Comments on: Dvorak for two weeks, a retrospective

By: John

John — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 17:17:41 +0000

I made this switch in the early ’90s. I remember editing the Linux kernel binary to remap the keys! Learning to type words on Dvorak was a little easier than I expected. It was a few days before I could type without looking. The Emacs keys, however, were a lot harder. ‘Muscle memory’ as you say about did get in the way, since one really doesn’t think about the ‘f’ or ‘b’ in C-f and C-b; you just type them. Anyway, I’ve never looked back, and while typing on other folks’ keyboards is irritating, I never wish I still used qwerty.

By the way, to become a true keyboard god, use the older (20- to 60-series) Thinkpads for your laptop and buy the USB or PS/2 keyboards with Ultranav for your workstation and server rack. The layout is identical, you never have to move your hands off the keyboard for the mouse, and you’ll never have to think about where the Esc, backtick, backslash, cursor or modifier keys are again.

By: Xah Lee

Xah Lee — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:30:23 +0000

i switched in 1993 after 2 years as a typist secretary/data entry clerk.

started to use emacs in 1998.

though, dvorak doesn’t help you with emacs pinky in any way. Better watch out. There are lots advices to avoid it, but mostly involving changing keybindings. But if that’s not your thing, or cant because pair programing… i don’t know, maybe kinesis keyboard will help but that doesn’t solve pair programing problem.

By: Aaron Toponce

Aaron Toponce — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:11:46 +0000

I should also mention, that if you hang out on IRC at all, check us out in ##dvorak on Freenode. We don’t talk about much very often, but it’s fun to know others who share the layout. I’m eightyeight if you stop by. Drop me a ping, let me know you at least read my comment.

By: Aaron Toponce

Aaron Toponce — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:09:37 +0000

Welcome to the fold. I switched just about 6 years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long), and I’ve never looked back. My speed easily went up 3-fold, and my accuracy is 98% quite consistently.

I switched due mostly to curiosity about the layout, but also I was suffering from RSI, which has completely subsided since the switch.

After my switch, I too found a number of friends that were Dvorak typists already. It was pretty cool, and every job I’ve worked at, for the most part, there has been at least one or two other Dvorak typists.

Our numbers are growing, slowly, but surely.

By: Sami Samhuri

Sami Samhuri — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:56:34 +0000

It was about the same for me as well.

I wrote the dvorak layout on my keyboard with a black marker and by the time the ink wore off I knew what was where. Probably took about 2-4 weeks or so.

By: Geoffrey Grosenbach

Geoffrey Grosenbach — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:53:34 +0000

That sounds like the way I switched to Dvorak, about five years ago.

Weeks 2-4 were the hardest. I started to be confident, but still made many mistakes and it didn’t feel natural yet. To this day I still can’t switch back to Qwerty without hunt and peck. But I find Dvorak to be much more comfortable, not to mention more ideologically pure. And I can do a reasonable 80+ wpm with Dvorak.

I’m glad I stuck with it!