6 ms·

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

• weavie 6y ago
  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..
  • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    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.
    • andrewzah 6y ago
      YMMV but after 3-4 weeks of dvorak, I actually did have difficulties when using qwerty. I gave up dvorak because I don't want to have to modify every keyboard/system I'm on, as opposed to just sitting down at a terminal and getting work done.
      • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        I think you might have tried a bit more. I'm typing this on my wife's qwerty laptop and have zero issues with blind typing on it, just a little more strain from having to move fingers more that it is possible on Dvorak.
    • bewuethr 6y ago
      But not using German makes your German worse.
      • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        True. But you can't be isolated from QWERTY in the real world: my wife's computer uses it, as do a lot of computers out there, so I still do get practice with it from time to time.
    • mettamage 6y ago
      I’ve met people who lost their native language for another one (Portuguese —> Italian). So maybe GP was that good
    • weavie 6y ago
      I could touchtype like crazy on qwerty before. It's possible because I learned dvorak when I was older - early 40s - I only have space in my brain for a single layout now..
    • ericlevine 6y ago
      I have to agree with the other poster. My typing speed was in the 70+ WPM on qwerty prior to learning dvorak, and now I'm a glorified hunt-and-pecker on qwerty keyboards. The only exception to this is typing on my mobile device, which is configured to qwerty.
    • soperj 6y ago
      Really? I always feel like I'm mixing up my 3rd/4th/5th languages.
    • laylomo2 6y ago
      I can type Qwerty, Dvorak, and Colemak all over 100wpm (https://youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6iSYMMHv0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6iSYMMHv0). You definitely have to practice all three together if you don’t want to lose them. Also happened with language learning. I speak English and Spanish natively. Learned Italian (very similar to Spanish) in high school. After college learned Chinese in China. One day I ran into an Italian person in China and tried to talk to them in Italian. I kept jumbling Italian and Chinese, even though on paper Italian is so much easier for me than Chinese. It was like my brain only had space for all native languages, and just one foreign language. I’m sure with practice I could speak both Italian and Chinese, but that’s the whole point of this comment. It takes practice to maintain them all.
      • wussboy 6y ago
        I agree with this. Colemak is a skill. Qwerty is a skill. Switching between the two is a separate skill. But all 3 can be learned.
    • lmilcin 6y ago
      I think it is exactly the opposite. If your speed did not fall it means you did not learn well. I actually learned to type at school (yeah, funny business school my parents sent me to). We had an actual specialist teacher to teach us to type on electric typewriters using pretty nice methodology. To learn to type well is to train "muscle memory". This means you think the letter and your body does it for you, automatically, without any part of your conscious brain involved. I don't know where keys are on my keyboard. It is unmarked, so I can't look it up. If somebody asks me, I need to lay my hands on it and think the letter and see which finger "wants to" press the button. In that regard I am a passenger and once I think a word or sentence I don't have any further control -- it is some uncontrollable part of my brain that takes over and does it for me. Even when typing at speed I am still free to think about anything else. Just as when you walk you don't need to think about walking itself and can concentrate on whatever else you want.
    • aspaviento 6y ago
      It does actually. The time you spend practising French is time you are neglecting German and hence, your knowledge will decay. If it's not a long time you won't notice it (maybe some very specific words that you rarely use will be forgotten).
      • toyg 6y ago
        Any long-term migrant learns this over the years, sadly. Obviously you can still use the language, but the farthest borders of language-specific knowledge become frail and tend to fall off the edge of your brain. I now struggle to give "flourish" to my speech in the "old" language, and have to make a conscious effort to remember difficult words.
  • pkkim 6y ago
    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.
  • lmilcin 6y ago
    Same problem here. 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).
  • snidane 6y ago
    Same for me. My fingers remember dvorak and can't work with qwerty with just using the fingers' memory. I use qwerty on mobile just fine. I don't think dvorak on mobile would be of any help since I type with thumbs.
  • SkyPuncher 6y ago
    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.
  • arafa 6y ago
    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.
  • goodpoint 6y ago
    I never had any problem in switching forth-and-back especially because the layout are completely different and this prevents confusion. 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.
  • 1MachineElf 6y ago
    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.
    • neodymiumphish 6y ago
      I was in this boat as well for quite some time. Early COVID, I bought a programmable (QMK-based) keyboard and hard-coded the keys to match the Dvorak layout, since most of my interactions with PCs was via RDP-like situations (Horizon Web Client, VMs, RDP). This way, I could keep everything configured to QWERTY and just use my keyboard. On my laptop, I have it set up with both layouts, so that if I don't have my QMK keyboard connected (in my lap, travelling, etc), I can just hit Ctrl-Shift and switch the built-in keyboard to Dvorak. To me, this is the best setup. Only pain point is that it required me to configure the 2 PC games I play to fit with my Dvorak configuration, since the PC sees it as me typing on a QWERTY keyboard with alien hands.
  • kbd 6y ago
    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
• bemmu 6y ago
  2-3 weeks!? 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.
  • michaelcampbell 6y ago
    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.
  • toyg 6y ago
    Your wpm is high. I'm in the 60s and Colemak actually improved my speed after a few months.
• michaelcampbell 6y ago
  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. Emacs with dvorak was... interesting.
• mbauman 6y ago
  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.
• dylanz 6y ago
  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.
  • ajfjrbfbf 6y ago
    Why would you have to relearn Vim? Just remap all the key where they used to be.
    • function_seven 6y ago
      Wouldn't it still be difficult? The HJKL row makes sense to remap to DHTN. But other commands are mnemonic and would make more sense to follow the key to its new location. So you have collisions. ("Does Y mean "yank"? Or does it now mean "to"? Well "to" can't be T anymore, because that's now the motion up command.") So you have to either remap everything back to qwerty positions, and learn the new mnemonics, or keep the letter associations the same, and give up on the clustered motion commands. I'm thinking it's probably better to do the latter, but I'd love to hear from vimmers that use non-qwerty layouts.
      • 1MachineElf 6y ago
        I type Dvorak and simply use the default Vim key bindings. Vim defaults are weird with Dvorak, but significantly more intuitive than what the situation is with Colemak. Here's the Vim and Dvorak inspired custom keymap I use on my programmable keyboard: https://github.com/1MachineElf/qmk_firmware/tree/_sb4dv/keyboards/planck/keymaps/sb4dv https://github.com/1MachineElf/qmk_firmware/tree/_sb4dv/keyb...
      • ezrast 6y ago
        I'm not a power vim user but sticking to the default keybinds on Dvorak isn't so bad. JK are still right next to each other, and HL are on the right index and pinky, respectively, so the basic spatial relationships between the keys are somewhat preserved. I find that remapping shortcuts is generally not worth it. Yeah, undo/cut/copy/paste are weird and that sucks, but it's better than fighting every application you ever use, on every machine, including machines you SSH into, until you die. For gaming, on the other hand, mixed up keybinds are intolerable. I just switch back to QWERTY for that.
• spacemanmatt 6y ago
  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.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    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.
• KajMagnus 6y ago
  > 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 :- ) > hotkeys are generally a MESS Colemak: Hotkeys = fine :- )
  • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    > 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.
    • cicko 6y ago
      Then you don't use the letter M? Oh, this reminds me showing Dvorak to a colleague. He asks: "So, where is the letter A?" - "Mmm, right here, where it is in Qwerty." - "OK. And where is, for example, letter M?" - "Mmm, right here, where it is in Qwerty." - "So, what's the point, then?"
      • Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
• TimSchumann 6y ago
  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.