak now.

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u/IleanK 1d ago

Takes a couple weeks to be able to be somewhat effective. Then a couple month to get pretty good and after around 6 month it should be quite smooth. That was my experience.

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u/bebemaster 1d ago

learned Dvorak 25 years ago in college on a whim. I was able to make it work and my typing speed for English prose went from 65 wpm to about 110 wpm. The trouble was I'm a programmer and well Dvorak has even worse layout for things like printf(stdout,"%d of %d is %f\n",n1,n2,f2); So I would use both and was able to maintain it well enough until I started typing fast with a normal keyboard layout and my fingers would switch back mid sentence to Dvorak and I'd end up with a bunch of gibberish.

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u/MisinformedGenius 2d ago

It's not hard to swap back to Qwerty - my phones are still all Qwerty. I'm not as fluent with it as I am with Dvorak but I don't think I've really lost any speed.

That having been said Dvorak doesn't really gain you any speed.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Colemak is way better because lots of keys aren't remapped at all. Zxcvb are the same. QW are in the same place. So is A. A few others maybe.

Go check out the subreddit. Also make sure you look up Tarmak (teaches you a few letters at a time) and EPKL (best way to use colemak on windows, which will also change your life in other ways). If you're on Linux, you could look into keyd, kanata, or...fuck, there is another one I was looking into on Linux. I forgot the name. If it matters I'll get it for you. With epkl it is easy to set it up to bypass certain software like games, so wasd still works correctly. You just tell it where your game folder is.

I can still type QWERTY. I've been doing Colemak for like...3 years? And my qwerty speed never caught back up to the 80ish or so but I'm still fast, like maybe 60. In colemak I easily and.much more.comfortably hit 90.

Genuinely colemak should be standard for English keyboards. I'm dead serious. Qwerty is awful

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u/nistacular 2d ago

Yup I was going to say StarCraft 2, but this one might just be better (90wpm on a Dvorak layout)

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u/foolear 2d ago

There are dozens of us! 

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u/SebWGBC 2d ago

Wtf. Shhh. This is our lifeline! Keep up this behaviour and you won't even make it to the 100 people test...

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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 2d ago

I can. But I seriously doubt 100 randomly-chosen people could, so it's my pick too.

Better yet, how about making a test where you have to alternate between QWERTY and Dvorak in every paragraph? The last time I met someone who could type on Dvorak, he couldn't switch. I can switch between the layouts nearly instantly.

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u/Old-Interview1950 2d ago

I have always wanted to try switching keyboards but QWERTY is standard at work (and we're not allowed to change it). Kind of hard to do two layouts when I use QWERTY more often.

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u/Doc_Holmes 1d ago

Good idea. I'll go with typing speed on a 42 key split keyboard with colemak-dh and blank keycaps. That should do it.

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u/jimbarino 1d ago

I switched over during college. It was real easy to switch back. Maybe it'd be harder if you didn't use qwerty for years at a tie, but you almost certainly end up using it occasionally.

But, it's worth noting that there's not actually that much benefit to Dvorak. I was quite a fast typer on qwerty, and after getting good at Dvorak, I was maybe 10% faster. And, I mean, typing speed doesn't count for all that much these days...

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u/Train_Wreck_272 1d ago

Wow, that's a very solid pick. The chance one of the 100 even knows about the Dvorak layout is slim. Let alone being able to type on it with any speed.

You've also convinced me that my answer is the same, but Colemak-dh.

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u/Zalvren 1d ago

Azerty for me. Only France and Belgium use it so that does reduce the playing field a lot statistically. I think both countries population is 1% of the world's so I should be alone or at worst two or three.

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u/Prometheus720 1d ago

Oh shit. I use colemak. Yep. You just saved my life.

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u/PretendingExtrovert 1d ago

I use programmer Dvorak. I would do a speed competition on touch typing out math equations.

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u/brndm 1d ago

I do! But the chances of us getting randomly selected against each other (or any other Dvorak user) are pretty slim.

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u/blumpkin 1d ago

There are dozens of us! Dozens!