mildlyinfuriating
Some guy changed their keycaps to alphabetical order
Discussion
Should've changed the numbers to correspond alphabetically too...
eight, five, four, nine, one, seven, six, three, two, zero
Same with every other key group. The F-Keys; alt, ctrl, windows; the arrow keys...
Username checks
You really took something from r /notinteresting and complained about it?
Lol what are the chances
100% because of those sweet sweet internet points
wait wont the keys he presses correspond with the old ones? like pushing B would type W?
You can just change the keymap.
Unless he changed the keyboard configuration in his computer settings.
If he's a good touch typist it wouldn't matter.
The home keys not being in the same spot could be a problem.
He could use something like AutoHotkey to reassign them, but yeah.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
Yes, you're right
You COULD remap your keyboard to use this... but why would you? It's like the opposite of a Dvorak keyboard layout.
Btw- Did you know that the QWERTY keys are designed that way to spread out commonly used letters to prevent the lever action of typewriters from jamming. This probably unintentionally slowed down typists once electric typewriters became common; But the system is so ingrained, few people want to take the time to retrain themselves to type in a more efficient way.
Isn't it still efficient to spread out commonly used letters? That makes it so you are frequently switching which hand and finger is hitting the keys which is faster than one finger pecking around in one area.
I think Dvorak keeps the most highly used letters on the middle row so you can use both hands without needing to leave the home position. Supposed to reduce strain; But like everyone else... I am too set in my ways to start over. You would think it shouldn't be a problem... all the letters are worn off my keyboard anyhow.
Yeah, I can touch type QWERTY keyboards at around 60 words per minute. Why would I bother learning a different layout?
That's what I've always thought, and so few people seem to realize that. I can type so much faster when my hands are alternating.
haha i saw that top post in this picture this morning and i was like this looks familiar
nice karma farming
As an April Fools joke a couple of decades ago, I switched the numpad on a coworker's keyboard at a law firm. I put the 1-2-3 keys across the top, and the 7-8-9 keys across the bottom. Just like phone keypads show. So it looks natural.
Unintended results occurred. Turns out there was a several thousand dollar discrepancy in one of the contracts that was written by him. Oooops.
I did that on one of my first IT jobs to the mainframe's control terminal keyboard. Went off shift.
Came back two shifts later and they mainframe was down, IBM was there, no one could figure out why nothing worked.
Serious lack of touch typing skills there. I sat down, typed in the commands to start everything up and then shooed everyone out "so I could log the problem" and put the key caps back in place.
Two techs from IBM, probably six people on two different shifts and not one person noticed that I'd moved the key caps.
EDIT: OP posted explanation, am satisfied. Leaving the rest of the comment intact for transparency.
Wait, something doesn't quite work with that story...
So EIGHT people typed for prolonged periods of time, none of them looking at the keyboard at all, but none of them were seeing what they were typing, or none of them bothered to look down when they realized they were getting tons of typos due to "serious lack of touch typing skills"??
Or are you suggesting that all eight people were LOOKING at the mis-arranged keyboard to type, yet none of them were looking at what they were actually punching up on the screen?
I have no idea how you rearranging the keycaps would lead to a scenario where people were having problems without realizing something was wrong with the keyboard.
No, eight people thought something was wrong with the console that the keys didn't match the keycaps.
None of them were the sharpest pencils in the box (although I was surprised that the IBM guys didn't sort it out).
I think the issue is that the keys were in order. I mean, looking at them, they LOOKED like they were in order. I discussed it with an industrial psychology professor later in life (she happened to be my wife at the time) and seeing order in something, even the wrong order, locks it in place as "correct" - not one of them noticed it was in the WRONG order. I mean, who swaps out the keycaps, right.
ETA:
She told me a few stories about this sort of thing having happened over time.
One was, I think, a British SAS operation prior to the assault on Aachen in WWII. Apparently the guys sent in were told to broadcast in the clear but with a keyword at the beginning and end of each transmission unless they were under duress. Something like "Banana. Need ammunition drop zone three. Banana."
