thanks GS

FYI I agree the QWERTY keyboard isn't great, but I also agree the cost of changing it now is too high.

wait, wtf. why doesn't the keyboard spell out "dvorak"?

@goodguy5 It's the inventors name

@goodguy5 Dvorak is the surname of its designer. It's not named after its keys.

then I am against it on principle

any argument of its value is immaterial

@goodguy5 In particular, dvorak is often said to be significantly faster, more reliable (less typos) and/or healthier to use in terms of ergonomics than qwerty by its proponents

Maybe I'd care if it had a name based on keys

Although studies on the field often disagree

webmeets.com/files/papers/lacea-lames/2013/539/…

Regardless of this heathen, dvorak board, Different cultures (read: the main language used by each major region) should have keyboards that reflect their commonly used letters/characters.

@goodguy5 There are indeed a handful of different keyboard layouts, such as QWERTZ and AZERTY used around Europe.

@goodguy5 They generally do

@doppelgreener ^That is exactly my point

So, a dvorak board would not be able to accommodate all of them

A study frequently cited as proving DVORAK isnt as good had a whopping sample size of 10 people who already typed qwerty

@goodguy5 Much like a QWERTY board does not - but a dvorak equivalent can exist and likely does in many alternative languages and alphabets

@SirCinnamon Well, the one you linked has a sample size of zero ;)

@kviiri :P

@SirCinnamon of course a qwerty board does not. I never supposed it did.

Let's say that DVORAK, when applied to all users, results in 20% faster typing. The average person has 40 wpm under qwerty, so 8 extra wpm. I do not know any enterprise whose chief problem worth solving is that employees ought to type 8 more words a minute.

I agree the ten-user paper is rubbish though.

and what is a "dvorak equivalent"?

but an argument of "studies cost money why bother" is likely why there isnt good data

I will remind the court that switching standards, such as Imperial to Metric, or road driving methods, is a significant undertaking that takes many countries careful planning and coordination across a great many institutions, additionally requiring structural support change at the educational level. The switch does not happen at the click of one's fingers.

@goodguy5 A keyboard with a philosophy of "The keys most used should be the ones easiest to reach"

@goodguy5 I'd guess it means a layout designed with the principles of dvorak applied to a different set of characters or a different language

@SirCinnamon isn't that the philosophy of all keyboards?

@goodguy5 It is the exact opposite philosophy of a qwerty keyboard

I thought that was the exact reason qwerty was laid out like it was

qwerty was designed for typewriters, where pressing two keys rapidly which are near each other would jam the keyboard

DVORAK is great for professional typists trying to optimize a blazing fast WPM, but that's like, 0% of all users

but then again, no one used proper typing form anymore, so it doesn't even matter.

@SirCinnamon That is most recently considered to be a myth, and a debunked one.

The greatest bottleneck on typing speed is thinking of what words ought to be typed next, and DVORAK won't improve that

Qwerty was not, demonstrably, designed to minimize typewriter jam.

And if you want to optimize typing speed, you need that ridiculous Thad Starner twiddler anyway

@SPavel Purely anecdotal

@SirCinnamon Again, the qwerty design was not to make characters hard to reach, but to separate characters that commonly appear together. That may correlate with letters being hard to reach, but it's nowhere near the "design philosophy" of a qwerty board.

@SirCinnamon You think that thinking of what you need to write before you write it is anecdotal?

I have a sick burn based on that, but I won't say it

If I try to type a word with proper form...it's super hard

@SPavel "thats the biggest bottleneck" certainly is

@SirCinnamon If I don't know what I want to write, I have 0 WPM.

That is not arguable.

@SPavel Well that sounds like a you problem because I often find I'm thinking faster than I'm typing

@SPavel We can assume for these purposes the person knows what they want to write, as keyboard layouts are not addressing that problem.

The question is how to effectively let them write what they want to write.

Well regardless of why QWERTY is the way it is, typewriter jam or not, the most used keys are spaced out and the home row contains several of the LEAST used keys

@doppelgreener But for optimization purposes, I'd say it does matter. (There's little point in optimizing something that's not the chief bottleneck)

@doppelgreener A realistic typing scenario - say, an analyst typing an email - is 1. think, 2. type, 3. think some more. Under this model, augmenting the speed of the bursts of typing does not provide that much improvement, if any.

@kviiri To what? It's outside the scope of what keyboard layouts do. They don't exist to help you think what you want to write next.

@doppelgreener To "whether we should put energy into optimizing this thing", I mean.

@doppelgreener It's within the scope of determining the value of the proposed change.

@SPavel More time to think, less time required typing. And thats one use - what about dictation

@SirCinnamon Dictation to a typist is a use case that hasn't been vital for 50 years.

And how much of a bottleneck you're proposing that is is a fully anecdotal and exaggerated reason

@SirCinnamon it's not JUT the organization of the home row. it's how the keys on the home row interact with one another and the adjacent rows. More specifically, how fingers move.

