I was coding earlier today (surprise surprise), and felt myself question for a second, why my fingers were moving so much while typing. You know the feeling when somebody reminds you that you're breathing, and then you suddenly feel like you're manually controlling it for a minute. It was like that, except this time I watched as my fingers jumped across the QWERTY layout on my laptop's keyboard.
And then I remembered that I'd read somewhere that QWERTY was not even the most efficient layout - it has just become too common to get rid of. So I did some more research - turns out, there's dozens of alternatives out there! There's the well-known Dvorak, there's Colemak, there's Workman, Neo, BEPO, and dozens more. It seems that the most efficient and ergonomic keyboard layout is a yet-unsolved and much-discussed problem by developers and researchers alike. That said, I have to admit I have never seen a Dvorak or Colemak keyboard in real life - much less know anybody using them day-to-day.
By the way, Dvorak isn't named after the first letters on its layout, like QWERTY is - it was created by August Dvorak in 1936.
The Dvorak keyboard layout
However, you don't have to reinvent the wheel to provide a boost in productivity - sometimes a simple variation on the QWERTY keyboard will do. AZERTY, for example, is widespread in France, Belgium, and some French-speaking African countries. Its main difference is swapping the Q and A and the W and Z keys, hence 'AZERTY'. AZERTY was designed to make it easier for French to be typed efficiently. But nobody seems to agree how it was meant to do that, and even the government is desperately trying to get rid of it. Likewise, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia and Slovakia, many keyboards use the QWERTZ layout. Unlike Dvorak or Colemak, these AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards are widespread on devices manufactured and sold in all of these countries, and you can even switch your phone keyboard to them when you want to type in those languages.
But why on earth are we all using QWERTY, or some super-similar derivative? What happened to Dvorak?
The Tyranny of Muscle Memory
The honest answer is muscle memory. I've been typing on QWERTY for my entire life. I wouldn't quite say I touchtype - my typing has been called 'erratic' and I definitely don't follow the official hand placement rules, but I can definitely type fast enough. My personal record is 157wpm, and I would say I average a high enough wpm that my typing speed is never a bottleneck, it's more how fast my brain can process the information I'm trying to write down.
When I type "the", I don't look for the letter 't', my brain just knows it's somewhere at the top middle of the keyboard. I don't always hit it with the same finger, or even the same hand, but my fingers can find it by themselves on autopilot while my mind can focus on forming sentences.
I've probably typed hundreds of thousands of words on this layout. Maybe millions. That's a whole lot of muscle memory I would be throwing away if I started learning a new layout. It would be like learning to walk again, but if you had no problem walking and voluntarily decided to crawl for a few months.
And before I get into the most important point, here's an anecdote. When I was younger, my librarian would let me sit behind the library computer while she was on break, and showed me how to use it. Younger me loved this, and it definitely helped fuel my love for computers. She had a particular little quirk, though. She used the mouse upside down. I don't mean she flipped it over and tried to click on the underside of the mouse, I mean that the mouse was facing downwards - just like this. She told me it was simply how she learnt to use it, as she grew up in Australia - looking back, she was probably running a long-standing joke on me - but whether she was serious or not, she was fully committed. Every time I saw her, and every time I used the computer with her, she would use the mouse this way, entirely flawlessly and comfortably.
Thankfully, I did not inherit this behaviour, and am capable of using a mouse like a normal human. That said, I did trial it for a couple of years on-and-off, and honestly it wasn't that bad. There's a relatively low learning curve, and it's pretty fun. You get some odd looks and your wrist will not thank you for it, though.
But the key point of this story, rambling as it was, was that I was able to trial it out. Despite the fact that most people use their mouse the normal way up, it was trivial for me to flip it upside down when I was using their computer. You cannot do this with keyboard layouts. If you sit down at a keyboard and see QWERTY, unless you have Dvorak entirely memorised, and you want to go to the settings, change the keyboard layout, and change it back when you're finished, it is almost impossible to try out other keyboard layouts without buying a new keyboard.
Every computer I sit down at has QWERTY as the default. Every laptop, every keyboard at my university, every computer in every office everywhere.
This is probably the biggest issue. QWERTY isn't just on my keyboard - it's everywhere.
Imagine being fluent in only Dvorak, and being handed your friend's phone to type in an address or an email. The embarassment having to hunt for letters like I'm eighty years old and have never seen a phone would probably kill me.
So Why Did AZERTY succeed?
AZERTY, like QWERTZ, appeared in the late 19th and early 20th century, as a new take on American typewriters which were becoming popular at the time. Y is not a common letter in German, so it was replaced with Z, and similarly the French decided they needed an easier way to type one of the most common letters (A) and pushed Q down the priority list.
Because these layouts were so similar to QWERTY, it wasn't a huge task to produce new typewriters in their style. The Germans would just have to take out a few keys and replace them with a few others, and then send the typewriters out for the public. Not nearly as dramatic as a complete rework - especially if newswriters, and the rest of your target customers, were already accustomed to the QWERTY layout.
The keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed that Q is not a common letter in the English alphabet either. That's okay - it's not actually a good idea to group commonly used letters together, as it makes for weird hand movements. If you wanted to type the word 'hello', and the letters were all grouped together, you'd likely have to use one hand to type the entire word, slowing you down.
It is commonly said that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing, to stop typewriters jamming. This is not entirely true, but not entirely false either. Typewriters often jammed because keys too close to each other were pressed in quick succession. So, the keys that were commonly used together were spaced out across the keyboard. However, as I've just said, placing commonly used keys far apart can encourage them to be pressed with the other hand, which also makes for a quicker and smoother typing experience - in an ideal world, you alternate hands with every letter. Funnily enough, this is what Dvorak aims to achieve - reduce movement and thus reduce wrist strain.
Maybe It's Not That Bad?
There is definitely something to be said for the familiar. Yes, you may not be outputting exactly 100% efficiency with QWERTY - but when are we ever?
QWERTY is like the English of keyboard layouts. It's not particularly well-constructed, it's a result of many bad decisions that were made a long time ago, but for various reasons, it has become the universally-recognised standard - and it is unlikely to lose that title anytime soon. And often, universal compatibility wins over theoretical optimisation.
QWERTY is like the English of keyboard layouts.
So, since we can't get adults who are used to QWERTY to use Dvorak, shouldn't we still teach children it? It's hard to say. Inertia is a powerful weapon, and it is the reason we still use our calendar system, when there are clearly better alternatives available (which I stand by). If it's necessary, societal changes can be done, like decimalisation, but it requires strong push and a striking reason. We aren't going to begin producing keyboards in Dvorak just for the sake of it.
Conclusion: I'm Probably Still Going to Keep Using QWERTY
I would love to be able to switch to a new keyboard layout. I would love to try out Dvorak for a proper trial, not just for a few hours at midnight trying to figure out what makes it more efficient. But until I stop using keyboards daily, the muscle memory is too strong and outweighs any potential benefits I'd gain long-term from a new-fangled hyper-efficient layout.
Oftentimes, the 'good enough' solution that satisfies most people is better than the optimal solution which makes one power-user extremely happy, and confuses everybody else. But if you're reading this and you've successfully made the switch to an alternative layout, I'm genuinely curious about your experience. Was it worth it? Do you ever regret it when you sit down at someone else's computer?
And any inventors out there - please keep creating new keyboard layouts - one day, you might create the new QWERTY. It's unlikely, though.