An AI designed keyboard layout (2021)

Simple answer is: use (self-)hypnosis.

The motor cortex can be "reprogrammed" (that's a metaphor) pretty easily. You already have the muscle memories, you just need to lay in a new "key map" (that's also a metaphor.)

I'll give you an example of what's possible: I was playing ukulele and a friend of mine said something about playing left-handed (I'm a righty.) I paused, went into a light trance, "rewired" my motor skills from left to right and vice versa, and then opened my eyes, turned over the uke, and started playing left-handed. It took maybe twenty seconds.

(I'm not saying the above to show off. I'm not special. Anyone can do this, you just have to learn how to operate your own nervous system.)

> Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout?

In my experience with dvorak no after testing for two years I had the same wpm as qwerty. If you can touch type you have maxed out your speed, the tiny reduction in travel time for your fingers just doesn't add up to anything measurable.

> Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the same time?

I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but when I learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it with qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I defiantly couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be able to touch type.

> If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer.

Yes! You look like its your first day using a computer. Once I could touch type I didn't really care what the key caps said and its fairly easy to switch between dvorak and qwerty on windows and I don't use other peoples computers often so it wasn't a deal breaker.

The only benefit I seen from using dvorak was that no one else could use my computer, as soon as they realised it wasn't qwerty they ran.

One issue I've always had with QWERTY (and probably this new layout as well) is that "similar" letters are often next to each other on the keyboard, making typo detection nearly impossible in English. For instance, in English, many short words with a "i" as the only vowel remain a valid word when the "i" is replaced by an "o" or a "u" -- pit/pot/put, bit/bot/but, tip/top/tup, pig/pog/pug, bitch/butch/botch, etc. This means if you go to hit the "i" key but accidentally hit the "u" or "o" keys, the typo won't necessarily look like a typo to either to the author or the reader.

Similarly with "s" and "d" -- pretty much every verb can be conjugated to end with either an "s" or a "d", so if you press "d" when you meant to press "s" or vice versa, it probably remains a valid verb, and thus is harder to catch.

For these purposes, my ideal layout would have interchangeable letters sufficiently far apart from each other to make typo detection+resolution easier. The most commonly used letters should be surrounded by the least commonly used letters so that, for instance, if you "jqb" I know you meant "job" and not, say, "jib".

This would also make swipe typing on phones far easier to use, as it would be much less ambiguous which letters you were aiming for.

> I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but when I learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it with qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I defiantly couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be able to touch type.

It takes practice. I switched to Dvorak around 2001/2002, and my QWERTY typing speed dropped from 50-60wpm down to about 10. But I then spent a lot of time in offices and labs where I didn't have control over the computers, they were closer to "kiosk" systems (single-user). I could have added Dvorak, but it would have been a bit rude. If I forgot to change it back it would create confusion. If I had a keyboard shortcut to switch layouts, it could create confusion. And having to manually change it was too tedious to bother with, for me. So I just sucked it up and used Dvorak on my own workstation and at home, and QWERTY in the lab environments. I got my QWERTY speed back up to 50-60, and my Dvorak speed never dropped below 100.