As a dvorak user, whatever increase in typing speed is mostly irrelevant, for most of us, our output isn't limited by how fast we can type, but how fast we can think. That being said, a long time ago I took an analysis of one of our code bases, mapped every character onto dvorak and qwerty keyboards to produce heatmaps, and it's startling how much less the fingers have to move on a dvorak keyboard. So if you're lazy, dvorak might be something to consider.
Overall, I've been using dvorak for >10 years and I like it. Going back to Qwerty is like going back to sleeping on a twin mattress. It gets the job done, but once you've become accustomed to sleeping on a queen, it's hard to justify going back to a twin.
Probably the best thing about Dvorak (and similar layouts) is that if you want to do proper touch typing, it is quite possibly easier to learn Dvorak than to learn how to touch type QWERTY.
Touch typing QWERTY is a constant uphill battle of using your willpower to force yourself to type correctly, despite the rest of your brain claiming it isn't the optimal way to type on that layout. I don't know that your brain is right, but I don't know that it is wrong either.
When you learn Dvorak or any other similar thing, you don't have to "learn" how to touch type. You just do it, because it's optimal already. You have to learn the layout, obviously, but once having done that you couldn't hardly fail to learn touch typing and "proper" typing technique if you tried. The same uphill gradient you're fighting when trying to learn "proper" typing technique with QWERTY is now a downhill gradient.
I'd actually recommend learning Dvorak over trying to force yourself to touch-type QWERTY properly. Of course, if you don't care about that, no big deal. I'm not sure how valuable that is as a goal on its own, and it's plainly obvious many people function as highly effective office workers of all sorts, programmers and otherwise, without learning to touch type.
> QWERTY users naturally wander around and have their hands leave the home row and I'm not entirely convinced it's actually wrong.
I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique.
I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.
It was a loooong time ago but I remember it started with lots of simple repetition. We were all using IBM selectrics and the instructor would call out "J-J-J Space, K-K-K Space, L-L-L space, sem sem sem space" etc. in a pattern around the keyboard while and we were told to avoid looking at the keyboard at all times. Eventually we would start copying simple and then longer, more complicated text, again without ever looking at the keyboard.
I'm not 100% sure you're right, but I'm one who did not touch type QWERTY properly. It could be because of the reasons you stated, or because I learned to type on a keyboard myself, not even knowing I should be using touch type. And I found that learning touch typing together with Dvora was great, like you say. It felt very natural with Dvorak, but I don't think the touch typing I learned made me touch type Qwerty properly.
I think there's something to be said about starting with a clean slate on the keyboard layout so you don't have to unlearn old bad habits in the process. For me learning Dvorak had the double benefit of making me type 100% correctly with the new layout. I'm really not sure I would have been motivated to do that if I decided to stick with Qwerty. Getting two comfort improvements with one training period makes it more worthwhile
This sounds very alluring but having to deal with setting up VIM in every environment or going to a new environment with VIM not set up sounds so painful.
I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK
Same experience for me with Colemak. My wife at one point got curious enough to try typing a few sentences on my machine (with me reading out which finger to move how to get the right letters) and even she had to admit it felt very relaxing compared to what she's used to. (But not enough that she's willing to relearn...)
Are you able to have all your normal keyboards as dvorak? I have thought about trying to switch. But I use a few different keyboards in my day and it would be a real problem for other people if the keycaps didn't match what was on the keyboard. I also think my fingers would get confused about what letter is where when switching.
I've been typing Dvorak for nearly twenty years now. I decided to learn when my programming job turned into an offshore team management job, so wanted to make it more interesting.
Initially looking down at the Qwerty labelled keyboard would totally mess me up, so I had try really hard not to look down
After about a month I could look down on occasion, realise the caps were no help and then continue on
Because I would switch back to Qwerty whenever anyone would come over to my PC, my brain then decided the presence of a person was a key to flip to Qwerty, which was annoying for a while, as whenever anyone would come near I'd lose the ability to type properly.
After the second month I would look down and I was sort of 'see' both characters at the same time: the actual keycap with my eyes and the Dvorak keys with my mind. Was very trippy and a bit difficult to properly explain.
After another month or so, that went away and then I can look at the Qwerty keys and I just sorta ignore them unless I made an effort to read them. My brain has learnt to not read them, if that makes sense. That's still the state now, many years later.
I can still type reasonably fast on Qwerty too if I need to, but it takes me a minute to adjust.
At home I have some blank keyboards I bought, partly to reduce confusion and partly because I think they look cool, but I really couldn't care less any more what the keyboards are labelled with as I rarely look at them.
I use Vim using the original bindings, hjkl are not so badly placed: h and l are still left and right of each other.
I'm actually now debating setting up a stegography keyboard, partly for another amusing brain rewiring exercise, and just because I like geeky things.