There were a dozen or so guys dropped in. All of them got captured. All of them happily broadcast requests for ammunition, food, medical supplies, even more guys without the key words secure in the knowledge that their messages would be ignored.
The British, getting messages from all twelve guys without the special words, assumed that they'd forgotten to give the instruction to use them and airlifted all sorts of things . . . to waiting German troops.
People, when faced with patterns, rarely question them. It's one of the simpler ways to frustrate a system (especially if people are involved). Mess with the patterns.
The result wasn't my intent. I worked 3rd shift and what I intended was to mess with a guy on 1st shift who was a bit of a jerk and who I knew didn't touch-type. I figured he'd solve the problem in 5 minutes and spend 20 minutes replacing the keycaps.
But no. Did I mention that none of these guys were the sharpest pencils in the box? He called IBM - they showed up half-way into the following shift and I fixed it when I came back on 3rds a few hours later.
To be honest, I was a bit flabbergasted at the whole thing myself, but aside from me, everyone in that place worked from rote instructions. Not one of them had any real understanding of how the OS worked or what the commands they put in actually did.
We had a DASD controller fail on restart one weekend and no one could fix it. They reentered the same commands running the same script over and over for an entire shift. to no avail, not even noticing where the error was in the log. I came in, spotted the error as the "vanilla" script ran, ran the commands manually substituting the backup controller's ID and it came up like a breeze.
The manager (who was on site) screamed at the second shift lead for not knowing his job (I was relatively new at that point and not a lead).
There were lots of down time periods at that job. Most of the guys spent the time playing cards or having rubber band fights. I spent my time working through the manuals in the computer room and learning the system end to end.
That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the explanation! Editing my comment to reflect this. :)
You're welcome.
An example of "not the sharpest pencils in the box" - I eventually got the weekend lead position because Hector (not his real name) thought it would be a good idea to bring a prostitute in on night shift and do her on the boardroom table on the ninth floor.
What Hector didn't realize was that there were 24/7 surveillance cameras in place. Hector, needless to say, was fired as he showed up for work on his next shift. That Monday I went in to my boss's boss's office and asked for Hector's job.
His first question was, "You've been here less than a year. What makes you think you can do Hector's job?"
I said, "I've met Hector. Any job he can do I can learn in a shift. If not, fire me."
I got the job, although I didn't get the pay for the job for another year.
That was actually the start of my IT career. I had the lower level job as a "job while I'm looking for a job" kind of thing.
Lollll
Shame on you just for karma farming without source the original poster
Number one reason I can think of for this is that they're a good touch typist and don't want anyone else using their computer.
You can buy a keyboard in alphabetical order
Somebody likes hunt'n'peck
Oh god that’s so cursed
This is actually hurting my brain wtf
[deleted]
Or just doesn't even have to look.
That’s fine for me but with F and J not in places they should be, I’ll have a hard time typing
Why is it so fucking cursed though?
Like, I get the thought process, it SHOULD make sense, but looking at it … it’s so fucking unhinged
I’m betting an experienced typist could still use this (hell, they could probably type blind). A very boring party trick lol.
Easily, but it'd still fuck you up a bit. The keys are actually slightly differently shaped according to where they are on the keyboard, so it will feel wonky. I'd still manage just fine and could get through the day without error. I probably wouldn't notice until I had to send a long email.
People who could use this are a dying breed.
I blame smartphones and tablets.
My daily driver keyboard is unlabeled.
Or if the keymapping has been changed to match it would drive them insane.
This belongs in a revenge subreddit
When I was in high school I changed the keyboard of my classroom computer to alphabetical order. In the next class, the teacher threatened to take the whole class to detention if it wasn't fixed in 5 minutes lol
I’m impressed he was able to do it on a membrane keyboard without breaking anything
Maybe it's for touch type training? The idea being that if the keycaps don't correspond to the bindings, you can't look at the keyboard to know what you're typing, you have to memorise it.
No, the shapes are wrong.
