Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?

I tried to mimic the programs we used when I was in elementary school to learn the keyboard - start with getting the home row keys under muscle memory, then expand outward slowly from there. I would mindlessly (and slowly, and often incorrectly) transcribe TV shows as I watched Netflix, which helped a bit.

The thing that made the biggest difference was buying a keyboard cover [1] (as opposed to trying to re-arrange the keys on my Macbook Pro and not having the right home key nubs). The keyboard cover really paid for itself; it made the whole learning process way, way easier.

I guess it also helps that macOS makes it incredibly easy to swap between keyboard mappings. It takes all of 5 seconds to add the Dvorak keyboard and a quick shortcut to swap between Qwerty and Dvorak (I use cmd-opt-ctrl-space). (I have to keep Qwerty around for things like Blizzard and Steam games, and Steam itself, which often don't understand virtual layout mappings)

On the other hand, whenever I set up Windows, it takes about an hour or two to figure out how to set up a second keyboard layout, you can't change the keyboard shortcut to swap between them, and often when my computer goes to sleep, the layout is reverted. My Google-fu is pretty strong, and I still have an incredibly frustrating time re-learning how to set it up again. I don't if that's others' experience, but I hate going through the process.

It does get easier. You're retraining your brain to do something very fundamental. One piece of advice I'd have is that if you're getting so much anxiety that you're avoiding it - change your methods. Maybe it means going back for a day while you think of a new plan for learning. Don't wear yourself out over an extracurricular activity; it's just not worth it. Also: I don't know if there's any scientific proof that Dvorak is any faster or better or easier, so I'd say if that's the reason you're switching, well, you may end up disappointed.

Bonus: have you ever seen that Vim learning curve picture [2]? Yeah, the first part of that graph is about 3x more difficult using Dvorak. ("hjkl are for movement and it makes sense because they're all next to each other" etc etc etc). Still worth it IMO, though.

EDIT: It's crazy that I struggle to type meaningful sentences in Qwerty on a keyboard these days, but I still type in Qwerty on phone keyboards. I even tried to use Dvorak on the phone once and it was basically impossible - it's almost like it's a completely separate stored muscle memory in your brain.

1: http://kbcovers.com/dvorak-keyboard-cover/ 2: http://www.thejach.com/imgs/vim_learning.jpg

I went in cold turkey, which was probably easier than for Dvorak, but still a pain. Anyway, after a couple of days I could type slowly again, and from that point on (taking notes using my laptop daily), the situation improved.

After a shorter than expected time, I was up to my old typing speed again. The downside: I lost my ability to type blindly on a QWERTY keyboard. On Macs, smartphones and linux computers this is not a problem as switching them to Colemak is trivial when I have to use them longer, but for Windows computers it is occasionally annoying. I do have a portable executable that switches such a system on a USB-stick I carry on my key ring, but it's still a pain.

Anyway, the end result is that I type faster now then I did, and the smaller distance your fingers travel does result in a more comfortable typing experience. I would definitely make the switch again with the knowledge I have now. That said, it's probably only worth it if you actually type a lot.

I’d imagine it would be hell to have to unlearn the qwerty muscle memory.

tl;dr: I learned to touchtype thanks to Dvorak

This also proved really useful when I started writing in swedish and had quick access to å without having to switch layout.