Dvorak user for 6+ years. Whereas I was very proficient touch-typing qwerty, that ability was lost when I learned Dvorak. It was too difficult, with too little benefit, to train myself to touch type in both formats. I ended up going all-in on Dvorak.
My keyboard [0] has software that translates from Dvorak to qwerty. So plugging the keyboard into different machines means no change for me, since most do qwerty by default.
When I use laptop keyboard, I do switch to dvorak layout.
Also, I'll mention the most interesting bit for me personally with changing has been in-person software interviews. The interviewer (future boss) gave me quite a look when he saw me start hunt-and-pecking! I should have given him some warning but wasn't thinking about it until I sat down at the keyboard. Fortunately it led to a good conversation, and after taking the few seconds to switch keyboard formats on the test machine I was back to full speed (unnecessarily extra full speed to impress).
> it would be a real problem for other people if the keycaps didn't match...
If you're concerned about other people, use qwerty keycaps and just ignore for yourself. It's also possible to have blank keycaps. I have blanks because they were the only sculpted option at the time for the keyboard I wanted. Along with the ortholinear layout I get some weird looks sometimes, the keyboard is just a blank regular grid of buttons, doesn't really look quite normal.
The best touch typing doesn't look at the keyboard at all, so it has more often felt like a benefit that the keys don't match what I type. (I sometimes feel like I should apologize to grade school teachers that tried to impart that lesson at too young an age to me when teaching QWERTY typing and I'd complain when they tried to block the keyboard from view.)
Having QWERTY key caps is even sometimes still useful for hunt and peck when an app (often a game) uses the wrong system library for keyboard input and is accidentally hard-coded to QWERTY input.
If other people need to use my computer it is very easy to set up profiles that default still to QWERTY or to temporarily shift to QWERTY for their interaction. (The default Windows shortcut key to switch between installed layouts is Left CTRL+SHIFT. It's very easy to switch to/from QWERTY with that quick shortcut.)
I've also used for dvorak for a long time...over 15 years. I've never changed keycaps. If you're looking at your fingers while typing qwerty, learning to type dvorak on a qwerty keyboard might just be useful in that it will force you to stop looking at your keyboard and you'll find a speed up in typing just from that!
For me the learning process was very similar to learning a foreign language. At first it was hard, but once I started to get fluency in dvorak, typing in qwerty was hard for a while...but then at some point my qwerty typing ability came back and switching between the two layouts is as easy as switching computer or human languages. (when you know them fluently).
To address your fear, yes, there will a period in the learning process where your fingers get confused switching back and forth but once you get past that it goes away and switching becomes second nature.
Get good enough touch typing dvorak you don't need to seethe keys so typing on a qwerty keyboard isn't an issue. These days it's not the letters I ever have to personally look at the keys for but the random symbols I don't use often enough to have memorized. Sadly some of those move around too.
I'm in a funny situation that at my desktop I've been using a Kinesis dvorak keyboard for over 20 years, but on laptops or other random computers I use qwerty. My brain is totally bought in on the different layouts, I don't even have to think about it. It's too much of a hassle to manage to reconfigure all of them to dvorak, and then no one else in the family would be able to use them either. An extra complication is that I also sometimes use a Swedish keyboard to type åäö and on a dvorak I have no idea where they would end up.
Perhaps it would pay off to standardize... But like someone else said, the letters aren't the problem, it's all the symbols that you almost never use that become impossible if they aren't labeled.
Not a Dvorak user, but I type on different language keypads a lot, both physically and on software keyboards. Your fingers get used to it within a few weeks and after a few years your brain doesn't even register the difference.
When I was learning dvorak (more than a decade ago) I bought a cheap keyboard at a garage sale and rearranged the keys.
An easier approach is just to get stickers.
I used that trainer keyboard for a summer, until my typing muscle memory was updated to dvorak.
Since then, I don't look at my keyboards while typing, so the fact that the keys are labeled for qwerty doesn't really matter.
I came to say this. It's not speed, it's comfort. I've been using Dvorak on my Kinesis Advantage since mid 90'es [1]. I don't actually think Dvorak is the best possible layout, but as the video points out, we are already in the realm of diminishing returns.
[1] I still use Qwerty on non-Kinesis keyboards and this fact is enough for my muscle memory to eliminate any mental overhead of switching.
> how fast we can think [...] an analysis of one of our code bases
Well, with coding that's certainly true. I can spend all day trying to come up with a dozen lines of code. Input speed is not the barrier there. But for writing English prose, at around 90 wpm, my fingers are often lagging behind what I want to say. People can reach short bursts when speaking as fast as 300 wpm. When I get such bursts of thought, it can be hard to hold on to the end of it while I'm still typing the beginning.
