71–79 of 79 posts
The first two weeks are a nightmare, you literally hear the gears in your brain turning in a direction they never knew they could turn.
Then the first 3-4 months are just hard and annoying.
After that it quickly becomes super nice. After a year, you look back at your QWERTY self and think "heh".
Do not give up. It's worth it.
For the context, I have been using the Dvorak layout since February 2009, so nearly 8 years. My keyboard is the TypeMatrix 2030[0]. The first 4 to 6 months where really hard, having the feeling to go back 10 years or more in the past with respect to typing speed. But after that, I improved a lot my typing speed and I am now to a point where I type as fast as I can formulate the sentences in my head. What is impressiv…
Why don't you use Dvorak on your laptop?
This just see a little of the keyboard effect is surprising and may be one reason why some people have some difficulties starting with Dvorak if they do it on a Qwerty printed keyboard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you use Dvorak on your laptop?
Surprisingly, the fact that the screen is so close to the keyboard makes me see the keyboard and mess up totally my touch typing in Dvorak as my printed layout on the laptop is a standard US Qwerty. And this is not that I cannot really touch type, right now I am in the dark and I cannot see my hands (the keyboard is below the main plate of my desk). This just see a little of the keyboard effect is surprising and may…
My experience switching to Dvorak was back in 2006. At that time I was a full time student and a part time programmer. Switching to a new layout took about a week in the evenings practicing about 30min - 1hour. I flew through the tutoring program, ymmv.
The first three months of using it in the wild were hard. I had a few big obstacles. I frequently needed campus computers, for projects and helping the GF I frequently shared computers, and muscle memory for shortcuts, vi, etc.
All of those problems have multiple solutions, and I found ways to deal with them, or ignored them until they went away. :-)
I have switched layouts 3 times in the last 27 years. I began with Dvorak. That wasn't a switch. It was the first layout I learned to touch type on. I think I was 16 at the time. Back then you either needed a keyboard which supported the layout, or a DOS TSR. (I had the former: a Northgate Omnikey). Years later I switched to Colemak, then to QWERTY using Kazantsev fingering, and finally back to Dvorak. My observation…
I can't imagine switching keyboard layouts 3 times, your mind must be extremely nimble. Currently, I have a picture of the dvorak keyboard pinned as my desktop wallpaper so if I forget location of a key I can look at desktop quickly.
I guess the one thing that does help is memory. I was able to ditch the printed layout after a couple of days. But even then, it was slow going for the first week or so.
I have switched layouts 3 times in the last 27 years. I began with Dvorak. That wasn't a switch. It was the first layout I learned to touch type on. I think I was 16 at the time. Back then you either needed a keyboard which supported the layout, or a DOS TSR. (I had the former: a Northgate Omnikey). Years later I switched to Colemak, then to QWERTY using Kazantsev fingering, and finally back to Dvorak. My observation…
I can't imagine switching keyboard layouts 3 times, your mind must be extremely nimble. Currently, I have a picture of the dvorak keyboard pinned as my desktop wallpaper so if I forget location of a key I can look at desktop quickly.
But did the nimbleness allow him to switch so much, or did switching so much cause the nimbleness?
I can juggle 5 balls, and when I do, I often hear people say something like 'wow, you have such great coordination, I could never do that', but they don't realise that before I started practising with 5 balls I didn't have the coordination either! I would throw 5 balls up and 5 would hit the ground.
Practice and determination over time built up the necessary coordination and skills to allow me to do it now with relative ease.
The same principle applies to learning keyboard layouts and almost everything else.
I switched to Colemak for a couple of years. The trick for me was using a typing tutor relentlessly over a weekend, enough that I could do around 40-50 wpm. Then I went cold turkey and never used QWERTY. Colemak is a little bit friendlier than Dvorak because it leaves a bunch of keys intact, which is nice for preserving common shortcuts like CTRL-C, CTRL-V, etc. It also doesn't touch punctuation, which always seemed…
I also went cold turkey a couple of years ago. The reason for me was that I experienced pain in my fingers after typing. After a day at work I was guaranteed to be in pain. At the time my productivity plummeted and it took me maybe two months to get to a level where I wasn't constantly frustrated. That said, I've never regretted the switch. Even though I still feel pain sometimes when using a laptop keyboard the pain…
Thank you. Mild wrist pains is what motivated me to start in the first place, will stick with it.