Why You Should Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout

Why you shouldn't switch:<p><pre><code> This reminds me of when I tried to switch to a Dvorak keyboard. The trouble was, I don't use one computer. I use all kinds of computers. I use other people's computers. I use three computers fairly regularly at home and three at work. I use computers in the test lab at work. The trouble with customizing your environment is that it just doesn't propagate, so it's not even worth the trouble. </code></pre> <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059....</a><p>Which is my experience too. Dvorak would need to be at least 2-3 times faster than Qwerty to outweigh the disadvantages, a "possibly 10% faster" doesn't cut it.

I switched to Dvorak about ten years ago. My experiences don't line up with a lot of the speculation I see in this thread.<p>* Most speed gains come from hunt-and-peck QWERTY typists learning true touch typing for the first time. If your first formal typing classes were in, say, high school, you never really un-learned your wretched habits. (On typists who were trained correctly from day one, QWERTY has always been just as fast as alternative layouts, hence its market success.)<p>* I find Dvorak really is vastly more comfortable. I have RSI problems. The working day is a constant battle against pain and fatigue. I can type longer without fatigue using Dvorak than QWERTY.<p>* The "switching" problem is real. It only took me about three days to learn Dvorak well enough to regain my original QWERTY typing speed. It took almost two years to be able to switch between Dvorak and QWERTY at will, without resorting to hunt and peck. These days, I can could easily switch mid-sentence.<p>* The keyboard shortcuts problem is pretty much bullshit. I found that my muscle memory moved with the letters. One-handed ctrl X/C/V only mattered when I was typing with the wrong hand. (e.g. typing on the left side of the keyboard with my right hand.) I can even use keyboard shortcuts correctly when switching between QWERTY/Dvorak.

Why I'm not switching ...<p>1. It is not a standard ... I work on lots of workstations, including machines I do not own. Context switching between Dvorak and Qwerty is hard for me<p>2. It is optimized for English ... I also do lots of typing in my native language too, and there is a Dvorak layout optimized for my native language, but it has differences ... and context-switching is even harder because of the similarities.<p>In contrast, the Qwerty layout for my native language just replaces 5 symbol keys near Enter/Backspace with the needed diacritics. All other keys stay the same ... i.e. it's just an extension of the US layout.<p>3. Qwerty gives me plenty of confort. I'm only doing something like 80 WPM ... I don't need more than that and it's a confortable speed for my hands (if I'm going to get RSI from that, then Dvorak wouldn't be much of an improvement)

once I was in a conversation with two friends of mine, one of them had recently switched to dvorak and was explaining us how he was using some software to improve his typing speed.<p>The other replied "you are a programmer, you're supposed to spend 90% of the time thinking about what you do, why do you try to slightly improve the 10% spent writing it"?<p>Do dvorak users out there find themselves much more productive at the end of the day because of their typing speed?

I switched to Colemak after getting my arm in a cast and having my typing speed slowed anyway for three weeks. I've been using it for over a year now. I can't start touch-typing qwerty instantly any more, but I can still type comfortably on a qwerty keyboard as long as I can look at the keyboard, so occasional stints on a non-Colemak workstation aren't a problem. I had been touch-typing on qwerty for close to a fifteen years before this, and the switch was surprisingly problem-free. Getting to a nice speed on Colemak took about a month.<p>I haven't seen significant increase in typing speed, but there could be ergonomic benefit from having to twist my hands less to hit the awkwardly placed keys.

Upon hearing that I use dvorak, people occasionally ask me if they should switch, to which I usually shrug. I'm happy with dvorak, but almost everyone else is happy with qwerty. I switched at a time where switching was cheap and am now "victim" to a similar kind of lock-in that most qwerty users are.<p>Despite being happy with dvorak, I see no real reason to evangelize a keyboard layout. It's simply not that big a deal.

Articles about this never talk about the impact of moving your common keyboard shortcuts. Being physically unable to use Ctrl-S,Z,C,V with my left hand while using the mouse with my right would be difficult to retrain around.

I thought it is proven that dvorak is not superior :<p><a href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/18/210216" rel="nofollow">http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/18/210216</a><p>Is there something wrong with that article/research?

I'm a big fan of Colemak (<a href="http://colemak.com/" rel="nofollow">http://colemak.com/</a>). It took me about a month to learn it. I don't type significantly faster but my fingers move less. It feels worth it, at least.

I switched to Dvorak for 3 years and became proficient at it. I put up with a lot of annoyances, waiting for it to be worthwhile; it never was.<p>Luckily, I am blessed with self-doubt, and was able to say to myself "Hey, self, stop being an idiot!", and switched back to QWERTY.