> output isn't limited by how fast we can type, but how fast we can think
It's hard to think while typing so the less time I spend typing the more time I have for thinking. Having said that I'm a qwerty user - it took me a lot of time (may be 100 hours) to learn touch typing and I don't have time to repeat the same with dvorak.
Hmm I never consciously learned to touch type, just got into it in time. Not being an actual practiced touch typist, I use like 3 fingers on each hand on average. Last time I took a speed test i could do like 50-60 wpm.
Thing is, this speed is more than enough for a developer. What do you write? Code and some communication with your co workers. In both cases you need to think about it, except the rare cases where you churn out yet another for loop.
> It's a constant source of stress. I'm only ever comfortable if I force myself to think slower.
I have some questions:
1. From a psychological point of view, have you explored ways of coping with this stress? What are your expectations? Do you know why you have the stress? Is about results? Is it about fluidity / flow / fluency? Something else?
2. This may be obvious, but I want to make sure I ask the question to make it really concrete: is one of your goals to transfer your thinking directly to the computer as quickly as possible?
3. Would you be willing to reframe your goal? Perhaps frame your goals as: "Accomplish my goals efficiently with a sense of flow, without rushing down a suboptimal path." You know some of these proverbs:
* "Running faster in the wrong direction won't get you anywhere."
* "Better to walk in the right direction than run in the wrong one."
* "Haste makes waste."
* "A fool at high speed is still a fool."
* "Don't mistake activity for achievement."
* "When you're headed in the wrong direction, progress means turning around."
4. It may be useful to think slower! This might help you let go of framing it as "forcing myself to think slower".
A. Maybe you would feel better if you could reframe this process as not simply thinking slower but also allocating some of your mental processing to summarization and translation and other valuable processing?
B. No knock against your brain, but how do you actually measure your thinking speed and error rate?
C. There are a lot of counterintuitive things happening in the brain when you dig into the neuroscience. Many experiments show that our conscious awareness lags our actual decision-making. Perhaps this can "problematize" your situation and make it interesting, rather than purely stressful. Thinking and typing may not be happening the way you think they are
D. I'd expect for you, a good typist, your brain fires motor control circuits to cause your fingers to type before you are consciously aware of it, if you are aware at all. Ever notice how switching keyboards increases your awareness? This seems to suggest that one's low-level typing awareness (i.e. how keys feel) dulls over time when using one particular keyboard.
E. I have not read this yet, but it seems relevant: "Hierarchical control of cognitive processes: The case for skilled typewriting." by Logan and Crump, 2011. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-04906-001
5. What technologies and/or methods have you considered?
6. Are you familiar with a steno machine (aka stenotype machine / shorthand machine / stenograph)? Might it work for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
Also, as a gamer, I'm concerned about keyboard mappings in games if I switch from Qwerty- I heard bad things, although games really should have switched from a key encoding mapping to a key location mapping a long time ago.
Some games do use key location. Factorio, for example, uses key location. It's really hit or miss. I am not sure what determines whether they use key location or not.
Edit: Basically, the key mappings would automatically change WASD to WARS for Colemak.
Using QUERTY after colemak is like being retarded, so after trying alternate keyboard layouts for a while, I'm just doing a hardpass on anything not QUERTY until we get rid of keyboards entirely.
I moved to dvorak to help with my RSI. I don't know if it actually helped (it's been decades since I used QWERTY on a keyboard for more than a minute), but typing speed was irrelevant to me.
I just don’t understand that metric or why Dvorak people keep using it. Yes my fingers might travel less, but do we know that moving your hands less leads to a reduction in pain and injury? I’d argue having them constantly in the same position might also do that.
And what about comfort? My index finger is stronger than my pinky; id much rather move further with my index finger than my pinky..
When I started using Dvorak, it was because I found that I could make my typing significantly quieter with Dvorak than with QWERTY, likely because of the reduced movement. As an undergraduate at a time when almost no one else had started typing notes in class, I found that there was a substantial reduction in how noticeable my typing was to others when I switched to Dvorak.
I did the same kind of code heatmap (only for querty) but never made a good implementation that accounts for autocomplete. The symbol characters are already much more heavily used than the abc but the real numbers are probably much worse.
These characters/keys are in better positions on Dvorak: '" ,< .> -_ +=
These are in worse positions: [{ ]} ;: /?
And this doesn't move: \| `~ and the punctuation over the numbers.
[]{} is significantly worse, equally -_=+ is significantly better, as these keys are swapped. Making an effort to learn and touch-type these keys is pretty similar on either layout.
It's just a matter of learning it. If you really want to, you can customize a keyboard layout on any OS and arrange these keys how you see fit, but then you lose any compatibility advantage of sticking with plain Dvorak.
I use the programmer variant of dvorak. The number keys are 'swapped' with symbols, so you press shift to access numbers. Given that most programmers (should) use symbols more often than numbers, this is highly convenient. Strongly recommend checking it out.
