I've often heard Dvorak is better than Qwerty and I'm still wondering exactly why that is. And if the difference is worth the hassle of learning a new keyboard layout over.
Is Dvorak like the Metric system of keyboards? A better system that people are just too stubborn to switch to? Or is it a marginally better layout that people with too much time on their hands use?
You can learn it in a couple of hours.
Also it will break every keybinding you have (unless you use it with Emacs), which is the most annoying thing.
And switching between both of them is pain.
Sage for keeping the caps lock key.
What's wrong with the caps lock key? I do a bunch of work on spreadsheets and some times I have to type a lot of capital letters so I find it way less tedious to just use caps lock.
Learning to type properly is worth it. If you 'learned' qwerty through a need to type fast in games, you'll benefit enormously from learning dvorak because you'll pull up some typing lessons and you'll do it properly -- like you should have qwerty.
Other than that, no point.
Way less point if you obsess about 'fixing' keybindings instead of just using them. vim keybindings in dvorak are usable as they lay, even if they lose some of the intent.
warning: you can overwrite your qwerty muscle memory if it was learned haphazardly enough, and you learn dvorak properly enough. I switched everything to dvorak, did some lessons, got comfortable with it over three days straight - and then when I next touched a qwerty keyboard I was typing like a stroke victim.
whatever you do, don't change the physical layout of your keyboard. leave it as it is. I knew a guy what got a 'proper dvorak' keyboard and after a week he was sucking cocks in public bathrooms.
THUMBS ARE FUCKING USELESS
Colemak master race. Dvorak is for retards
Only learn Dvorak (or any other 'alternative' keyboard layout) if you never ever have to use other people's computers for whatever reason. Having to switch between layouts is the worst thing there is and will slow you down way more than using an 'inefficient' layout like QWERTY.
Whether or not Dvorak is actually better than other layouts is up for debate, some say it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, others say that shit like Colemac is way better than Dvorak. I personally never really tried it, since it would mean having to rebind pretty much all keys in all applications. And being utterly fucked if the keys cannot be rebound, have fun with ^X, ^C or ^V being all over the fucking place
The nice thing about colemak is that a lot of common shortcuts are in the same place. c, v, and x are in the same place while s is moved one key to the right.
I switched to it mostly because I was bored one weekend and in the middle of a quest for ergonomics in other areas. It'll take you a few days to get comfortable and 2-3 weeks to regain your old speed if you type regularly.
Overall I think it's worth it with some caveats. It's not necessarily faster, but it is certainly more comfortable. I prefer Dvorak to Colemak for this reason too, hand-alternation is much better for typing over long periods than Colemak's finger rolls, even if latter does score better by some metrics. It's worth keeping in mind, before you get roped into an argument about keyboard layouts, that Dvorak and Colemak are honestly pretty close to one-another in terms of ergonomics and both a world away from how qwerty scores.
I do type considerably faster on Dvorak than I ever did on qwerty, but I attribute most of this to type properly as part of the process of adapting to Dvorak. The layout itself very much enforces proper typing form too, so it's not something that can be avoided.
As other people have said, absolutely do not switch if its important that you regularly use other machines, some people claim to have retained their qwerty typing skills, but I'm not one of them. I probably type somewhere around 25-30wpm on qwerty now that I use it irregularly and it takes a few moments to adjust as well.
The one argument I absolutely do not buy is the shortcut one, the only (almost) universal shortcuts are the cut, copy, paste set which are in a shitty spot in qwerty anyway, they're separated in Dvorak, but I've never found that to be a problem. The vast majority of other shortcuts are understood by their letter or prefix, not where they are on the keyboard. C-H opens history in Firefox, it makes no difference if H is in the centre of the keyboard or under the index finger once you learn the new layout. That said, most of my work gets done in Emacs where I can configure the environment to my heart's content, maybe it's not the same for everyone's workflow, but I found the shortcut issue to be a whole load of nothing, probably perpetuated by qwerty users.