@goodguy5 Sure, and in the space covered by the index fingers there is 1 vowel

yes, but the longer middle finger has the 'e'

the other middle finger has the i

In order to deprecate qwerty in favor of another primary text entry method, it would probably need to increase speeds by an order of magnitude before there would be business value sufficient to push for change

@goodguy5 I dont think finger dexterity is based purely on length of the finger

@kviiri Oh. Yeah. I don't consider it worth the effort. I'm a programmer, I type a ton every day, I am a fast typist. In terms of my work, I spend more than half my time thinking. I have never felt any desire or need to type faster than I do now, it is already quite fast enough.

I've considered learning DVORAK myself, but I've decided I'd rather not.

@doppelgreener Yeah, exactly :) and as a programmer I guess you've encountered similar situations in other opitmization problems

points to dvorak keyboard This is the future that liberals want!

Wow, I never thought about the job title of someone studying ergonomics...that is a terrible name

@kviiri There's always the question of whether to spend X time now that will save me Y time later, and I don't think the equation balances out in favour of me learning Dvorak. The Y is negligible for my work.

Like in my previous job, I created a really straightforward yet inefficient script to do some routine maintenance on a customer's installation. It was slow and bad, but it didn't really matter since it was only run once a fortnight and even then on the weekend when the load was minimal, no point in spending several times as long to create an objectively better, faster, neater script if the optimizations didn't really result in extra value for the customer.

Given improvements in AI, predictive typing is the future IMO

@doppelgreener But if you had learned dvorak when you learned qwerty? And lived in a world where both had widespread support?

@SirCinnamon Then he would type slightly faster?

@kviiri there's an xkcd about that

And the thinking bottleneck isnt a great counter - less time spent typing is more time to think, soon and less time spent doing the work overall

@SPavel Yeah exactly

@SirCinnamon That's not a very strong argument.

@SPavel Why not?

"If we change the entire timeline, we might see a marginal increase in an unimportant statistic for a small sliver of the workforce"

@SirCinnamon According to this paper I would be typing 10% faster. I don't consider that a meaningful difference.

@doppelgreener What if everyone typed 10% faster

@SirCinnamon Then they would take 10% more breaks

It's not a meaningful difference.

@SPavel QoL improvment

Efficiency does not produce more output, by and large.

I already type more than 10% faster than almost everyone I know, just by practice. My bottleneck in my writing is not "I can't finish this sentence fast enough", it's working out phrasing and how to position that sentence the way I want.

@SirCinnamon If I had to type 10% fewer words, my QoL would not improve

@goodguy5 The phenomenon applies to more than that though - sometimes time is of no real value.

@SPavel I disagree

@SirCinnamon You disagree about my QoL?

Wow

Odds of developing Carpal tunnel are lower

eg. in cases where the script runs every midnight on a server doing nothing else, it doesn't really matter if it takes a minute or an hour.

@SirCinnamon A better keyboard, rather than a different layout, would show a better health increase, as would ergonomics training

@kviiri in that case, it's not costing YOU time. (and even then processor time is an arguable metric to compare against)

Is this the point of the argument we're at now? You guys are legitimately arguing that "the ability of everyone in the world to type 10% faster would have no impact"? Because if so i'm ready to cal it there

Honestly, if I didn't have to type at all and words would appear as I thought them, as if by magic, I do not think I would be more productive or happier.

@SirCinnamon not "no" impact just "less impact than giving everyone in the world new keyboards"

@goodguy5 Sure you can measure that one is worse in processor time than the other, but processor time on an idle server is of negligible value.

@SPavel I would be happier, but still not more productive

The value of pretty much anything is relative.

@goodguy5 As I have explained several dozen times at this point that is NOT what my argument is

@GreySage Happier for like a week before it became familiar and you found a new thing to complain about? :P

@SirCinnamon wait, I thought it was "should everyone use weird keyboards or not? go"

(sorry, I joined late)

And "simple but objective" measures of efficiency (eg. processor time) are pretty much invariably bad metrics in edge cases. Sometimes not even that edge ones.

@goodguy5 My argument is the gradual effort towards that end is worthwhile, over a long timeframe.

Do developers who work in terser languages produce better or faster work? Are they happier?

@SirCinnamon Then you have no idea what kind of effort would be involved.

I think it may be time to move on to a different topic.

@SPavel And i think youre putting forth the fact that you dont want to as an argument

@doppelgreener Taxes. Did everyone remember to do them?

@SPavel Yes, but I still haven't

@GreySage Nice

@SPavel I only have to fill in one field so naturally I'm not going to do it until I'm almost late.

No wait, two fields.

I need to figure out what the proper witholding is so that I don't end up getting such a high refunbd

@kviiri ugh you and your sensible European tax system

@kviiri The envy... it grows...

