I have used dvorak for around 15 years now, and I'm very happy with it. Took me 2-3 weeks to type as fast as in QWERTY, and hands feel way more relaxed and easy.
For those who are afraid that it will somehow affect QWERTY typing speed, such fears are totally unfounded, I can type QWERTY as easily as I could before, just with some more strain compared to Dvorak.
That said:
- for developers, the typing speed is not the productivity bottleneck, so you are unlikely to see any real gains
- hotkeys are generally a MESS, especially if you use 2 languages on a system. More so on Windows. Less so on Ubuntu.
As a counterpoint, my ability to type on Qwerty is shot now that I am on Dvorak. I'm back to searching around on the keyboard with my eyes and tapping with single fingers. I feel sure people question my ability to work on computers when I have to go and fix something on their computers and spend ages just typing out basic stuff..
I learned to type on Dvorak 20 years ago and my ability to type on QWERTY still did not recover to even 1/5th of my previous speed.
It is pretty embarrassing sometimes.
On the other hand I use completely unmarked keyboard which coupled with Dvorak makes me largely invulnerable to pranking by coworkers by writing mail in my name (assuming I forget to lock my workstation which happens about twice in a decade).
I can still type on QWERTY without looking at keys but my skill definitely took a hit because I never use it. I bet I'd be up to par if I spent a day or two only on QWERTY again.
One time I had an interview where they handed me a Windows laptop on QWERTY to code some problem and I looked like I could barely use a computer :D
It took me two years before I could switch between Dvorak an Qwerty without much difficulty. Four years later, I can now rapidly switch between the two. The only problem is remembering which layout I have turned on, but once that's clear, there's not a problem anymore. I haven't practiced since the first year, but all that time I frequently switch because I work with multiple computers and RDP sessions where the layout doesn't carry over. Touch typing with Dvorak came after learning the muscle memory for typing characters, and afterwards with Qwerty, it was muscle memory for words/phrases that got me typing well again.
Maybe you weren't all that good with qwerty before? I always felt it's like learning an extra foreign language: learning French doesn't make your German worse.
Some folks seem to be able to switch and keep their old ability and some can't. I was able to switch back to Qwerty pretty easily, but it made my wrists contort in such odd ways that I never noticed before. So I generally wouldn't go back to it.
Colemak all muscle memory for me, so it's nearly impossible for me to remember my Qwerty muscle memory now.
One place that really sticks out is job interviews. Asking your interviewer to change keyboard layouts is a bit intrusive. It's not a huge deal on a Mac, but it's a challenge on Windows since Colemak isn't built in.
When I was around 12 I learned Dvorak and lost the ability to touch type in Qwerty, then my parents forced me to go back to Qwerty because I kept leaving the family computers in Dvorak. Because of that I can type in both, though my Dvorak is still faster.
I'm at about 15 years with Dvorak as well. It completely healed my RSI issues which were getting quite bad. Learning it was a mental challenge and re-learning Vim wasn't really fun.
I could type around 90 WPM in QWERTY and now I hunt and pick at it. I'm at that speed in Dvorak now so it doesn't really matter. If you play games at all it kind of sucks having to switch back and forth, but that's a small price to pay to not have career ending RSI.
> For those who are afraid that it will somehow affect QWERTY typing speed, such fears are totally unfounded
What! :- ) Well founded fears, I'd say: I've been typing in Colemak for 10+ years and if I switch to QWERTY I'm significantly slower than before I started using Colemak. — But I'm still glad I made the switch.
> the typing speed is not the productivity bottleneck
Yes agreed. I'd only recommend a software person to switch, if they think the learning process seems fun. But maybe if one writes novels, it's nice to type faster? Or someone who writes a lot here at HN :- )
> What! :- ) Well founded fears, I'd say: I've been typing in Colemak for 10+ years and if I switch to QWERTY I'm significantly slower than before I started using Colemak.
I'm not a Colemak user, but from my experiences with Dvorak, I have a theory on why this happens. Precisely because it shares many keys with QWERTY!
Explanation: when I type in Dvorak or QWERTY, the only hesitation is when I type the first letter of a text I need to type. Then, a muscle memory kicks in and I type without thinking. The only exception: words starting with letter "A". This letter is special, because it is the only key that has the same position in both Dvorak and QWERTY!
