3 ms·

I understand that Dvorak hasn’t been great for you, but I don’t think it’s fair to attribute all of its success and merits to touch typing. The distribution of

by F3nd0 3y ago

I understand that Dvorak hasn’t been great for you, but I don’t think it’s fair to attribute all of its success and merits to touch typing. The distribution of keys is obviously more optimal than than of QWERTY, and even if your analysis holds true for some Dvorak typists, I doubt it does for a majority (or even a significant portion) of them. Speaking from my own personal experience, I learned to touch type (properly) on QWERTY first, but after a while I switched to Colemak. After yet another while, I switched to Dvorak, and have been using it for several years now. For me, Dvorak has been slightly more comfortable than Colemak (which, in turn, was much more comfortable than QWERTY); though I have to admit I’ve never experienced significant pain or cramps just from typing. In any case, I find both layouts to be a great improvement over QWERTY, and certainly not only because of touch typing.

Nadya 3y ago
The primary difference is rolling vs alternating (as someone else mentioned) and slight left vs right hand biases (I don't think anyone brought this up yet) and there is some definitely enough room for preference of one over the other there. I prefer rolling over alternating and I'm left-hand dominant. For finger alternation I'd recommend any of the CarpalX layouts (Qgmlwb specifically). If I knew about CarpalX before learning Colemak I probably would have learned it instead but I also don't want to relearn typing for a 4th time. There's always a handful of exceptions to every rule but by and large from my experiences in the altkey layout communities the people who touted Dvorak the loudest largely didn't know how to type properly before learning Dvorak and it was their first alternative layout learned. So it's colored my view a bit. I have regularly typed for >8 hours/day - nearly every day - since age 8. The hand pains didn't really start until I was in my 20's.
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by F3nd0 3y ago

Nadya 3y ago

The primary difference is rolling vs alternating (as someone else mentioned) and slight left vs right hand biases (I don't think anyone brought this up yet) and there is some definitely enough room for preference of one over the other there. I prefer rolling over alternating and I'm left-hand dominant. For finger alternation I'd recommend any of the CarpalX layouts (Qgmlwb specifically). If I knew about CarpalX before learning Colemak I probably would have learned it instead but I also don't want to relearn typing for a 4th time. There's always a handful of exceptions to every rule but by and large from my experiences in the altkey layout communities the people who touted Dvorak the loudest largely didn't know how to type properly before learning Dvorak and it was their first alternative layout learned. So it's colored my view a bit. I have regularly typed for >8 hours/day - nearly every day - since age 8. The hand pains didn't really start until I was in my 20's.

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