I would say "then again, you probably pay way more tax" but New York has VERY high taxes because it subsidizes the state of New York as well as the federal govt

Last year my parents were really angry at my little brother who used his tax returns to buy a "PlayStation" (which turned out to be an Xbox) instead of putting it into savings. I think they should've called it a "Nintendo" for the proper "out-of-touch with the modern world" vibe.

@SPavel Well, possibly - I'm unemployed until late Summer, so I won't be paying a lot of taxes this year (yay progressive taxes)

Do they have savings in Finland? I thought that when you run out of money, the socialists come and give you some more.

Or am I thinking of Sweden

@SPavel Idealistic people who can afford it do have savings, yep

I did see that they straight up gave housing to a bunch of homeless people in Finland, which worked out very well in the long run because it's cheaper than shelters, health care, etc costs

I hope the U.S. makes its way to UBI or population control. I think we're going to tank without one or the other in 50 years

@SPavel Yeah, I think that's a good idea

@goodguy5 UBI?

@goodguy5 Honestly, I'm not significantly attached to Dvorak in particular and havent done that much reading into other options. My genuine belief is that QWERTY is not magically the best layout that could exist and research into efficient layouts is worthwhile

And that whatever layout provides the most efficient typing is worth switching to

@GreySage Universal Basic Income

(gradually)

@SirCinnamon Not even QWERTY's creator thought it was the best layout. It is just a Good layout.

@goodguy5 Ah, yes, I think that would be a good thing.

But, if we want to keep talking about this, I would invite those interested to continue it in Not A Bar.

@SirCinnamon the REAL problem though.... with any sort of "keyboard layout" argument...

I wish we had universal basic income here. The current welfare system is okay-ish but there's the odd chance of welfare traps and there's too much bureaucracy

@goodguy5 Which should be taken into account when researching alternatives

@SirCinnamon So, qwerty might even be the best phone layout! who knows!

@GreySage The problem with UBI is that the American system is not set up to pay for it.

@goodguy5 Swype/Swiftkey has like 120 WPM

But yes, we should value studies more

@SPavel I love swyftkey

@SPavel If you ever pop up in Finland let me know so I can treat you to a beer or somesuch with my welfare €

I used to use swype, but my new phone didn't come with it and I didn't want to pay the dollar

@kviiri If you ever pop up in New York, let me know so I can treat you to a beer or somesuch with my capitalist $

@SPavel And you can return the favor with your not-taxed-in-the-first-place $

jinx

My tax rate works out to...let me check

If either of you are in Vancouver I can... get you some tap water?

I think mine was ~20% last year?

Is this an elaborate ruse to get me to do my tax work?

So I can tell you my percentage too

"work"

I'm all for more taxes

it's 2 lines

@SPavel Yeah and it can be done online too

@kviiri The IRS has an e-file system but it went down

@kviiri I have to print out my US tax form and mail it in like an animal :(

@SPavel haha

32% taxes

Another 13 goes to savings

@kviiri Check the time range on that error

@SPavel did you include your return amount (if any)?

@SPavel Yeah, and it's supposed to be up in Sept 2016...

@goodguy5 No but I'm not sure how much it's supposed to be for a full year since I changed jobs last year

But it would not be a significant change

Less than a few %, I think

@SPavel yeah, I cracked up on noticing that

ok, round of TDE starting!

Sadly I also owe a few thousand to a different country on top of this

So my finances am cry

Hm actually no, I counted it wrong, taxes + deductions are 45%

So I get 55% of my salary in money dollars

or wait no that's right, 32 + 13 = 45 and I can't do math

I'm sure you could work out my salary based on this information + my jurisdiction's tax rates but I'm also sure it would be a lot of work

Like, I'm not sure that the designers intended the magic instrument to only enhance three spells... Seems like an oversight to me. But I also think I have accounted for everything RAW/RAI.

Oh I forgot to unveil my tax rate. It's about 16% for income tax

@kviiri wow srsly?

moving to finland

I think we have an office there

@SPavel Unemployed until late Summer, don't forget :)

Yeah but still, as a percentage it shouldn't change

But then there's tax-like expenses like pension payments which bring it up to 25%.

@SPavel It does - progressive taxation.

Ah yep there is a Helsinki location

The more one earns, the greater proportion one pays of their income. Although that logic only works for salary - IIRC the capital gain tax has a flat rate (except for minor gains that are untaxed).

Marginal tax is still bounded, though, but to which percentage I can't recall.

Same here but it doesn't change that much

The Helsinki office only has 5 people though

@SPavel Out of curiosity, which company?

@kviiri A financial data company, we are not very interesting

@SPavel I'm sorry I couldn't find this table in English, but there's little enough Finnish for you to understand it I hope: vero.fi/syventavat-vero-ohjeet/ohje-hakusivu/48846/…

What is the second column?