My best friend’s older brother did this so that he couldn’t use his computer while away
We never thought to just swap the keyboard out (we were children, so)
Be hitting that BLMK instead of WASD
Understandable change
Maybe even more efficient than querty
The M & N key swap was enough shake my coworker
This is it right here
This may be a dumb question, but this made me wonder how they came up with the actual keyboard organization. Now I’m curious and need to do some research
it’s better than apples devorak
Burn that accursed thing
Oh yeahhh that’s the good stuff
Love a good keyboard prank
this should be illegal
how else would you remember the lyrics to the song?
I mean, it doesn’t really matter what the key caps show. There are custom caps with emojis on them and completely blank caps… Who cares. I think it’s actually pretty funny. I’ll do the same thing with my keyboard at work just to mess with people
The shapes are different on different rows, though, so it would be uncomfortable to type on if you just moved the existing caps around.
I would LOVE to hear why he did this ...
Now change his number keys so ‘0’ is at the beginning
We know it’s you bro
having transparent keycaps is the ultimate "don't use my keyboard" move. I miss that keyboard.
If you can't touch type it's kinda on you
Haha I did something similar to a coworker once upon a time.
Wrote I like guys on his keyboard when he was on vacation. 🤣
When I was in high school many many years ago they actually had typewriters with layouts like this. There were only two though and all the other typewriters were qwerty, some with the letters on them and some blank. I don't know if those two were used for something special as I was just 13-14 and really didn't give a fuck.
Death.
Get your own wireless keyboard and keep it with you.
We gotta make the switch some time. Might as well be now
Bro has TOK
Ew. Straight to jail lol
But it looks like they're flat (as opposed to cherry or SA) profile keycaps? So it shouldn't matter what it says on them it's still completely usable.
Y'all play games with the arrow keys or with BKLM?
The first thing I did was check if Y and Z were switched...
"Mildly"?! I would flip my shit over this!
Diabolic
Ktqssn?
So?
LOL
Eheheheheh
I do that too so nobody knows what I'm typing.
MILDLY infuriating???????
If you touch-type, this is just a humorous prank. If you use the hunt-and-peck method, this is a malicious and cruel plot twist.
So fun fact, type writer keys actually used to be in alphabetical order. Back then typists were paid by the word, but because they were so fast at typing, companies that hired them were paying them a ton. So they changed the keyboard to the order it is now to slow down typists.
Why does that infuriate you? It's not your keyboard, you're not forced to use it... I hope.
Real loyal evil kind of shit.
Straight to the gulag with whomever did this
Deranged
He’s got CDO
I did that when I left my call centre job
Wxy vin? (It makes sense, if you understand it)
oh, I'm not alone in this world...
every keyboard in school it lab ever, or it would just have the n-word ever
Someone got bored
That keyboard is so greasy
As a touch typist I approve.
Most of mine have entirely worn off at this point.
WASD is a nightmare to use now.
So change it to BKLM.
Lmao
Ngl I wouldn't even notice
As a Hunt and Pecker, I'd be screwed
Thats not how it works
now you be playing with bklm
Sounds like a fun April fools day prank
I've done that before (on a laptop that kicked the bucket after 13 YEARS). I also had the keys act like the letters they were switched to, but the program only worked after logging on (meaning I had to remember which keys to press and in which order to put in my password).
I LOVED it!
If I would've been able to make them work in alphabetical order even on the password screen, I would have.
This is how people who can type by touch claim a workstation.
What would really be unhinged is if he changed the keymap so all the key caps are correct.
For April Fools one year, we swapped the keys on the office complainer to alphabetical.. Then remapped the keyboard to Dvorak.
For Anyone wondering how Dvorak looks like
https://preview.redd.it/wpfpbw8w0tbf1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=7b79b266332e9ac932bcabbe6dc2fac3e59855ca
Why is it called Dvorak 😭
it’s named after the creator 💫
apparently it aims to have the most common letters under the strongest fingers
https://preview.redd.it/mgpenueb0ubf1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=81e64ab1e399aec479a367d5ca9ff28e8ba14dbc
My phone keyboard does the same thing.
That's not a keyboard, that's a fucking alphabet tesseract
😂😂 it's a FOSS keyboard called Thumbkey that puts all the most common letters, according to your language, as the main keys you press and the others in positions you swype to. Learning curve, but once you get used to it it's fast, very fast.
