When comparing QWERTY vs Carpalx QGMLWB, the Slant community recommends QWERTY for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” QWERTY is ranked 5th while Carpalx QGMLWB is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose QWERTY is:
You don't have to carry your own keyboard everywhere, QWERTY is pretty popular.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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.
Pro Punctuation is in the same location as QWERTY
If you already know QWERTY you don't have to relearn the punctuation, with the single exception of the ;:
key which is in QWERTY's P
position, like Colemak.
Pro ZXC don't move compared to QWERTY
Like Colemak, the common undo, cut and copy Ctrl-commands don't move from their QWERTY positions. The V
(paste) key does though.
Pro Uses a colemak-like character layout
Uses the colemak character layout of moving P on a standard QWERTY keyboard layout one step down, extending the home row.
Pro Has low consecutive finger use
See the source here.
Pro Letter positions optimized
Via a quantitative effort model.
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.
Con Very unintuitive
Why QWERTY?
Con Correct typographic letters and symbols not easily reachable
Con Effort model is speculative
The quantitative effort model central to the optimization is based on armchair speculation, rather than a scientific biomedical study. The chosen metrics and weighting for them are likely partially correct. But no-one is really sure how correct.
Con Doesn't take finger length into account
Unlike layouts such as norman and workman, QGMLWB doesn't take the length of fingers into account, for example on a standard QWERTY layout, it's easier to reach E than C.
Con Punctuation is not optimized
Programmers have to use punctuation a lot, but (except for the ;:
key, like Colemak) punctuation hasn't been moved from their positions on QWERTY. In fact, the non-letter characters , . - " _ ' ) ( ; 0 1 = 2 :
are used more than the least-frequent letter z
in a reasonable English corpus. Not optimizing punctuation at all, especially for programmers, is nonsense.
Con V key has moved compared to QWERTY
The common paste shortcut used in for example windows has been moved to the right hand, making the layout harder to learn. This however is fixed in the QGMLWY variant of the carpalx series.
Con A very small user base and community
Con Doesn't favor the right hand
For right handed users, this keyboard layout doesn't use the usually stronger right hand more than the left, infact it sometimes favors the left hand more.