For the record, I mostly use python nowadays but it's still a big improvement over mashing shift all day.
,.<> are slightly more convenient than on Qwerty, ;: is obviously worse but hardly "way out" (it's where Z is on Qwerty).
[]{} are indeed further out, but instead we have -_=+ closer. Once we add in all the English I type, file-names, U_R_L?s, --command --flags, /directories/, I think, if anything, the rearrangement is an advantage.
I use a gaming mouse and assign common shortcuts to the extra buttons.
One nice advantage of mac os is the built-in Dvorak-Qwerty layout which retains Qwerty shortcuts. You need an AHK script to achieve the same result on Windows.
Anecdotally, I gave Dvorak a try and became somewhat proficient, but ultimately reverted back to QWERTY for one reason: keyboard shortcuts! Control-C|V|Z are all transformed into either two-handed shortcuts or right-handed shortcuts. In either case, I can't copy/paste while selecting text with the mouse (since I'm right-handed).
I now use Colemak (https://colemak.com/) which doesn't have this issue and I'm quite happy with!
Good point, but IMO mechanical programmable keyboard with hardware shortcuts are the way to go. That way you can remap to one-handed, or even one button, or whatever you like. You can even take it with you between machines. It's like a portable "human interface" that stays with you.
I'm a dvorak user and never really found a way around the shortcut issue. Mac has a native option to use Dvorak with QWERTY shortcuts which is what I prefer, but on windows you have to use buggy programs to map the shortcuts over. Never found anything that worked great. Linux is even worse since you have to mess around with the OS to get it to work, and is a bit different between distros / flavors.
In the end I use a Ergodox keyboard that switches the layout to QWERTY if you hold down the control key, works flawlessly and haven't had to deal with it since.
15 years on dvorak and shortcuts are the primary impediment. The mac tweaked shortcuts work nicely, but they're not consistent. Swing based UI ignores them. It's also still a bit confusing dealing with ctrl-* vs anything that has a cmd, including cmd-opt-shift-* etc. Seems like re-implementing the mac tweak but in a more complete way manually in qmk would be the ultimate cross-platform solution.
This depends on taste. I find it very easy to type "ls" on Dvorak, where it is typed with the same finger on adjacent keys.
Moreover, the variant of Dvorak that I use is much more shell-friendly than any QWERTY layout.
While for the alphabet and for the punctuation signs that are used in natural languages I use a layout closer to the initial Dvorak layout from 1932 than to the modern Dvorak layout, for the other non-alphanumeric symbols I have made a few changes that I consider best for typing shell commands or other kinds of programs.
The pre-WWII Dvorak layout does not say anything about most non-alphanumeric symbols and there are no suitable standards for them (i.e. any standards than are based on rational criteria, not on preserving a random historical layout), so anyone who wants an optimal keyboard for programming or work with a command-line interface should design a custom layout for the non-alphanumeric symbols, according to taste and experience.
Sorry, I don't follow: `ls` is dragging your right pinky downward. How is that not shell friendly?
(I mean, to each their own, I use dvorak because other layouts hurt my hands, but I would presume there are better non-shell-friendly examples -- but interestingly, I couldn't readily find them since `mv` is also just the right hand, unlike its qwerty friend)
I've been using dvorak exclusively for over 20 years. Best investment of my career. I don't bother remapping keys and just learn them however they land on the layout.
Ironically Qwerty is extremely well-designed for typing on a touchscreen phone.
Dvorak was designed to have common characters on home keys and common character sequences alternate between each hand.
That's great on a keyboard with 4 fingers on each hand. On a touch screen, that's really bad! Characters close together complicate touchscreen recognition - is it "poet", "peet", or "pout"? And consecutive characters on opposite sides of the keyboard creates lots of movement for a single thumb.
Instead, Qwerty has common characters spread out across the keyboard, and many common character sequences close together (e.g. "-ed", "tion"). Which is exactly the pattern that is fast & accurate on a touchscreen.
I've had the on-screen keyboard on my phone set to Dvorak for > 5 years, and I just can't switch back to Qwerty. I think it's quite good for the phone.
One YouTube comment echoed my experience with Dvorak:
> Often overlooked is that the main reason for switching to dvorak isn't speed for most users. The dvorak layout is layed out for minimal movement while maintaining a roughly even split between hands. This reduces strain on a typists hands and helps a great deal with comfort when typing for longer periods of time.
I may not type faster than if I had stuck with qwerty, but I definitely don't have the wrist problems I keep hearing coworkers complain about.
This was my driving factor for switching to Colemak (I considered Dvorak, but felt Colemak was easier for _me_ to learn).
I'm starting to get some finger pain again, but that's almost entirely from overuse. QWERTY was crushing my hands. Far too many, weird twisting moves to hit consecutive keys between top and bottom rows.