So when I type words starting with "A", my muscle memory kicks in not on first typed letter, but on second! With Colemak, I guess this effect might be in full swing for almost every letter you type, and THAT would be a significant problem. So what is sold as being Colemak's advantage is probably a disadvantage if you need to type on different types of keyboards.
As a full time developer, I'm sure my typing speed directly affects my productivity (probably between 80-100 wpm in Dvorak). There are a lot of times I'm typing at full speed for hours, aided by code auto-completion and vim macros, and since the program already exists in my head, the limiting factor is how fast I can type it out. Other times not so much, I'm sitting there reading code, or debugging line by line, or whatever. But when I'm ready to code, my typing speed is the single biggest factor of how fast I can get it out.
I've been typing Dvorak since age 17, so... 37 years. Despite breaking my left hand (not while typing) I haven't lost any typing skill/speed that I can tell, and I haven't ever seen a hint of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Btw there are dvorak layouts for one-handed typing, both for left and right hand. If I ever break my arm so I won't be able to type for some time, I'll definitely try that.
I tried Dvorak for a year and hotkeys are what made me go back.
Hotkeys are this bizarre mix of positional _and_ semantic locations. That is, some are the keys they are because of where the keys are placed (most notably z-x-c-v but also j-k-l-o and many others in various apps), while others are what they are because of their mnemonics. Neither preserving Qwerty locations for them nor using Dvorak everywhere is right.
Just wanted to chime in. Same experience here. Switched to Dvorak over 20 years ago and I had almost the exact same experience.
It's just like knowing a different language, there's some switch somewhere in my brain I can flip and type in either layout. If I use one for a long period of time, the other one gets slower and less easily recalled, but it takes on the order of minutes to come back to 90% speed.
Agree that the main annoyances are hotkeys and what layer of the software you're mapping things in.
This was my experience, except I couldn't switch between them very well, and my RSI more or less went away so I'm back on qwerty now, with no re-flare-ups.
I was at qwerty speed with Dvorak in about 2-3 weeks as well. In the past couple years I tried Colemak, but I could not make the switch for some reason (from qwerty). I don't know why; I can't say it's because of the layout itself; could be that I'm 20+ years older than I was when I did the dvorak switch.
The point about programming languages is fairly irrelevant; the truth is that basically all layouts are bad for programmers, since they inevitably put special characters at the margins, which are hard to reach. I have a short pinkie so it's extra hard for me.
The answer is to use a meta key to add a layer dedicated to those - CapsLock is great for that. I did that last year [0], although I now wish I had that meta-key available on the right side too (I don't want to mess with the traditional Ctrl and Alt, too many programs have shortcuts hard-bound to those). With that extra layer, you can go to town and use the home row for the stuff you really need in your preferred language(s).
As for simple text layouts, I never warmed to Dvorak but picked up Colemak very quickly, and now I just can't look back.
The Neo2 and Bone layouts [1] are very interesting for programmers that have organized special characters as you described. There, Caps Lock and the # key are used for switching layers. Another layer includes arrow keys and number keys and almost eliminate the need to ever take your hands off the home row.
The best part is that most Linux distros already include it! Yes, it's intended to type German, but it should work for English as well since these languages are so similar. Also, it has many dead keys that should help composing accented characters.
Yep, switched to neo2 last June or so after thinking about it for a couple of years. Beginning was tough (relearning Emacs shortcuts, ouch), but now I type faster than on qwerty (~90-100 wpm, still improving though).
It is so great for programming! Also although I'm German, probably 90% of what I type is English. Works perfectly for English as well.
Also being able to type Greek letters is great as a physicist, hehe.
Yes. The rabbit hole that took for me was writing my own firmware using QMK. Make every key close to home row a tap/hold key accessing either modifier keys or extra layers. My fingers finally travel much less (the apparent promise of Dvorak/Colemak) but for the actual work of programming and operating a computuer.
A really affordable entry into this that I've found is Epomaker keyboards. I struggled to find the exact layout I wanted in an affordable QMK keyboard. Their software sucks but it works and profiles are stored to the keyboard so it can come with you wherever. They also have split space-bar and 3 space-bar options which is really nice for adding modifier keys beyond Caps-lock or rebinding backspace or escape into a more comfortable position.
I realize this is starting to sound like an ad, but my biggest challenge getting into fully reprogrammable keyboards was the huge price tag once you start narrowing features. In my case, a 60% keyboard that retained arrow keys would have been $200+ for a QMK supported model. The Epomaker I picked up was $65 or so.
