QWERTY Review

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Review of QWERTY powered by the Slant community.

QWERTY is the standard US keyboard layout. (With close variants in other countries.) It was originally designed to avoid mechanical collisions of typewriter hammers.

SpecsUpdate

Left Little Finger Travel0.4%

Right Index Finger Travel25.5%

Right Ring Finger Travel8.8%

Left Ring Finger Travel2.6%

Home Row Key Freq.27.0%

Right Middle Finger Usage6.2%

Top Row Key Freq.43.8%

Left Ring Finger Usage7.1%

Right Little Finger Travel3.5%

Right Little Finger Usage2.4%

Left Index Finger Usage18.6%

Right Ring Finger Usage10.4%

Left Middle Finger Travel22.0%

Bottom Row Key Freq.13.9%

Right Middle Finger Travel8.6%

Left Index Finger Travel28.5%

Thumb Usage15.3%

Left Little Finger Usage6.4%

Right Index Finger Usage15.4%

Left Middle Finger Usage18.2%

Consecutive Same-Hand Keystrokes (L/R)65.5%/34.5%

Spacebar Row Key Freq.15.3%

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?

Pros

Pro
Popular

You don't have to carry your own keyboard everywhere, QWERTY is pretty popular.

Pro
Default keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts for most applications were designed with QWERTY in mind.

Pro
Good for Vim users

Vim is most natural in QWERTY, since this is the layout it was designed on. Learning a good editor will help with your programming a lot more than learning a new layout.

Pro
Easy access to important keys

Some of the most used keys in programming such as ; . / " | ' < > * are very easily accessible because they either have their own keys or are "shift options". People who grew up using alternative layouts, such as Belgian AZERTY, know from experience this shouldn't be taken for granted.

Cons

Con
Not an easy to gain speed on QWERTY

Learning to touch type using traditional touch typing methods, you would not be as fast as others on Dvorak and you would be making quite a few mistakes.
The reasons that most of record holders have placing in typing speeds is because they do not use traditional typing methods.

Con
Made for typewriters, not computers

It was created before computers got popular. This layout was created for typing machines, so as to prevent collision between character hammers from slowing down the typist.