Anyone have an estimate or range on how long it takes to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK? I copy at about 80 wpm and compose at about 30 wpm, and have invested about 100 hours in learning / drilling / exploring QWERTY techniques. How long should I expect to spend learning DVORAK?
Anyone have an estimate or range on how long it takes to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK?
Don’t know. But note that Colemak is better than Dvorak for all the same reasons Dvorak is better than Qwerty. If you are going to optimise you may as well do it properly!
Also note that there are keyboard layout programs like carpalx. You could try for the Q*MLW* layout, which is supposedly quite a bit faster than Dvorak and Colemak. You can look at statistics and examples on the website, too. It’s rather fascinating.
In my case it was really annoying for a couple of weeks, then about a month later I noticed that I hadn’t noticed the new layout in a while, and I was faster than on QWERTY a few months later. HOWEVER:
1) I was on vacation at the time, so I didn’t use the computer all day long as usual. It probably would have gone faster if I did.
2) I was at most 25 when I switched; it might take longer if you’re older.
3) I wanted to touch-type (on QWERTY I kept dancing my hands around and peeking at the keys), so I switched “cold turkey” by spray-painting my keyboard uniformly black, to be unable to look at the keys. I’d expect the time taken and frustration level to be very different with visible keys, though not necessarily both changing in the same direction.
(I now use a “normal” keyboard with switched key caps; I still touch-type, but it’s useful when you need to hit a random key every now and then for mouse-centric stuff like media players or Photoshop. Or finding that damned ampersand… For the record, the all-black version is cooler and {roomate|sibling|ancestor}-proofs your computer.)
4) I didn’t keep records of typing speeds; I remember I did a few tests around the time, and I did improve significantly, but (a) I can’t remember the numbers exactly, (b) I never needed much speed, since I mostly program and I need to stop often to think, and (c) I wasn’t touch-typing before switching.
5) My adaptation was very non-uniform. I could type well enough after a couple of days, but the “S” key for some reason (and another I can’t remember) still gave me occasional trouble a couple of months later.
[ETA:] 6) In case it wasn’t obvious from the above, I didn’t use QWERTY at all for the first couple of months.
I’ve been practicing dvorak for about a month. Not much since I got above 10wpm(1 hour a day for a week), but I’ve used it when there has been typing to be done. I’ve gotten to 40wpm, and I started with 70wpm qwerty speed. Incidentally, I’ve also forgotten how to type with qwerty.
I’d suggest you find a week when you are free to use about an hour of your time every day to practice dvorak and don’t need to type anything really, and then maybe another week when you are not under any stress about your typing speed. After that, you should be able to type well enough to cope, but its gonna take more time than that to get even faster.
If you know some systematic touch typing systems already, and know how to use them, i think you might be able to retain your qwerty ability. I lost that because my touch type system for qwerty was so wild and unorganized, and learning this more proper style pretty much overwrote that. Also, knowing these proper touch type systems probably help you learn dvorak faster.
It took me about a month to get up to speed when I did it a decade ago, but at the time I was a measly 30 or 40 WPM hunt-and-peck QWERTY typer. Hearsay says that if you want to maintain proficiency in both layouts, it takes a little longer. (I now type at something like 70 wpm.)
I wouldn’t switch unless you’re looking for more comfort. From my totally unscientific reading of numerous anecdotal reports on the internet, good typists don’t typically gain much if any speed when switching.
Oh, and all programmers: figure out how to rearrange your keyboard layout. The []{}()+=/?-_ keys should NOT be typed by the same weak finger, that’s total insanity. You can rearrange one or two keys per week and it won’t slow you down too much. (I have a keyboard that lets me swap key positions.)
Remember that the rules about keeping your hands in the home position are for typing long stretches of normal text, i.e., prose. When I’m programming my hands always move up and to the sides as needed, and for most of the keys from 7 to backspace I use the first three fingers (and the left hand for shift, not the left pinky). The pinky goes to those keys only if they come up in prose by accident.
Who types []{}()+=/?-_ with their pinky? I occasionally type ‘]’ and ‘}’ with the pinky, but more often I use my ring finger. The only characters in that set that I always type with my pinky are ‘/’ and ‘?’, and those are not common enough to worry about. The others? never.
BTW, IMO typing the C with the middle finger, the X with the ring finger and the Z with the pinky seems ridiculous to me, even though that’s what pretty much any typing tutor I’ve seen recommends. (As for the right hand, the brain-dead ISO mechanical layout makes it ridiculously easy to accidentally end lines with the key immediately left of the Enter key, e.g. ù on the Italian layout—and there are several Facebook pages about that.)
Except for “(” (mistake on my part), QWERTY and Dvorak touch-typists do. Twisting your wrist to hit those keys (not to mention the backspace key) with a finger other than your pinky is a good way to get carpal tunnel...
I am a QWERTY touch typist and I do not, nor do I twist my wrist to hit those keys with my ring or middle fingers. Rather, I move my hand to the correct position. Touch typing does not mean your hands have to remain in one location, unless of course I am misapplying the term.
Incidentally, the reason I did not switch to Dvorak long ago was that my vim keybindings work much better with a QWERTY layout and I was not willing to remap those.
Yeah, if you’re going to move your hands, it’s important to move your whole arm and not bend at the wrist, as you say you’re doing. (I used to bend my wrist to hit the backspace key; I got a keyboard with the backspace key in the middle and it made a huge difference.) But my recollection is that you’re supposed to do as little moving of the hands as possible. Wikipedia seems to confirm my recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FingerHandPosUSA.gif
I was lucky enough to not know VIM when I switched…
I am a QWERTY touch typist and I do not, nor do I twist my wrist to hit those keys with my ring or middle fingers. Rather, I move my hand to the correct position. Touch typing does not mean your hands have to remain in one location, unless of course I am misapplying the term.