On the left, you have taxable salary ranges, the second column is how much you have to pay if you make exactly as much as the lowest amount in the range, and the third column is how much you pay for income exceeding the lower bound.

Ah so col 2 is just a shorthand

Eg. if you make 30k a year, you'll pay 518e + (30000e-25700e)*0.1725

Essentially yep

So if you earn 17200, you pay 8 euro?

Yep!

But 6% of that is 62, not 8

The 8 euros is the base amount, you pay 6% of anything exceeding 17.2k

oh

It's easy, just declare yourself a business, then you get the lower rate of... 15%? or whatever.

New York has a tax calculator because every level has taxes

smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator

@SPavel Note that (barring the 8e in the first row) the value of the second column always corresponds to the tax you'd be paying at the maximum of the previous row

@goodguy5 Movie ref for you and your ZPG idea

So in that sense it's essentially a shorthand

So for the top Finnish income bracket, converted to USD, you'd pay 33.47% tax rate

@SPavel Yeah, but that's just for income and ignores some tax-like expenses.

(eg. the pension payments I mentioned earlier)

I'm not sure how the Finnish VAT compares to the one you have in America, for example.

@kviiri Whoa 24% VAT?

@kviiri When I lived in Italy, VAT was 19%. Tax evasion around where I lived was an art form.

@SPavel Yep. It's steep, and varyingly complex (VAT laws have changed fairly often)

New York State is 4%, NYC adds 4.5% more, and in some states it's zero!

IIRC, VAT is a classic regressive tax? (Not sure if I am using that term correctly?)

Tax rates on e.g. cigarettes are very high, so people smuggle them in from New Jersey

Cig smuggling from North Carolina to NJ/NY was a big deal back in the 90's, in terms of the underground economy working so well with that commodity.

At some point, fast food restaurants would pay different VAT depending on whether you ate the food there (restaurant service, higher VAT) or as take-away (food item, lower VAT).

Enlist a crowd of cool kids with a pack tucked into their t-shirt sleeve

@kviiri same in Italy. (back then)

Oh but in America, tax is not listed on price tags

@SPavel 18-wheelers full of unstamped cartons.

Today I think there's no difference in VAT but I'm not sure which has changed, food VAT or the criteria for being a food.

So say you are in a restaurant, you get your bill, plus tax, plus expected tip (in NYC, 20%)

20% is not expected nor required. Don't get fooled by that.

@KorvinStarmast zpg?

And then they say "cash only bruv" and you have to pay 3.50 to use the ATM

Zero Population Growth @goodguy

ah

Tree fitty?

@SPavel Learn to carry cash.

@KorvinStarmast They do make a fuss if you don't

I'd love if we did away with tipping

@KorvinStarmast My bank reimburses me

I think expected tipping is a weird tradition. Restaurants ought to pay their waiters salary like any establishment pays their employees.

Though I am seeing more no-cash places that just have the iPad card swipe widget

@SPavel No comment on how jerky New York culture is; @goodguy I am against that. Tipping is a good thing. But trying to apply an ever increasing percentage as a rule is crap.

@SPavel And then the restaurant proceeds to commit tax fraud and money laundering! Perfect!

@GreySage exactly

I've actually been to places that give a ~10% discount if you pay cash

When I was a teenager and working for tips, 10% was a good tip, and you had to earn it.

@KorvinStarmast How the times have changed

@SPavel My local liquor store has a 5% standing price reduction if I pay in cash.

I tip 15% rounded up so the total payment is a round number

Less for actual bad service

@SPavel They have a ton of those in Vancouver and the surrounding area. Pretty much all of them are fronts for gangs/other criminal organizations.

But only because waitstaff work for chump change here

@SPavel That is very close to my algorithm for tipping

@KorvinStarmast I love when places do that

@goodguy5 Tipping makes servers optimize for # of tables over quality

^

I like tips as a courtesy or for particularly agreeable service, but having to tip just so the waiter receives compensation for their work is weird. Arguably, even tipping for good service is weird because we don't do that in other establishments.

@kviiri Not weird, but normal. It is a cultural norm. In Italy, servizio was a required add on to restaurant bills. It had no effect on service, but it was a service charge.

But that's a couple of decades ago, not sure if it is still true.

There is a bar I go to that also has meal service. With each bill, at the bottom, is pre-calculated for you 10, 15, and 20% tip amounts from the bill.

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, I can sort of understand it as an additional mandatory charge

@kviiri How much time have you spent in the customer service business?

Or selling retail, or selling on commission?

@KorvinStarmast Depends on what you consider customer service. I had a Summer job in a library.

Did you work for an hourly wage, or were there incentives / bonuses as well?

Hourly

Ok, that's not where I was headed .. and I need to go.

Best wishes to all.

bai

Cya!