My experience is that Dvorak solved my RSI problems, and split keyboards do not. The amount of time it takes to retrain into Dvorak is irrelevant to me, because the alternative is something more extreme, like quitting my job, using speech-to-text, or living in pain.
Yeah, I think this sums up every Dvorak debunking story that pops up on HN twice a year. You can type 100 WPM with two fingers as seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqyiyh_hrUs so layout does not matter too much for speed. You can see his physical movement does not appear superhuman, and this is well above average typing speed of 40 WPM.
Dvorak is also based on English spelling, and thus its benefits vanish almost everywhere in the world. There are other alternative layouts, having the same kind of marginal gain over the standard, but then it's not available everywhere, and if you're a developer, you may also want an easier access to braces and stuff, and from here your keyboard will basically work nowhere unless you buy some kind of custom hardware to do the translation.
And it also has the same problem to me as QWERTY, it makes numbers accessible while I don't care since most keyboards have a numpad (and to enter a number holding shift isn't hard) while for example it adds a significant amount of keystrokes to open and close a brace.
> vowels are still the most common letters in most Latin-alphabet based languages.
Also "s" "t" and "n" are fairly-to-very common in damn near every language (Latin-alphabet or otherwise) due to how phonetics works. (They're the default-voiced-ness for each manner of articulation at the most-default-ish - alveolar - place of articulation for consonant phonemes.) The other two - "h" and "d" - are less universal, but still better than "j" and "g".
Regardless whether one uses Dvorak or QWERTY, it is good to revert the effect of the shift key on the 10 numeric keys of the upper row.
Thus the non-alphanumeric symbols, which are more frequent in programming languages, are available directly, while keeping shift pressed for the entire duration of a number is easy, so it is a minor disadvantage.
I also find useful to map the 3 pairs of ASCII brackets on 3 keys, so that the opening brackets are available directly and the closing brackets with shift. I need very seldom to type the closing brackets, as they are normally inserted automatically by most editors.
I use Dvorak. When typing on QWERTY, I feel like I'm playing a secretary in a 1950s movie trying to ham up the notion that I'm really typing something here, because it feels my fingers have to fly around everywhere in an exaggerated and ostentatious manner.
If you have typing speed less than 50 WPM, you'll probably type faster by switching to Dvorak. If you type faster than that before switching, your typing speed will go down and not fully recover automatically unless you train it back up. I lost some speed that I never recovered. It wasn't worth the effort because I can still type fast enough.
A lot of people get hung up on the keybindings thing. zxcv for CUA cut-copy-paste make a nice little row on QWERTY, and hjkl for vi type movements, but as it turns out, it really doesn't matter. Those help you learn when muscle memory doesn't translate into intention without thinking. Once you learn them by muscle memory, it doesn't matter where the keys are. I just use programs with QWERTY shortcuts and press the key on Dvorak wherever it happens to land on the layout, and it works perfectly fine.
I can still touch type QWERTY, but quite a bit slower than Dvorak.
Can attest vi movements can be learned on Dvorak. But have to admit it is not quite as nice, those movements were designed for qwerty.
Of course "j" and "k" are next to each other on Dvorak. "h" and "l" are also positioned at first and fourth fingers like qwerty... but on different rows and on different hand than "j/k". Which means Dvorak requires two-handed vi movements.
Maybe not a big deal, vi shortcuts mean moving all over the keyboard anyway. Just not quite as nice.
With the rise of (split) mechanical keyboards as a hobby in its own right (with open source keyboard firmware like QMK and ZMK) it is much easier to make small tweaks to your layout as you find things which annoy you, so there seems to be a lot of experimentation going on right now with alternative layouts.
I feel like I'm one of the last generation of Dvorak typers, anyone who cares about typing ergonomics learning about alternate layouts is probably both better off and more likely to try e.g. colemak, or something newer or maybe even design their own.
It's my lone complaint with Colemak is that Windows still doesn't include it out-of-the-box and needs it to be admin-installed from an MSI bundle that needs to be downloaded (or copied from a thumb drive). Every other modern OS includes it today (including iOS).
I taught myself dvorak for fun in high school have used it everyday for close to a decade now. It certainly never made me a faster typer, but what I don't hear a lot of people point out is that it is simply a more pleasant experience. Whenever I switch back to qwerty (I can still touch type in both), I become instantly contingent that my hands are having to move more erratically over the surface of my keyboard to type any given word or sentence. Also a couple small things about the layout that really like are that the underscore key is much easier to reach and the period and comma keys are on the top row which makes writing long numbers with decimals and commas nicer.
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Overall, I've been using dvorak for >10 years and I like it. Going back to Qwerty is like going back to sleeping on a twin mattress. It gets the job done, but once you've become accustomed to sleeping on a queen, it's hard to justify going back to a twin.
