Monday, January 18, 2010

Typing in Stereo?

"Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible." St. Augustine

I don't remember who or when, but I was once told that the current setup of the common keyboard is set up to intentionally slow you down. Maybe I wanted to believe it because I've never been a particularly fast typer. Truthfully, instant messaging chatting improved my speed and accuracy more than any of the exercises I ever had to do in school...but I digress.


I was skeptical of this so I decided to research it. The keyboard setup we're all familiar with is nicknamed the "QWERTY," after the letters on the top left (go ahead, look). After doing some research on the internet, I discovered that the other setup is the "Dvorak" (named after it's creator) and after reading from this site, I learned that it is designed for the one hand/finger typer- it couples commonly used letters closer together to limit the distance traveled to type letters (think of the letters Pat always picks on Wheel of Fortune: RSTLNE). Click here to read what Wikipedia has to say about Dvorak and see how it is setup.


I read somewhere else that in studies QWERTY users could type just as fast as Dvorak users. I guess that means that you should probably just go with what you're used to. But I wonder, how much do I do that makes things harder for me? How often can I "not get out of my own way"? How often do we, as Christians, do that? Search for a way to simplify and increase the effectiveness of what you're doing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I believe the current keyboard setup was done because on typewriters the goal was to avoid having the "pegs" get jammed on one another as ones near each other tend to do when pressed near the same time. Thus commonly used letters were spaced far apart. Heard that somewhere, or at least that basic idea...