If you are going to make the switch, look into programmer Dvorak before you do. All the letters are in the same place, but some symbols are shuffled around.
Reason behind this is that symbols like (){}[] =* are much more common in code than numbers.
keyboards are a meme
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Hipster normalfags who have only ever typed high school English papers on their computer like to meme about the Caps Lock key being useless. It's a bad meme.
ISHYG, ISH!
Do you even
Caps lock is useless. I bet you press the caps lock button twice at the first word of a sentence.
Dvorak isn't necessarily faster but it's a hell of a lot more comfortable. And as another user said, if you learned to type wrong (like me) learning Dvorak is a nice opportunity to correct that.
My only real beef with it is shortcuts. Huge pain in the ass since you have to change them for every program.
But all in all I recommend it. Comfier easier layout.
Dvorak is objectively faster in typing English words because of the fact that fingers travel a shorter distance when typing in English.
Caps lock doesn't deserve to be on the homerow, even in the rare cases you use it you're not hitting it often enough for it to take up that space, personally I always swap caps and escape.
- most commonly used letters on the home row (which is easiest to press)
- least commonly used letters on the bottom row (which is hardest to press)
- all vowels on the left hand, which makes you alternate hands all the time since words typically alternate vowels and consonants
- right hand heavy, since most people are right handed
- letters from common sequences are on different fingers
- common letter sequences go outside-to-inside, which is easier to press than inside-to-outside
All in all, while touch-typing in Dvorak you keep your fingers on the home row most of the time, instead of jumping them all over the place. Aside from effect on typing speed, it just feels much more comfy and less straining. If you do so much typing that RSI is a serious risk for you, Dvorak is definitely worth it for lowering the strain on your hands alone.
You got it backwards. Imperial is objectively more ergonomic for typical everyday measurements and I'm from an exclusively metric country.
I don't think so buddy.
There are a hell of a lot more objects about a foot than about a meter. For science 100% metric, but day to day I ain't saying my dog is .3 meters tall.
(checked)
I use capslock when typing SQL queries or that acronym just now. I read somewhere that all reserved words should be all caps, and table and column names should be lowercase. I wonder if it would be simpler to just have a script change all reserved words to uppercase, and type everything lowercase.
I'll feel a feel for you, buddy
I used Dvorak for about a year and then switched back to QWERTY. It was just fucking annoying having to switch layouts if I ever had to use other people's machines and I manage about 90 WPM on Qwerty anyways, plus, some software doesn't play nice with Dvorak.
To me, Dvorak is really only worth it if you're a secretary or some shit and spend a lot of time typing. It is a lot less stressful on the hands and pretty comfy. I found it shit tier otherwise.
Colemak doesn't have a letter on the right pinky decreasing alphabetic efficiency on home row by 10%, also the symbols ;',.:"-_/? are in a more ergonomic position, retard.
my only gripe with programmers Dvorak is the inversion of ; : & ' " it seems like an annoying relocation.
My nigga, we've had electric keyboards for decades and we still have this backwards ass shit from MECHANICAL TYPEWRITERS!!
As a machinist and a violin builder I can attest to you guys that both are useful for particular areas of measurement, we use both. I use thousandths of an inch for linings, blocks and necks where as 1/10th of a millimeter is good for the soundboards, 1/100 of a millimeter would be too fine for wood working where as 1/10th may be too broad so we use 1/1000s of an inch as a happy medium. Most machining of industry parts is done in 1/10,000-1/100,000 before nanometer tools come into play.
Also I keep up on my qwerty in so much as enough to find and change the key map settings on any system I touch. I once wrote my own key map in c that was linear alphabetic so instead of qwerty it was abcdefg; I pulled all the keys off my keyboard and rearranged them to my lay out and learned to type that way so no one could use my computer. It fucked with people so bad because it turned all trained typists into hunt & and peck retards with a 12wpm, I pull the keys of some of my laptops and rearrange them just to show people what Dvorak is.
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