It’s of course anecdotal, but I write almost daily in three languages (English, French and Romanian, with quite a few accented letters via AltGr) on Dvorak, in addition to the various computer languages I use as a programmer, and it doesn’t feel worse than QWERTY at any particular task (which I use on computers not my own), except in the very limited sense that shortcuts and games tend to assume the latter.
There are a few common shell commands that are particularly ill-matched to Dvorak’s ideas, like “ls -l”. But the point of Dvorak is to require minimal movement by keeping your hands in the “home position” and only moving your fingers. Which I do, but only when writing prose, like I do now; when I do things like programming and command-line work however my hands move a lot more (since you need to hit numbers, symbols and navigation keys often anyway), and words-per-minute are not quite as important. (I have a reflex by now of typing “ls -l” by almost swiping my index finger along the l-s keys and hitting “-” with the middle one, which is completely different from how I’d hit those keys when writing text. I got similar brain-macros for common Ctrl-{CXZV} combinations that I never need to think about.)
(I thought about switching to Dvorak for “coolness” for years but never bothered. I did switch half a decade ago when my hands started hurting. The hurting stopped, but I can’t tell if it was related, it’s not like I tried going back. I do use QWERTY without trouble on other computers, I just need to remember to look at the keys often otherwise my brain switches to Dvorak. For the record, I also used to look at the keys before switching, just a bit less often. I typed a lot from memory, but I wasn’t really touch-typing, just kind of dancing my hands around and peeking every now and then. I forced myself to lean Dvorak without key-caps, and now I can touch-type on it, much faster than I used to on QWERTY and completely blind. Note that I was 25 or younger when I switched, I’m not sure if a switch would go that well for others.)
It’s of course anecdotal, but I write almost daily in three languages (English, French and Romanian, with quite a few accented letters via AltGr) on Dvorak, in addition to the various computer languages I use as a programmer, and it doesn’t feel worse than QWERTY at any particular task (which I use on computers not my own), except in the very limited sense that shortcuts and games tend to assume the latter.
There are a few common shell commands that are particularly ill-matched to Dvorak’s ideas, like “ls -l”. But the point of Dvorak is to require minimal movement by keeping your hands in the “home position” and only moving your fingers. Which I do, but only when writing prose, like I do now; when I do things like programming and command-line work however my hands move a lot more (since you need to hit numbers, symbols and navigation keys often anyway), and words-per-minute are not quite as important. (I have a reflex by now of typing “ls -l” by almost swiping my index finger along the l-s keys and hitting “-” with the middle one, which is completely different from how I’d hit those keys when writing text. I got similar brain-macros for common Ctrl-{CXZV} combinations that I never need to think about.)
(I thought about switching to Dvorak for “coolness” for years but never bothered. I did switch half a decade ago when my hands started hurting. The hurting stopped, but I can’t tell if it was related, it’s not like I tried going back. I do use QWERTY without trouble on other computers, I just need to remember to look at the keys often otherwise my brain switches to Dvorak. For the record, I also used to look at the keys before switching, just a bit less often. I typed a lot from memory, but I wasn’t really touch-typing, just kind of dancing my hands around and peeking every now and then. I forced myself to lean Dvorak without key-caps, and now I can touch-type on it, much faster than I used to on QWERTY and completely blind. Note that I was 25 or younger when I switched, I’m not sure if a switch would go that well for others.)