I have switched to a Dvorak keyboard now for over a year after 20 years as a QWERTY typist.<p>To answer some of the questions in the comments<p>1) My peak speed for the Dvorak was at 100wpm compared to around 70wpm in QWERTY (I am intentionally slowing my typing speed now)<p>2) It took me 4 months to convert and get back to the speed I got using QWERTY. During that period, I switched between QWERTY and DVORAK a lot. The program DVAssist made it easy to switch it using a simple function key<p>3) For those who have problems using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, you can use Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins respectively. I find it much easier<p>4) If you need to use Dvorak on another computer, I have created an on the fly javascript program to do that on <a href="http://www.electronizer.com/dvorak.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.electronizer.com/dvorak.html</a> (Note : It only works on IE)<p>I personally find the Dvorak keyboard more comfortable to type with. I have an RSI problem which I thought was due to the QWERTY, however, after getting to my peak speed in Dvorak, the problem started coming back, thus I am actually trying to slow my speed (I am contemplating being a 2 finger typist instead).<p>I reckon the problem with RSI and keyboard is not due to the keyboard layout, but more in the positioning of the keyboard when typing. To elaborate, I noticed people tend to centre their keyboards and align it to their body, this has the problem where the right hand has to over extend to type because of the numeric keypad placed on the right side of the keyboard. Couple this with the fact that the mouse is on the right hand side on most people's keyboard, this makes the right hand move more. An observation I noted was that people tend to move the wrist and not the entire hand.<p>To combat RSI, I have adopted the following<p>1) Align the keyboard "G" to align with the centre of my body (or the centreline as Wing Chun practitioner calls it). This enables both hands to extend to the same length.<p>2) Move the elbow and less of the wrist (whole forearm movement, another of Wing Chun's principle of using the whole arm)<p>3) Use the mouse with the left hand (easier done for me as I am a left hander) and the number pad with the right hand<p>My motivation for switching to Dvorak was to combat RSI and to prove that I can change a habit of 20 years.<p>If you are a 2 finger typist, I don't recommend switching to Dvorak. If you are switching for RSI, my experience is that it doesn't work. If you switch to Dvorak, you might miss out on a cool technology for mobile phones called Swype. Unless of course they have Dvorak support in the future.

On the iPad/iPhone, you can't get an on-screen Dvorak keyboard. People petitioned for it years ago and it's just not happening.

Colemak is better for 3 reasons:<p>1. It changes fewer keys so it's fas easier to learn. I picked it up in a few hours.<p>2. It changes fewer keys so I switch between Colemak and Qwerty regularly.<p>3. It was designed after computers were invented. It keeps programming code in mind. It also used computers to design the optimal layout to maximize "finger-rolls" (really fast typing).

I tried the Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts. The day I had to launch Vim again I realized Qwerty was the way to go.

I've been thinking about switching to Colemak but the fact that I use Vim daily has kept me from seriously considering it.<p>While I certainly can remap some keys in Vim, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea in the long run. Some keys, such as h,j,k and l are no-brainers - those should be remapped. But what about w, b and e? When I'm using those keys it's all muscle memory, but should I really change w to y (word to yank)?<p>Do I want to spend my time learning a new keyboard layout AND relearning how to use Vim? Ultimately I've decided that Qwerty is good enough for me. I don't have RSI and I can type at a max speed of over 90 wpm (I probably average in the 70s for "real world" typing).

I switched to dvorak with a <a href="http://typematrix.com" rel="nofollow">http://typematrix.com</a> keyboard about 10 months ago and not looking back, only drawback is that i cant type on the laptop anymore. Having the enter and backspace keys in the middle of the keyboard is truly the biggest benefit for me, hitting enter with a "strong" finger really makes a difference.<p>The main reason i switched to dvorak was that i wanted a typematrix keyboard and if i was relearning where the enter key etc is, i could as well switch to dvorak.<p>It took about three months to be as fast as qwerty.

Regardless of whether Dvorak is better on physical keyboards, it is definitely worse when it comes to soft keyboards, which are on the rise. I wrote about it here: <a href="http://macrael.com/blog/qwerty_rides_again.html" rel="nofollow">http://macrael.com/blog/qwerty_rides_again.html</a> but the gist is that since Dvorak puts frequently used characters next to one another, it makes it more difficult to recognize different words' patterns (think swype) which is what makes the autocorrect so good on today's phones.

The other problem is that your control/alt/command + keystrokes become a problem with Dvorak. So if your using VIM/EMac or another like editor you going to not want to switch.

I had a wrist health scare in I guess early 2006 now; tendonitis instead of carpal tunnel but the same sort of shooting pains. I changed a lot of things--keyboard I typed on, wearing wrist braces, posture, but among other things I switched to Dvorak. I think it is a important part of why I can type today without pain; whenever I am forced to do QWERTY at length (which is admittedly usually on poor keyboards) the pain starts to return.

This article says they were able to find a copy of the original Navy study:<p><a href="http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html</a><p>Was anyone able to find an online copy of the studies from Western Electric or Oregon State University that the article referenced?

I wonder: would a system like Apple's automatic corrections for iOS work worse with Dvorak?<p>If Dvorak really makes travel time for your fingers shorter, wouldn't that also make it harder for a predictive systems to cope with human's error?<p>(This is not a rhetorical or provocative question, but a serious question.)

Let's say for arguments sake I have been using qwerty for the last 23 years or so, 15 or so touch typing. How much more efficient across my lifespan can trying to teach myself a completely different layout really be? It could be years before I clean out all the errors.

I use too many disparate keyboards (Dell, Apple, on-screen mobile keyboards, physical keyboards, iPad keyboards) to even begin to bother. Also, I'm pleased with my current typing speed, thank you.<p>To each their own, though.

The biggest question has unanswered in this article<p>"What's the avg. switch time?"<p>When can I get back to my speed of QWERTY, 3 days, 1 month?

I almost died when I had to use a Mac &#38; all I got there was some unexpected home key behaviour and the squiggle button.

For those of us that are left-handed, dvorak is very cumbersome to use. It <i>strongly</i> prefers the right hand for typing, and if your dominant hand is the other--dvorak feels really weird to type with.<p>Give me a dvorak, but favored for left-handed typers, and I could see it improving my speed. Until then, I can break easily 120wpm in qwerty--I'm not too concerned.