Touch typing QWERTY is a constant uphill battle of using your willpower to force yourself to type correctly, despite the rest of your brain claiming it isn't the optimal way to type on that layout. I don't know that your brain is right, but I don't know that it is wrong either.
When you learn Dvorak or any other similar thing, you don't have to "learn" how to touch type. You just do it, because it's optimal already. You have to learn the layout, obviously, but once having done that you couldn't hardly fail to learn touch typing and "proper" typing technique if you tried. The same uphill gradient you're fighting when trying to learn "proper" typing technique with QWERTY is now a downhill gradient.
I'd actually recommend learning Dvorak over trying to force yourself to touch-type QWERTY properly. Of course, if you don't care about that, no big deal. I'm not sure how valuable that is as a goal on its own, and it's plainly obvious many people function as highly effective office workers of all sorts, programmers and otherwise, without learning to touch type.
I think you are learning it wrong. It's not hard at all to learn QWERTY with the proper training technique.
I took touch typing in High School, back in the 1980's. Even back then I knew I was going to be doing a lot of work with computers so it made sense to take it. It turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in school by a wide margin since I've used that skill all day every day for 35 years.
It was a loooong time ago but I remember it started with lots of simple repetition. We were all using IBM selectrics and the instructor would call out "J-J-J Space, K-K-K Space, L-L-L space, sem sem sem space" etc. in a pattern around the keyboard while and we were told to avoid looking at the keyboard at all times. Eventually we would start copying simple and then longer, more complicated text, again without ever looking at the keyboard.
I think there's something to be said about starting with a clean slate on the keyboard layout so you don't have to unlearn old bad habits in the process. For me learning Dvorak had the double benefit of making me type 100% correctly with the new layout. I'm really not sure I would have been motivated to do that if I decided to stick with Qwerty. Getting two comfort improvements with one training period makes it more worthwhile
I imagine the native VIM bindings would be atrociously positioned in DVORAK
Initially looking down at the Qwerty labelled keyboard would totally mess me up, so I had try really hard not to look down
After about a month I could look down on occasion, realise the caps were no help and then continue on
Because I would switch back to Qwerty whenever anyone would come over to my PC, my brain then decided the presence of a person was a key to flip to Qwerty, which was annoying for a while, as whenever anyone would come near I'd lose the ability to type properly.
After the second month I would look down and I was sort of 'see' both characters at the same time: the actual keycap with my eyes and the Dvorak keys with my mind. Was very trippy and a bit difficult to properly explain.
After another month or so, that went away and then I can look at the Qwerty keys and I just sorta ignore them unless I made an effort to read them. My brain has learnt to not read them, if that makes sense. That's still the state now, many years later.
I can still type reasonably fast on Qwerty too if I need to, but it takes me a minute to adjust.
At home I have some blank keyboards I bought, partly to reduce confusion and partly because I think they look cool, but I really couldn't care less any more what the keyboards are labelled with as I rarely look at them.
I use Vim using the original bindings, hjkl are not so badly placed: h and l are still left and right of each other.
I'm actually now debating setting up a stegography keyboard, partly for another amusing brain rewiring exercise, and just because I like geeky things.
My keyboard [0] has software that translates from Dvorak to qwerty. So plugging the keyboard into different machines means no change for me, since most do qwerty by default.
When I use laptop keyboard, I do switch to dvorak layout.
Also, I'll mention the most interesting bit for me personally with changing has been in-person software interviews. The interviewer (future boss) gave me quite a look when he saw me start hunt-and-pecking! I should have given him some warning but wasn't thinking about it until I sat down at the keyboard. Fortunately it led to a good conversation, and after taking the few seconds to switch keyboard formats on the test machine I was back to full speed (unnecessarily extra full speed to impress).
> it would be a real problem for other people if the keycaps didn't match...
If you're concerned about other people, use qwerty keycaps and just ignore for yourself. It's also possible to have blank keycaps. I have blanks because they were the only sculpted option at the time for the keyboard I wanted. Along with the ortholinear layout I get some weird looks sometimes, the keyboard is just a blank regular grid of buttons, doesn't really look quite normal.
[0] Ergodox-EZ (old style, not sold anymore) https://ergodox-ez.com/
Having QWERTY key caps is even sometimes still useful for hunt and peck when an app (often a game) uses the wrong system library for keyboard input and is accidentally hard-coded to QWERTY input.
If other people need to use my computer it is very easy to set up profiles that default still to QWERTY or to temporarily shift to QWERTY for their interaction. (The default Windows shortcut key to switch between installed layouts is Left CTRL+SHIFT. It's very easy to switch to/from QWERTY with that quick shortcut.)
For me the learning process was very similar to learning a foreign language. At first it was hard, but once I started to get fluency in dvorak, typing in qwerty was hard for a while...but then at some point my qwerty typing ability came back and switching between the two layouts is as easy as switching computer or human languages. (when you know them fluently).