Seems like a pretty good analysis. I've been using Dvorak for 20+ years also. The keyboard shortcuts thing is annoying, though I hadn't heard about the wrist strain they cause. I didn't see this discussed, but I actually find the fact that Colemak shares more keys with QWERTY to be a problem for learning if you already know QWERTY (even though that might be the biggest strength). Dvorak only shares the "A" and "M" with QWERTY, but typing those letters always confused my brain the most when learning, and sometimes I'd fall right back into QWERTY in a really frustrating way.
I switched to Dvorak because of wrist strain/RSI issues. I was in pretty serious wrist pain and now I rarely have any. It probably wouldn't have been worth it otherwise, but that was a huge benefit to me. I'm not sure if other things would've helped since I didn't try a lot of other approaches first.
> I switched to Dvorak because of wrist strain/RSI issues.
I did the same with Colemak, and had the same effect. I think the main thing really is just to not use qwerty - that layout is just extrarodinarily unergonomic.
It probably also helped that, around the same time I switched to Colemak, I took an interest in overall keyboard ergonomics, and invested in a split keyboard.
I taught myself Colemak last summer, as a pandemic project. If anyone is interested in learning, I recommend the "Tarmak" transitional layouts [1].
It's 5 intermediate layouts to transition from QWERTY to Colemak. Each only changes a few keys. So, rather than 1 big change (where you basically can't touch-type for a month) you have 5 little changes that you can learn over a weekend each.
Tarmak is what finally allowed me to switch away from QWERTY. Prior to tarmak I couldn’t deal with the massive productivity loss that I would initially encounter with Dvorak and I would eventually switch back.
The fact that initially steps are the highest impact really helps too.
I've been a happy Colemak user since 2012. One of the first things I do when I get a new computer is rearrange the physical keys, which is a significant advantage of Apple non-butterfly keyboards. [1]
Aside from less overall movement while typing, Colemak keeps many common keyboard shortcuts the same. The first few hours are very frustrating, but the overall time-to-competence is short. There's a lot of upside and little downside.
I wrote about the process of learning Colemak in my book on skill acquisition, and posted a summary of the process and the tools/techniques I used on the book's website. [2]
Having to resort to trial-and-error to find the correct key is painful and completely debilitating. You can still develop muscle memory if the labels are correct.
You're so right about [1], when possible. I should've rearranged them years ago on this mid-2012 MBA 11" .. maybe I should actually do that, today. I'm quite used to 104-key qwerty boards, but if all my keyboards could say aoeui they totally would.
For those chiding the practice, it's not for beginners-still-learning, it's for actual-years-running-users trying to type one-handed once in a while.
As for looking at a qwerty keyboard from a dvorak mindset, I'd say dvorak "wins" in my head like my right eye's image wins over my left. I look down and "see" aoeui .. pyf .. dhtns. But it's still confusing.
The programmer in me wants a numpad for () [] {} +-/*^% &c. (Do any exist, off the shelf, I wonder?)
Do people really type non-stop long enough to make any of the speed gains actually significant? Even when I was writing my dissertation I would rarely type more than a couple sentences at a time and even then I often had to back space because of a typo or something.
If you have some kind of RSI and it helps then it would make sense but at least for me it doesn't make sense for the way I type.
I had RSI issues crop up when I was writing my PhD thesis - a lot of hurried, last minute typing where typos be damned. I'm also mostly hunt and peck, so touch typing would have probably resolved most of my issues.
> If you have some kind of RSI and it helps then it would make sense
I think it makes way more sense to consider the risk and the odds of getting a RSI from qwerty vs. dvorak and take preventative action. You don't want to suffer a learning curve on the rehab side of an RSI, while also kicking yourself in the posterior for something that was avoidable.
I feel like more important and easier measures anyone can take to prevent RSI that doesn't involve learning a new keyboard layout are ergonomic: ensure you have a good chair/posture, use a wrist rest (these are debatable, but I couldn't type without one), and avoid taking your hands off the keyboard (don't use a mouse if possible).
I've been using QWERTY for decades now, and for years have used a ThinkPad keyboard with a TrackPoint instead of a mouse, use a mostly hotkey-driven workflow, and a wrist rest even on a laptop. Anecdotal, but I've rarely experienced strain and can type comfortably for hours.
