(Not just 14,000 words of notes. I also wrote a 7,000-word scaffolding document that’s basically an FAQ from myself to myself about what I learned about all this – and a test whether I can answer simple questions like “Did QWERTY slow people down”?)
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Replying to @mwichary
(But it’s just facts, and no narrative. Over the next two days, I’m turning all this into a fact-based, but also hopefully *enthralling* story of three separate inventors dying unhappy, having lost to QWERTY – including the very person who invented QWERTY.)
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Replying to @mwichary
Oh, oh! Another thing. This is August Dvorak; it’s surprisingly hard to find photos of him. (I’m also trying to get in touch with his family, but it’s hard – mostly since I don’t know how to.)pic.twitter.com/fZow2AMiF4
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Replying to @mwichary
I want to say more about this moment – not just to savior it (which I promised myself to do as often as possible on this project), but also to share with anyone’s reading, in case you wonder about embarking on a parallel journey.
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Replying to @mwichary
It feels… actually profound to realize that at this moment in time, I might be the best equipped person to untangle the mysteries of QWERTY and Dvorak. And I mean, really. Worldwide.
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Replying to @mwichary
It doesn’t mean someone else cannot make smarter connections, work harder, employ more statistical analyses, or discover unknown documents. (God, I hope someone does, since I will learn from them then.) It also doesn’t mean I can’t for sure fuck this up.
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Replying to @mwichary
But right now, I feel I’m the person that can tell this whole story better than anyone else ever before, this story that eluded many experts. It’s a really great feeling.
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Replying to @mwichary
And the best part to share: I didn’t get here because I have access to secrets, or because I’m particularly clever. I just really, *really* wanted to figure it out, and I believe I did this using tools and resources that most other people have.
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Replying to @mwichary
Taking a short break from writing to validate a keyboard layout hypothesis…pic.twitter.com/f4uQWXwzPy
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Replying to @mwichary
Why don’t *you* try to write some recursive code and then I’ll judge you, Firefox.pic.twitter.com/hH7CmWGSim
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Replying to @mwichary
to go!!!
To celebrate writing about QWERTY/Dvorak, I apparently turned myself into a Dvorak typewriter robot. (Turns out, I have no idea how to take selfies.)pic.twitter.com/QSoGIPOas9
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Replying to @mwichary
Is that Scrivener, you're writing in?
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