My Ruminations on Software

The curse of QWERTY

Two years back I started having pain in my hands, wrist joints, finger joints, neck and upper back. I searched about it and came to know lot of programmers face this and for some of them this pain turns into Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome . This was serious . The height of chair and monitor and keyboard were pretty right and I did not feel any problem with that. Then the biggest surprise came in the form of DVORAK keyboard. I came to know that QWERTY keyboard was actually designed to slow down typing. There is an interesting web-site that has lot of good info on  DVORAK.

The problems with QWERTY keyboard are mentioned at so many places on internet that it is impossible to read them all.  QWERTY is such a pain and I am amazed that with so much advancement in technology we still manufacture QWERTY keyboards. I came across so many different keyboard layouts: Colemak, Workman and Norman among the popular ones. I like to improve myself and the pain in hands, finger joints, neck and upper back was a motivation to try something. I chose DVORAK above Colemak and Workman because latter two were based on QWERTY. I think one can not design a better model to solve a problem if its design is based on a faulty old model. Norman layout I could not find on Arch Linux. In India only QWERTY keyboards are available (hardware). So the only option was to change software and Linux has so many possibilities and options that it made me more happier. You do not need to change hardware, just some settings as per your distro. I have logitech wireless K260 motherboard and I decided to change the placement of keys on keyboard manually to DVORAK along with software settings. This is how it looks like:

As you can see every key was a fit for every other socket except these four: F, U, J and H. These four keys were fitting only in their original positions, I don’t know why. Hence I put handmade stickers on them and this is how my keyboard looks now:

Using this for 3 months now and pain in hands and finger joints is gone. Neck and upper back pain have reduced to a much larger degree but not totally gone. All these parts pain a lot if I sit for longer hours in front of computer (6-9 hours or more). I am not a doctor and you should consult a doctor if you are experiencing pains then please do not postpone a medical checkup. Here are some points that may help:

1. Make sure monitor is at a height where your neck is straight when you look at it
2. Make sure your chair has cushion and flexible back support. You can adjust the height of your chair to a comfortable level.
3. Keyboard and mouse need to be at comfortable height and distance

The best option is to find a good computer table according to your height and build. It is very easy, you know your comfort level within few seconds of sitting on that chair and putting your hands on table. Please do not type (for desktop computer) while sitting on bed. It will cause lot of discomfort for many days.

There are many scientists/researchers/government-organizations who after doing lots of research have concluded that all these alternatives like DVORAK, Colemak, Workman, Norman etc do not offer any advantages over QWERTY because human mind can adapt to any random pattern of keyboards, that a person can type as fast on QWERTY as on any other random pattern. Well that may be true and I can agree to that and I do not give much damn if my typing speed is 20 wpm or 50 wpm but what about RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? I am using DVORAK from 3 months now and one day I just wanted to try QWERTY again to see how it feels. It was horrible experience to use QWERTY again. My hands were literally moving from one corner of keyboard to another (diagonally) causing much stress and pain in fingers. With DVORAK most of the words (of English language) exist on Home Row and hence there is not much diagonal movement of hands when you type. My mind did not forget the QWERTY layout though but that one hour was torture. I switched back to DVORAK and till date never tried that again. Though I face problems because keyboard is changed at Operating-System level(software level) than hardware level. So, when I have BIOS or a boot-loader at my disposal then it behaves like QWERTY keyboard because this is what it is as per hardware construction. But this is a minor issue compared to 99% of my time which I spent in OS.

Copyright © 2014 Arnuld Uttre, Village – Patti, P.O – Manakpur, Tehsil – Nangal, Distt. – Ropar, Punjab (INDIA)

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