I know QWERTY is demonstrably worse, but so far I haven't had the need to try another layout. The downsides of losing my current muscle memory, having to remap hotkeys and not being productive on other computers don't seem worth it to me.
I think the main take-away from that link is "either option is much better than QWERTY." So, if you're trying to decide between Colemak and Dvorak, remember that you're basically guaranteed to win -- either choice is a big improvement!
I'm using the qgmlwy layout for a few years now, pretty happy with it.
I remapped caps & added a new modifier to have a "special chars" layer and it works pretty well.
Overall it's more trouble than it's worth, if I had to redo the whole journey, I would simply learn to touch-type with querty (maybe colemak), but I'm still happy with the end result.
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For those who are afraid that it will somehow affect QWERTY typing speed, such fears are totally unfounded, I can type QWERTY as easily as I could before, just with some more strain compared to Dvorak.
That said:
- for developers, the typing speed is not the productivity bottleneck, so you are unlikely to see any real gains
- hotkeys are generally a MESS, especially if you use 2 languages on a system. More so on Windows. Less so on Ubuntu.
I learned to type on Dvorak 20 years ago and my ability to type on QWERTY still did not recover to even 1/5th of my previous speed.
It is pretty embarrassing sometimes.
On the other hand I use completely unmarked keyboard which coupled with Dvorak makes me largely invulnerable to pranking by coworkers by writing mail in my name (assuming I forget to lock my workstation which happens about twice in a decade).
One time I had an interview where they handed me a Windows laptop on QWERTY to code some problem and I looked like I could barely use a computer :D
Besides, why would you need to use qwerty other than occasionally?
Reminder: sharing keyboard with other people is really bad for hygiene, due to the shape of the keys preventing any deep cleaning.
One place that really sticks out is job interviews. Asking your interviewer to change keyboard layouts is a bit intrusive. It's not a huge deal on a Mac, but it's a challenge on Windows since Colemak isn't built in.
I use qwerty on mobile just fine. I don't think dvorak on mobile would be of any help since I type with thumbs.
I could type around 90 WPM in QWERTY and now I hunt and pick at it. I'm at that speed in Dvorak now so it doesn't really matter. If you play games at all it kind of sucks having to switch back and forth, but that's a small price to pay to not have career ending RSI.
What! :- ) Well founded fears, I'd say: I've been typing in Colemak for 10+ years and if I switch to QWERTY I'm significantly slower than before I started using Colemak. — But I'm still glad I made the switch.
> the typing speed is not the productivity bottleneck
Yes agreed. I'd only recommend a software person to switch, if they think the learning process seems fun. But maybe if one writes novels, it's nice to type faster? Or someone who writes a lot here at HN :- )
> hotkeys are generally a MESS
Colemak: Hotkeys = fine :- )
I'm not a Colemak user, but from my experiences with Dvorak, I have a theory on why this happens. Precisely because it shares many keys with QWERTY!
Explanation: when I type in Dvorak or QWERTY, the only hesitation is when I type the first letter of a text I need to type. Then, a muscle memory kicks in and I type without thinking. The only exception: words starting with letter "A". This letter is special, because it is the only key that has the same position in both Dvorak and QWERTY!
So when I type words starting with "A", my muscle memory kicks in not on first typed letter, but on second! With Colemak, I guess this effect might be in full swing for almost every letter you type, and THAT would be a significant problem. So what is sold as being Colemak's advantage is probably a disadvantage if you need to type on different types of keyboards.
Hotkeys are this bizarre mix of positional _and_ semantic locations. That is, some are the keys they are because of where the keys are placed (most notably z-x-c-v but also j-k-l-o and many others in various apps), while others are what they are because of their mnemonics. Neither preserving Qwerty locations for them nor using Dvorak everywhere is right.
It's just like knowing a different language, there's some switch somewhere in my brain I can flip and type in either layout. If I use one for a long period of time, the other one gets slower and less easily recalled, but it takes on the order of minutes to come back to 90% speed.
Agree that the main annoyances are hotkeys and what layer of the software you're mapping things in.
Emacs with dvorak was... interesting.
I switched to Colemak in September (2020) and have been using it solely ever since. I started at 110 WPM QWERTY and am currently at 85 WPM Colemak.
The answer is to use a meta key to add a layer dedicated to those - CapsLock is great for that. I did that last year [0], although I now wish I had that meta-key available on the right side too (I don't want to mess with the traditional Ctrl and Alt, too many programs have shortcuts hard-bound to those). With that extra layer, you can go to town and use the home row for the stuff you really need in your preferred language(s).