To address your fear, yes, there will a period in the learning process where your fingers get confused switching back and forth but once you get past that it goes away and switching becomes second nature.
Perhaps it would pay off to standardize... But like someone else said, the letters aren't the problem, it's all the symbols that you almost never use that become impossible if they aren't labeled.
I used that trainer keyboard for a summer, until my typing muscle memory was updated to dvorak.
Since then, I don't look at my keyboards while typing, so the fact that the keys are labeled for qwerty doesn't really matter.
[1] I still use Qwerty on non-Kinesis keyboards and this fact is enough for my muscle memory to eliminate any mental overhead of switching.
Well, with coding that's certainly true. I can spend all day trying to come up with a dozen lines of code. Input speed is not the barrier there. But for writing English prose, at around 90 wpm, my fingers are often lagging behind what I want to say. People can reach short bursts when speaking as fast as 300 wpm. When I get such bursts of thought, it can be hard to hold on to the end of it while I'm still typing the beginning.
It's hard to think while typing so the less time I spend typing the more time I have for thinking. Having said that I'm a qwerty user - it took me a lot of time (may be 100 hours) to learn touch typing and I don't have time to repeat the same with dvorak.
Thing is, this speed is more than enough for a developer. What do you write? Code and some communication with your co workers. In both cases you need to think about it, except the rare cases where you churn out yet another for loop.
It's a constant source of stress. I'm only ever comfortable if I force myself to think slower.
I have some questions:
1. From a psychological point of view, have you explored ways of coping with this stress? What are your expectations? Do you know why you have the stress? Is about results? Is it about fluidity / flow / fluency? Something else?
2. This may be obvious, but I want to make sure I ask the question to make it really concrete: is one of your goals to transfer your thinking directly to the computer as quickly as possible?
3. Would you be willing to reframe your goal? Perhaps frame your goals as: "Accomplish my goals efficiently with a sense of flow, without rushing down a suboptimal path." You know some of these proverbs:
* "Running faster in the wrong direction won't get you anywhere."
* "Better to walk in the right direction than run in the wrong one."
* "Haste makes waste."
* "A fool at high speed is still a fool."
* "Don't mistake activity for achievement."
* "When you're headed in the wrong direction, progress means turning around."
4. It may be useful to think slower! This might help you let go of framing it as "forcing myself to think slower".
A. Maybe you would feel better if you could reframe this process as not simply thinking slower but also allocating some of your mental processing to summarization and translation and other valuable processing?
B. No knock against your brain, but how do you actually measure your thinking speed and error rate?
C. There are a lot of counterintuitive things happening in the brain when you dig into the neuroscience. Many experiments show that our conscious awareness lags our actual decision-making. Perhaps this can "problematize" your situation and make it interesting, rather than purely stressful. Thinking and typing may not be happening the way you think they are
D. I'd expect for you, a good typist, your brain fires motor control circuits to cause your fingers to type before you are consciously aware of it, if you are aware at all. Ever notice how switching keyboards increases your awareness? This seems to suggest that one's low-level typing awareness (i.e. how keys feel) dulls over time when using one particular keyboard.
E. I have not read this yet, but it seems relevant: "Hierarchical control of cognitive processes: The case for skilled typewriting." by Logan and Crump, 2011. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-04906-001
5. What technologies and/or methods have you considered?
6. Are you familiar with a steno machine (aka stenotype machine / shorthand machine / stenograph)? Might it work for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
7. Have you discussed this with others with similar goals? Have you read "Quest for a fully deterministic keyboard shorthand system" https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/comments/3ul9y3
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Also, as a gamer, I'm concerned about keyboard mappings in games if I switch from Qwerty- I heard bad things, although games really should have switched from a key encoding mapping to a key location mapping a long time ago.
Edit: Basically, the key mappings would automatically change WASD to WARS for Colemak.
And what about comfort? My index finger is stronger than my pinky; id much rather move further with my index finger than my pinky..
if your code base is C, is dvorak going to help with all the [^A-Za-z]* punctuation characters? That's what slows me down.
These are in worse positions: [{ ]} ;: /?
And this doesn't move: \| `~ and the punctuation over the numbers.
[]{} is significantly worse, equally -_=+ is significantly better, as these keys are swapped. Making an effort to learn and touch-type these keys is pretty similar on either layout.
It's just a matter of learning it. If you really want to, you can customize a keyboard layout on any OS and arrange these keys how you see fit, but then you lose any compatibility advantage of sticking with plain Dvorak.
For the record, I mostly use python nowadays but it's still a big improvement over mashing shift all day.
[]{} are indeed further out, but instead we have -_=+ closer. Once we add in all the English I type, file-names, U_R_L?s, --command --flags, /directories/, I think, if anything, the rearrangement is an advantage.