I thought I'd have a try for myself but there's no way I'm paying £16 to get pissed off in 30 seconds lol
16£? It's free open source software, where are they asking for money?
What if you do a spiral?
Uppercase of the main letter 😁
As someone who enjoyed T9 I might try to learn this one.
It's called Thumbkey, a FOSS app for Android. It's not t9 but it's great, actually better than your standard phone keyboard once you get used to it.
How do you not misclick letters or symbols? It feels like everything is bunched together and that it wouldn't work for larger hands. Definitely interesting to me and I may try it if this isn't an actual issue.
It's not an issue, the way it works is this: the big letters you see are the ones you click, you choose the language and based on your language you have the most used letters there (example mine is italian-english). The other letters you swype to them from the big ones.
For example in my layout you would click the "s" but swype diagonally down from "s" for "w". From the "h" you swype up to "q", down to "x", etc.
Initially each main letter has a border so it's easier to see. I've learnt it now so I've removed them.
It's not free, just so you know lol
Idc if it’s free or not it just looks really nice.
It's free open source, you canegetit on Github, FDroid or Izzydroid.
your keyboard's 4D, mate
What even is that
Dove hai questa tastiera?
È Free Open Source! Io ho scaricato da F-Droid, è tipo Play Store ma per app open source!
Grazie! Proverò questa Tastiera!
This is insane
That makes sense… but doesn’t explain the locations of D, H and R
Dvorak wants his own name to be easy to type ¯_(ツ) _/¯
John Dvorak, creator of Dvorak
No. patented in 1936 by August Dvorak and his brother-in-law
The left side of the keyboard not being A.E.I.O.U. is kind of unnerving for me
Probably vaguely the sound people start to make after trying to use it for a while
Mr Dvorak created the layout.
Ah yes, my favorite keyboard setup for gaming: <OAE
I use Dvorak :)
It's like having a manual transmission car. If anyone want to use your stuff (computer or car), it's going to be difficult so they just leave your stuff alone.
10 years down the road from teaching myself Colemak (which is admittedly not Dvorak, but kind of in the same design space): wouldn't necessarily recommend. Yeah, it's comfortable, yeah it keeps people away from your stuff, but also
It's manageable, most of the time it feels good, and I'm too lazy to retrain myself on QWERTY (and I'm definitely not relearning my country's cursed AZERTY layout) but if I had to do it again, I'm not sure I'd bother.
Bruh, unhinged
Settle down, Satan.
They tried this with my mom's keyboard at work but without changing the layout in software, I believe it took her almost a week to notice because she never looks at the keys, her younger colleagues couldn't understand it took her so long 😅
This would be me. It's interesting how touch-typing lasted maybe 2 generations through the invention of the typewriter to the computer before everyone moved to the smartphone.
Oh so your mom was actually a touch typist! They tried to teach that to us in keyboarding in high school and I could mostly do it and was able to keep doing it through college and my first job. Then I had several jobs in a row where I barely used a computer for any length of time and now I'm back to looking at the keyboard if I want to know what I'm typing.
I was bored at work one day and decided to teach myself Dvorak on a QWERTY keyboard. Man that was painful learning curve. Twenty years later I am still happily typing in Dvorak because it’s easier on my hands.
Ages ago, I worked as a system administrator. I got tired of kicking staff off my computer (It was the closest one to the entrance that wasn't 'public locked'.) so I switched to dvorak. People decided to go to their office and log in properly after that ;)
This should be classified as a war crime and have you sent to the Hague.
That's some Lovecraftian lore you are dropping there, buddy.
Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. The qwerty keyboard was meant to slow down typists on typewriters. So it might be faster if you adjust to the new format
Edit: popular reasoning, but highly disputed: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-qwerty-keyboard-will-never-die-where-did-the-150-year-old-design-come-from-49863249/
Alphabetical order shouldn't be faster, but the Dvorak keyboard is faster than the QWERTY keyboard because it places the most common letters under your fingers and in positions that are easy to reach in sequence
So I guess the original reasoning for QWERTY is up for debate: link I had always heard that Alphabetical was faster on typewriters, except it caused more mechanical jams. So qwerty was designed to reduce mechanical issues. But yeah, it does make sense that in modern times we can make it faster, it’s just tough to retrain people. Like having a specialized keyboard might keep people from using your computer at work and such
Yeah, it's weirdly unclear the reality of it for some reason
Like the French revolution. It will all become clear later
if we are forced to switch to a french keyboard, that's it, i'm going caveman mode. holding shift for numbers and basic punctuation like . is absolutely unhinged
The reason I was always given, and that makes complete sense if you've ever used an old mechanical typewriter, is that the QWERTY layout puts keys you might use in sequence further apart. This is because if you press two close keys together nearly simultaneously, the levers that strike the ribbon can hit each other and get bound up. So it was a method of getting around the mechanical issues of levers striking at similar times.
The problem with that logic is that “the” has all of it’s letters close together, and it’s one of the most common words
Give the kids alphabetical, continue to use qwerty. 5 uears later, kids will think your a god for using an old style keyboard
Yeah cause my kids thought I was Miles Davis for using a rotary phone.
Reminded me that I had a phone once that would let you switch between tone and pulse dialing.
I remember that; because there was a point where you might or might not have touch tone service on your landline. I also remember when they charged you an extra monthly fee to upgrade to touch tone service, even though it actually saved them money if you did because it was cheaper to operate.
I've actually heard part of the reason for qwerty is because you can type typewriter all on the first row with one hand.
Either way I don't think it's a necessarily bad format, but maybe it's just because I'm so used to it
The fastest layout is whatever you're used to. If you can type fast on Dvorak, great, I'm not gonna learn that tho.
That's true for the vast majority of cases, yes.
But at the very high end the layout does probably dictate the ceiling. There is a reason that stenographer, for instance, use extremely custom stuff.
This is a popular explanation but it's most likely incorrect.
Ah, yeah I mentioned that in the other thread. I stand corrected
No, it wasn't. Where did you get this incorrect idea? I'm curious. The QWERTY keyboard was created to put the most used letters in comfortable range of our fingers to make typing easier, not slower. I mean, really, do you really think anyone would actually invent a product to make work slower?
You of course want the most common keys to be the easiest to reach, but if that were their only goal they would’ve ended up with something like the Dvorak or Colemak (where those keys are home row). But QWERTY was made for typewriters, and one of their limitations was jamming if nearby hammers strike at the same time. You can prevent jamming by either slowing way down or buy a little time by keeping physical space between keys that would be stuck in rapid succession. Keeping that kind of space though is not ideal for an efficient keyboard, so they struck a balance. The QWERTY layout has common keys within easy reach but strategically spaced out to give time between the strikes of the typewriter.
So I think saying it’s designed to “slow you down” is maybe not 100% accurate, but I think their point is more that it’s designed to not be as efficient as it could have been, because a certain amount of delay between keystrokes was a necessity at the time, given the mechanical factors. With computers, we don’t have that problem, so there are designs that can truly optimize the concept QWERTY was going for.
Stopping every little bit to unstick the metal rods is not convenient. Slowing you down just enough so they don't stick is way better.
Source: as a kid i liked to make them get stuck on purpose.
I own an old keyboard where this is the case, it has a switch on the board which swaps it between qwery and abc
I read somewhere that QUERTY was invented because in typewriter times there were some keys that would get stuck because they were next to each other in words too often. So those keys where separated to avoid that problem. Which is not a problem with new keyboards. Maybe we should go back to alphabetical order
I don’t think there’s any speed benefit to an alpha layout; if you want actual increased efficiency, Dvorak seems to be the way to go. And as much sense as it seems to make, esp to anyone who has used an old manual typewriter, that reason is in dispute. The article is linked in multiple places here, but tldr it may have been related more to telegraph operators translating Morse code.
Not unhinged It would be the only way to use it in that configuration
Exactly what I was thinking
Calm down satan
What would be even more unhinged would be changing the key map so all key caps but two are correct, just to fuck with anyone trying to use the keyboard