Has anyone learned a dvorak keyboard?

[pete6032]

How long did it take before you were up and going as fast as qwerty? Did you have any trouble switching back and forth between qwerty and dvorak?

 

[utahraptor]

Lolz! Anyone not using a safe type may as well be face rolling.

 

[Jaepheth]

I tried it out once.

Didn't take. Simply too much hassle when sitting down at ANY other computer to have to switch.

QWERTY is good enough, and consistency is more important than minor gains in efficiency.

 

[Wyndru]

Lolz! Anyone not using a safe type may as well be face rolling.

 

[PottedMeat]

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/03/my-quest-to-learn-the-dvorak-keyboard-layout-part-1/

 

[alkemyst]

I experimented with them. The problem as others mentioned is every other machine you sit in front of is going to be QWERTY.

In the end, I haven't found any tangible information that the fastest DVORAK typers are much better than QWERTY ones.

 

[who?]

A you tube video by the engineer guy claims that Dvorak didn't catch on because it's only 5% faster. (I can't go to you tube here to link to it).
When I first decided to get away from hunt and peck I learned Dvorak on a Kinesis ergo keyboard but eventually I used the shareware program Stamina to learn Qwerty touch typing so I can be fast on any ordinary keyboard that I come across.

 

[phucheneh]

A you tube video by the engineer guy claims that Dvorak didn't catch on because it's only 5% faster. (I can't go to you tube here to link to it).
When I first decided to get away from hunt and peck I learned Dvorak on a Kinesis ergo keyboard but eventually I used the shareware program Stamina to learn Qwerty touch typing so I can be fast on any ordinary keyboard that I come across.

I would completely believe the 5% thing. And that may be optimistic, given that many people have decades of QWERTY use. It's not like 'learning' a new layout is just flipping a switch...it will still take tons of use to develop the same second-natured typing ability.

DVORAK was obviously conceived by engineers. 'Put the statistically most-used keys on the home keys! BRILLIANT! It will be 400% faster!'

Only, uh, nope. Not at all. Keys not on the home row are still not hard to hit. When someone is hitting like five keys or more a second, rearranging the keyboard is probably not going to make a big difference.

Engineers: failing at real-world thinking since...well, forever.

 

[who?]

August Dvorak was an educational psychologist and professor of education.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Dvorak