I'm trying to switch to dvorak because the people I know who switched raves about it. I went cold turkey in my switch and I'm having an incredibly hard time adjusting. I now actively avoid the computer because typing in dvorak is so mentally draining. I'm close to giving up. Does it get better? Has anybody successfully switched to another keyboard, and what are your experiences?
Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#2I switched to Dvorak about ~10 years ago. Took about 1 month to get comfortable. After 2-3 months I still wasn't as fast as qwerty, but it already felt more comfortable to type than qwerty for some reason.
Unfortunately I gave up after about 3 months, mostly because I kept changing computers at that point and it was a bit annoying to have to switch back and forth. In retrospect I regret that – maybe it's time to give it another shot
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#3I switched to Dvorak for a summer and it got easier and much more nautral after a few weeks. Until Qwerty I did learn it the right way so it really did help with my typing speed and accuracy in the end.
But I ultimately went back to Qwerty when I ended up working for someone else as I was pair programming and dvorak was not working out so well with others. Haven't bothered picking it up again since.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#4Switched to programmer dvorak. Does it get better? For sure, it'll become second nature in a matter of months. Is it better? Maybe but I don't really know. All I know is I can't type QWERTY anymore and if I'm at someone else's desk I have to hunt and peck.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#5Seven years ago I switched to Colemak, smartest thing I ever did for my hands/wrists. It took two weeks of pain and very slow typing but considering the benefits it was very worth it.
I don't mean to start holy war here but consider Colemak instead of Dvorak. I did a lot of reading years ago before picking the right keyboard layout.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#6the only thing i routinely do is make caps another control.
i use probably 6 machines on a regular basis, and keeping them all keybound correctly is enough of a pain. i can't imagine the annoyance of a full remap. i never felt it was worth it.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#7It gets better in terms of ease, especially if you practice and drill a bit. And it's really cool when you realise one day that you can type in both keyboards at about the same speed (because you will encounter qwerty more often than you think). The human brain is wacky.
But the fact is we live in a qwerty world. Even though I used dvorak for a while, I switched back. Partly because I'm a vim guy. The hjkl religion has a different god with a different keyboard and it all goes to shit. I mean there's dvorak-friendly vim mappings but at that point you're going down a rabbit-hole of ridiculousness.
That said, if the world was more dvorak-friendly (or you could convince your smaller world to be), that would be a good thing. And I would jump back in a heartbeat.
Also, I think I've read some keyboards like colmak are supposedly even better, so in terms of bang for buck it might be best investigating alternatives so you can optimize your degeneracy.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#8I spent several months learning Dvorak a few years back. I got up to an almost decent speed (50-60wpm), but it was still less than what I could type with Qwerty (maybe around 70wpm).
I also found though that as my Dvorak speed increased, my Qwerty speed was decreasing.
Then it was very frustrating whenever I had to use anyone else's keyboard. Bam. Back to struggle town and confusion.
Then I realised that if I had put the effort I had spent on Dvorak in to training Qwerty, I would probably have been better off.
And so I gave it up. Now I've forgotten it entirely.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#9I am competent in both dvorak and workman alternative layouts. Both took approximately two weeks of use to not be completely awkward, annoying and slow. Then probably about another month to be up to scratch with my qwerty speed.
Switching between the three layouts is completely painless for me, so in that sense I'm fine with using other peoples' keyboards or swap layouts on the fly (if you're worried about being confused if you need to swap back and forward in the future).
Specifically connected to dvorak: I found that the uppe right region of the keyboard is required more frequently than it should be, so your right pinky finger ends up performing more tasks than all others. This I found quite annoying - and one of the reasons why workman is now my default layout.
What works for you though will of course be different, but I do think changing from qwerty is worthwhile. So keep at it! It definitely gets better.
Re: Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?
#10Disclaimer: not an answer, but a follow-up question. I'm seeing lots of Colemak and Dvorak responses; has anyone switched to Workman layout and had a positive experience?