One nice advantage of mac os is the built-in Dvorak-Qwerty layout which retains Qwerty shortcuts. You need an AHK script to achieve the same result on Windows.
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I now use Colemak (https://colemak.com/) which doesn't have this issue and I'm quite happy with!
In the end I use a Ergodox keyboard that switches the layout to QWERTY if you hold down the control key, works flawlessly and haven't had to deal with it since.
Moreover, the variant of Dvorak that I use is much more shell-friendly than any QWERTY layout.
While for the alphabet and for the punctuation signs that are used in natural languages I use a layout closer to the initial Dvorak layout from 1932 than to the modern Dvorak layout, for the other non-alphanumeric symbols I have made a few changes that I consider best for typing shell commands or other kinds of programs.
The pre-WWII Dvorak layout does not say anything about most non-alphanumeric symbols and there are no suitable standards for them (i.e. any standards than are based on rational criteria, not on preserving a random historical layout), so anyone who wants an optimal keyboard for programming or work with a command-line interface should design a custom layout for the non-alphanumeric symbols, according to taste and experience.
(I mean, to each their own, I use dvorak because other layouts hurt my hands, but I would presume there are better non-shell-friendly examples -- but interestingly, I couldn't readily find them since `mv` is also just the right hand, unlike its qwerty friend)
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Dvorak was designed to have common characters on home keys and common character sequences alternate between each hand.
That's great on a keyboard with 4 fingers on each hand. On a touch screen, that's really bad! Characters close together complicate touchscreen recognition - is it "poet", "peet", or "pout"? And consecutive characters on opposite sides of the keyboard creates lots of movement for a single thumb.
Instead, Qwerty has common characters spread out across the keyboard, and many common character sequences close together (e.g. "-ed", "tion"). Which is exactly the pattern that is fast & accurate on a touchscreen.
> Often overlooked is that the main reason for switching to dvorak isn't speed for most users. The dvorak layout is layed out for minimal movement while maintaining a roughly even split between hands. This reduces strain on a typists hands and helps a great deal with comfort when typing for longer periods of time.
I may not type faster than if I had stuck with qwerty, but I definitely don't have the wrist problems I keep hearing coworkers complain about.
I'm starting to get some finger pain again, but that's almost entirely from overuse. QWERTY was crushing my hands. Far too many, weird twisting moves to hit consecutive keys between top and bottom rows.
Debunkers: It's not any faster!
Dvorak users: We know, and we don't care.
And it also has the same problem to me as QWERTY, it makes numbers accessible while I don't care since most keyboards have a numpad (and to enter a number holding shift isn't hard) while for example it adds a significant amount of keystrokes to open and close a brace.
Also "s" "t" and "n" are fairly-to-very common in damn near every language (Latin-alphabet or otherwise) due to how phonetics works. (They're the default-voiced-ness for each manner of articulation at the most-default-ish - alveolar - place of articulation for consonant phonemes.) The other two - "h" and "d" - are less universal, but still better than "j" and "g".
Thus the non-alphanumeric symbols, which are more frequent in programming languages, are available directly, while keeping shift pressed for the entire duration of a number is easy, so it is a minor disadvantage.
I also find useful to map the 3 pairs of ASCII brackets on 3 keys, so that the opening brackets are available directly and the closing brackets with shift. I need very seldom to type the closing brackets, as they are normally inserted automatically by most editors.
If you have typing speed less than 50 WPM, you'll probably type faster by switching to Dvorak. If you type faster than that before switching, your typing speed will go down and not fully recover automatically unless you train it back up. I lost some speed that I never recovered. It wasn't worth the effort because I can still type fast enough.
A lot of people get hung up on the keybindings thing. zxcv for CUA cut-copy-paste make a nice little row on QWERTY, and hjkl for vi type movements, but as it turns out, it really doesn't matter. Those help you learn when muscle memory doesn't translate into intention without thinking. Once you learn them by muscle memory, it doesn't matter where the keys are. I just use programs with QWERTY shortcuts and press the key on Dvorak wherever it happens to land on the layout, and it works perfectly fine.
I can still touch type QWERTY, but quite a bit slower than Dvorak.
Can attest vi movements can be learned on Dvorak. But have to admit it is not quite as nice, those movements were designed for qwerty.
Of course "j" and "k" are next to each other on Dvorak. "h" and "l" are also positioned at first and fourth fingers like qwerty... but on different rows and on different hand than "j/k". Which means Dvorak requires two-handed vi movements.
Maybe not a big deal, vi shortcuts mean moving all over the keyboard anyway. Just not quite as nice.
I feel like I'm one of the last generation of Dvorak typers, anyone who cares about typing ergonomics learning about alternate layouts is probably both better off and more likely to try e.g. colemak, or something newer or maybe even design their own.