I gave Dvorak a very serious 3-month try about a year ago.
I typically type ~90 wpm, and using Dvorak I was up to ~110.
That's great and all, however I am very seldom typing words. More often, I'm inputting key-bindings and pressing shortcut combinations. Some programs offer Dvorak-based keybindings, but not all, and unlearning all those keybindings on top of the typing instincts provides yet another layer of frustration. Not to mention the fact that every time I used my wife's computer I was effectively crippled ;)
Overall, I would say learn Dvorak if you just are really curious or do a lot of very serious word-based typing. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time.
Wouldn't an AHK script in a dropbox fix this problem? I know with linux and OSX things get a bit messier. But that seems like a very easy problem to solve with a fixed cost of creating some small scripts that swap keys and keyboard settings.
I personally would recommend colemak [1] rather than Dvorak. While both are improvements over QWERTY colemak only moves 17 keys from their QWERTY positions, while Dvorak moves nearly all of them. In particular Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V require two hands in Dvorak which is very inconvenient. In some applications these shortcuts can be rebound, but in many others they cannot. In colemak their positions (and all of the left-bottom row keys) are the same as QWERTY.
I used Dvorak for ~2 years and then switched to using colemak for the last 3+. OS support for both is widespread.
You can get back up close to your QWERTY speed in about a month or so (maybe less if going from QWERTY straight to colemak).
I switched to the alternatives to reduce RSI rather than speed and found it helped me with both.
I think this one is a waste of time unless you seek a mental challenge. In my experience, it's just not worth getting confused on QUERTY keyboards all the time, and the 5% speedup or so is really not worth it. It's definitely more a cargo cult/challenge than a useful skill.
I don't think the speedup is worth it, but that wasn't why I became interested in the first place. I'm way more interested in the benefits of a more ergonomic layout for my wrists and fingers. I haven't studied the science of that very carefully, but I'm fluent with both Dvorak and Qwerty and the subjective comfort I feel when typing English with Dvorak is very much worth the effort of learning it, for me. It ticks me off a little bit when people discount it as "definitely" a "cargo cult" thing. If you don't like it, that's fine.
> It ticks me off a little bit when people discount it as "definitely" a "cargo cult" thing. If you don't like it, that's fine.
Read more carefully. I merely said that people mostly do it as a challenge or as a cargo cult, doubtfully because it is a useful skill (unless you happen to spend an extremely large amount of time writing, which likely only applies to a small percentage of those that get told to learn Dvorak).
I'd be interested in knowing what resource(s) you used to learn Dvorak, and how easy it is for you to switch back and forth (if you do it often/daily).
I'm not a dual-keyboarder, so I can't address that question.
When I first got a computer, in college, my father recommended I learn Dvorak instead of Qwerty for ergonomic reasons.
My keyboard was one of the typical 80's/90's beige color, so I took a black sharpie and wrote the Dvorak equivalent on each key. When I was typing, I focused on trying to remember which finger had to move where for each character. If I couldn't remember it for more than a second or two, then I could look at the keyboard.
It only took a couple of weeks to get the basics down, and it was several weeks after that that a friend pointed out I had worn off the sharpie for my most frequently used keys (I hadn't even noticed) and I was typing at a speed comparable to all the Qwerty keyboarders in the dorm.
Is it possible to switch back and forth easily, or is it one of those things where the constant context switching is more trouble than it's worth? I know very little about Dvorak, is it a software setting in the OS (e.g. you can relatively easily switch a single keyboard back and forth) or a hardware/firmware setting in the keyboard itself?
It's a software setting, though the setting varies in each OS. OS X has my favorite layout: Dvorak with qwerty shortcuts. That gives me normal placement for cmd + x/c/v/etc.
I really like Dvorak. I don't type much faster, but typing requires much less effort. If you know someone who types Dvorak, take a look at the wear patterns on their keyboard. It's pretty much the home row. Contrast that to qwerty, where the top row (especially the E key) gets an inordinate amount of wear.
Most major operating systems have supported Dvorak for well over a decade (I started using it almost 2 decades ago and have never used an operating system that didn't have support baked in).
It does take a minute or two to initially set it up. Here's an old listing of ways to do it on a wide range of operating systems - https://kb.iu.edu/d/aepk And I would recommend setting up a keyboard shortcut to switch between them.
Once you have it set-up, including a keyboard shortcut, switching your keyboard is just a shortcut away.
I only type in Dvorak, so I can't speak to the ease of a single typist switching back and forth. I have pair programmed quite a bit with Qwerty typists and other than occasionally switching keyboards and momentarily forgetting to switch it, it has never been a problem.
I had a coworker a few years back who used dvorak with vim. I've been vimming for five years, and there's no way I would ever want to retrain myself to use dvorak.
I typically type ~90 wpm, and using Dvorak I was up to ~110.
That's great and all, however I am very seldom typing words. More often, I'm inputting key-bindings and pressing shortcut combinations. Some programs offer Dvorak-based keybindings, but not all, and unlearning all those keybindings on top of the typing instincts provides yet another layer of frustration. Not to mention the fact that every time I used my wife's computer I was effectively crippled ;)
Overall, I would say learn Dvorak if you just are really curious or do a lot of very serious word-based typing. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time.