I heard about the Dvorak keyboard a few month ago on the Mikhaila Peterson podcast
where she had her father and brother alongside as well and at some part I heard Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
talk about the Dvorak Keyboard and how fast someone can type on it. And it was switched to
QWERTY because people needed to slow down or something like that. Excuse because
I am paraphrasing that is why.
Anyway, I did switch to Dvorak for six days. And I have some thoughts, both about the keyboard layout itself and the process for switching away from your main everyday layout (mine is normally QWERTY). So let's get to it.
First, thoughts on Dvorak itself. I actually kind of like it. During my six days with it, I got up to around 55 words per minute, which for just a few days is spectacular. I definitely learned it better than I did colemak, which I used for several weeks last year. Part of that success is that all of the most popular letters are on the home row. It made it really easy to learn words with those letters because your fingers hardly move around at all. It's very nice. And even lesser-used letters aren't that hard to get to or learn.
There were a few problem keys. The major punctuation is all moved to the other side of the keyboard and to the top. So “.” and “,” are all in very odd places. It took some getting used to, but I actually, again, ended up liking it. I can see how it would be very useful to have those keys up top where they are easier to reach than below your right hand like normal.
The thing that tripped me up, and which ultimately led to me going back to qwerty, is that the hard-coded shortcut keys for cut, copy, paste, save, and so on are all in completely different places. I tooted about this and was reprimanded by some that I just needed to be more of a "touch typist" and learn to use the right modifier keys (ctrl mainly).
Other than that using the Dvorak keyboard in vim was also a new learning experience like learning vim from scratch again.
Overall if I stayed a month or so on the Dvorak keyboard and stopped wining like and accept the new experience I would have used to for the years to come but old habits die hard and I did not want to leave my comfort zone in the sake of learning a new key layout and I can’t risk it right now so I just got back to the QWERTY keyboard.
Anyway, I did switch to Dvorak for six days. And I have some thoughts, both about the keyboard layout itself and the process for switching away from your main everyday layout (mine is normally QWERTY). So let's get to it.
First, thoughts on Dvorak itself. I actually kind of like it. During my six days with it, I got up to around 55 words per minute, which for just a few days is spectacular. I definitely learned it better than I did colemak, which I used for several weeks last year. Part of that success is that all of the most popular letters are on the home row. It made it really easy to learn words with those letters because your fingers hardly move around at all. It's very nice. And even lesser-used letters aren't that hard to get to or learn.
There were a few problem keys. The major punctuation is all moved to the other side of the keyboard and to the top. So “.” and “,” are all in very odd places. It took some getting used to, but I actually, again, ended up liking it. I can see how it would be very useful to have those keys up top where they are easier to reach than below your right hand like normal.
The thing that tripped me up, and which ultimately led to me going back to qwerty, is that the hard-coded shortcut keys for cut, copy, paste, save, and so on are all in completely different places. I tooted about this and was reprimanded by some that I just needed to be more of a "touch typist" and learn to use the right modifier keys (ctrl mainly).
Other than that using the Dvorak keyboard in vim was also a new learning experience like learning vim from scratch again.
Overall if I stayed a month or so on the Dvorak keyboard and stopped wining like and accept the new experience I would have used to for the years to come but old habits die hard and I did not want to leave my comfort zone in the sake of learning a new key layout and I can’t risk it right now so I just got back to the QWERTY keyboard.