From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu May 10 2001 - 22:52:11 MDT
Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 06:08:01PM -0400, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > experience. I would similarly report from my personal experience that the
> > chief advantage of the Dvorak keyboard is rhythm and the distance your
> > fingers need to travel. I expect that both the Navy results and the
>
> People I know who have switched have said this too. It's not speed, it's
> effort.
That's a good way of putting it.
> I tried switching. I found that Dvorak is in fact better for English text,
> but not for coding and Unix. Possibly because coding and Unix have adapted to
> Qwerty, but still, the rhythm and frequencies of computer text are a lot
> different than English.
Yes, Dvorak is slightly less superior for coding; I've noticed that as
well. On the other hand, it depends what language you're using
(*cough*Python*cough*... the Better Ways all work together, you know...)
> So I use a Kinesis keyboard, where the physical distance to all keys is closer
> to being constant. Nyah.
Hm, I looked this up online, but it appears to require actual hardware
rather than hitting a software switch. If switching to Dvorak required
new hardware I wouldn't have chosen it as an iconoclasm archetype... I
should probably try one of those keyboards if I ever happen to run across
one, though.
> "Does using a Kinesis and riding a motorcycle and a recumbent bicycle make up
> the iconoclasm points that I lose for not using Dvorak?" -- a friend.
If you're *asking someone else* how many iconoclasm points you have... oh,
never mind. The motorcycle doesn't count; the Kinesis is worth a couple
of points; the recumbent bicycle scores a lot of points but still not as
many as a Dvorak keyboard.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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