Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jbpetersen 3398 days ago
If you already know Dvorak I'd personally recommend Workman as a third as someone who was in the same position of already being competent with QWERTY and Dvorak.
2 comments

I went and tried out both Workman and Colemak for a few minutes; I'll have to give Workman more time to try it out, but one thing I noticed about Workman and Colemak, and of course Qwerty, is that they all have the most-used punctuation at the bottom of the right hand. This is actually one thing I prefer about Dvorak: the punctuation symbols (period, comma, quote mark) are in the upper left-hand area, where it's a little easier to get to than anything on the bottom row. I use periods and commas a lot, which I think isn't unusual, so I always thought it was weird that other layouts relegate these to the 2nd-hardest to reach part of the keyboard (for a right-handed person).

What are your thoughts on Dvorak vs. these other layouts?

Personally, my biggest gripe with Dvorak is that it bunches up all the vowels on the left hand home row, and it puts A on the left pinky, while U is on the index finger and I requires a lateral stretch. I do like how Workman sticks the E on the strongest finger, the right-hand middle finger. But the punctuation bothers me, and I feel like both it and Colemak make some sacrifices in the interest of not deviating too far from familiar-old Qwerty. As someone who's already proficient with Dvorak, I really don't care if a layout is "alien" to Qwerty users.

Very interesting, thanks for the tip!