As for simple text layouts, I never warmed to Dvorak but picked up Colemak very quickly, and now I just can't look back.
[0] http://blog.pythonaro.com/2020/06/better-access-to-special-c...
The best part is that most Linux distros already include it! Yes, it's intended to type German, but it should work for English as well since these languages are so similar. Also, it has many dead keys that should help composing accented characters.
[1] https://www.neo-layout.org/
It is so great for programming! Also although I'm German, probably 90% of what I type is English. Works perfectly for English as well.
Also being able to type Greek letters is great as a physicist, hehe.
https://github.com/Syzygies/log_folders/blob/master/keyboard...
A really affordable entry into this that I've found is Epomaker keyboards. I struggled to find the exact layout I wanted in an affordable QMK keyboard. Their software sucks but it works and profiles are stored to the keyboard so it can come with you wherever. They also have split space-bar and 3 space-bar options which is really nice for adding modifier keys beyond Caps-lock or rebinding backspace or escape into a more comfortable position.
I realize this is starting to sound like an ad, but my biggest challenge getting into fully reprogrammable keyboards was the huge price tag once you start narrowing features. In my case, a 60% keyboard that retained arrow keys would have been $200+ for a QMK supported model. The Epomaker I picked up was $65 or so.
I switched to Dvorak because of wrist strain/RSI issues. I was in pretty serious wrist pain and now I rarely have any. It probably wouldn't have been worth it otherwise, but that was a huge benefit to me. I'm not sure if other things would've helped since I didn't try a lot of other approaches first.
I did the same with Colemak, and had the same effect. I think the main thing really is just to not use qwerty - that layout is just extrarodinarily unergonomic.
It probably also helped that, around the same time I switched to Colemak, I took an interest in overall keyboard ergonomics, and invested in a split keyboard.
He’s had some RSI issues, and the real problem is simply typing in any form.
I remember reading several of his articles thinking that surely within a decade, we’d have better voice assist for programming.
Tavis Rudd’s demo looked promising in 2013:
https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI
I’m not sure what’s the best solution. Here are a few that I known of:
https://serenade.ai/
https://talonvoice.com/
https://voxhub.io/silvius
It's 5 intermediate layouts to transition from QWERTY to Colemak. Each only changes a few keys. So, rather than 1 big change (where you basically can't touch-type for a month) you have 5 little changes that you can learn over a weekend each.
[1] https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1858-learn-colemak-in-steps-...
The fact that initially steps are the highest impact really helps too.
Aside from less overall movement while typing, Colemak keeps many common keyboard shortcuts the same. The first few hours are very frustrating, but the overall time-to-competence is short. There's a lot of upside and little downside.
I wrote about the process of learning Colemak in my book on skill acquisition, and posted a summary of the process and the tools/techniques I used on the book's website. [2]
[1] https://twitter.com/joshkaufman/status/1334632614368583680
[2] https://first20hours.com/typing/
For those chiding the practice, it's not for beginners-still-learning, it's for actual-years-running-users trying to type one-handed once in a while.
As for looking at a qwerty keyboard from a dvorak mindset, I'd say dvorak "wins" in my head like my right eye's image wins over my left. I look down and "see" aoeui .. pyf .. dhtns. But it's still confusing.
The programmer in me wants a numpad for () [] {} +-/*^% &c. (Do any exist, off the shelf, I wonder?)
If you have some kind of RSI and it helps then it would make sense but at least for me it doesn't make sense for the way I type.
This comes up in every HN post.
I think it makes way more sense to consider the risk and the odds of getting a RSI from qwerty vs. dvorak and take preventative action. You don't want to suffer a learning curve on the rehab side of an RSI, while also kicking yourself in the posterior for something that was avoidable.
I've been using QWERTY for decades now, and for years have used a ThinkPad keyboard with a TrackPoint instead of a mouse, use a mostly hotkey-driven workflow, and a wrist rest even on a laptop. Anecdotal, but I've rarely experienced strain and can type comfortably for hours.
I know QWERTY is demonstrably worse, but so far I haven't had the need to try another layout. The downsides of losing my current muscle memory, having to remap hotkeys and not being productive on other computers don't seem worth it to me.
This analysis finds that Dvorak and Colemak are both substantially better than QWERTY, but Colemak has the edge.
[1] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?popular_alternatives