Likewise. I am a touch typist in that I can type while the keyboard is nowhere near my field of vision, I may not be a touch typist by any more specific definition (I certainly don’t consciously follow a particular approach). I will move my hand to be more or less centered on whatever I’m doing, only twisting it when I need to hit several keys at once (which seems likely to be necessary with any keyboard).
Incidentally, the reason I did not switch to Dvorak long ago was that my vim keybindings work much better with a QWERTY layout and I was not willing to remap those.
This is the kind of thing that I’m worried about. Changing over any particular application is undoubtedly doable. Changing over everything is undoubtedly a headache, and in some cases may not even be possible (flash games, say, not that I play a lot of those).
For momentary games, it’s easy enough to switch back and forth as necessary. My xmonad config has shortcuts for the appropriate xmodmap calls, and Windows is nice enough to put up a layout-switching tray icon if there’s more than one keyboard in your list.
And to complete my earlier answer above, I did switch because I was beginning to have hand pains, and now I don’t. Pirates decline and global warming, etc.
Anyone have an estimate or range on how long it takes to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK? I copy at about 80 wpm and compose at about 30 wpm, and have invested about 100 hours in learning / drilling / exploring QWERTY techniques. How long should I expect to spend learning DVORAK?
Don’t know. But note that Colemak is better than Dvorak for all the same reasons Dvorak is better than Qwerty. If you are going to optimise you may as well do it properly!
Also note that there are keyboard layout programs like carpalx. You could try for the Q*MLW* layout, which is supposedly quite a bit faster than Dvorak and Colemak. You can look at statistics and examples on the website, too. It’s rather fascinating.
Thanks, learning Colemak actually looks like it would offer a fantastic return on investment of time. I’ll try it over the holidays.
In my case it was really annoying for a couple of weeks, then about a month later I noticed that I hadn’t noticed the new layout in a while, and I was faster than on QWERTY a few months later. HOWEVER:
1) I was on vacation at the time, so I didn’t use the computer all day long as usual. It probably would have gone faster if I did.
2) I was at most 25 when I switched; it might take longer if you’re older.
3) I wanted to touch-type (on QWERTY I kept dancing my hands around and peeking at the keys), so I switched “cold turkey” by spray-painting my keyboard uniformly black, to be unable to look at the keys. I’d expect the time taken and frustration level to be very different with visible keys, though not necessarily both changing in the same direction.
(I now use a “normal” keyboard with switched key caps; I still touch-type, but it’s useful when you need to hit a random key every now and then for mouse-centric stuff like media players or Photoshop. Or finding that damned ampersand… For the record, the all-black version is cooler and {roomate|sibling|ancestor}-proofs your computer.)
4) I didn’t keep records of typing speeds; I remember I did a few tests around the time, and I did improve significantly, but (a) I can’t remember the numbers exactly, (b) I never needed much speed, since I mostly program and I need to stop often to think, and (c) I wasn’t touch-typing before switching.
5) My adaptation was very non-uniform. I could type well enough after a couple of days, but the “S” key for some reason (and another I can’t remember) still gave me occasional trouble a couple of months later.
[ETA:] 6) In case it wasn’t obvious from the above, I didn’t use QWERTY at all for the first couple of months.
I’ve been practicing dvorak for about a month. Not much since I got above 10wpm(1 hour a day for a week), but I’ve used it when there has been typing to be done. I’ve gotten to 40wpm, and I started with 70wpm qwerty speed. Incidentally, I’ve also forgotten how to type with qwerty.
I’d suggest you find a week when you are free to use about an hour of your time every day to practice dvorak and don’t need to type anything really, and then maybe another week when you are not under any stress about your typing speed. After that, you should be able to type well enough to cope, but its gonna take more time than that to get even faster. If you know some systematic touch typing systems already, and know how to use them, i think you might be able to retain your qwerty ability. I lost that because my touch type system for qwerty was so wild and unorganized, and learning this more proper style pretty much overwrote that. Also, knowing these proper touch type systems probably help you learn dvorak faster.
It took me about a month to get up to speed when I did it a decade ago, but at the time I was a measly 30 or 40 WPM hunt-and-peck QWERTY typer. Hearsay says that if you want to maintain proficiency in both layouts, it takes a little longer. (I now type at something like 70 wpm.)
I wouldn’t switch unless you’re looking for more comfort. From my totally unscientific reading of numerous anecdotal reports on the internet, good typists don’t typically gain much if any speed when switching.
Oh, and all programmers: figure out how to rearrange your keyboard layout. The []{}()+=/?-_ keys should NOT be typed by the same weak finger, that’s total insanity. You can rearrange one or two keys per week and it won’t slow you down too much. (I have a keyboard that lets me swap key positions.)
Remember that the rules about keeping your hands in the home position are for typing long stretches of normal text, i.e., prose. When I’m programming my hands always move up and to the sides as needed, and for most of the keys from 7 to backspace I use the first three fingers (and the left hand for shift, not the left pinky). The pinky goes to those keys only if they come up in prose by accident.
Who types []{}()+=/?-_ with their pinky? I occasionally type ‘]’ and ‘}’ with the pinky, but more often I use my ring finger. The only characters in that set that I always type with my pinky are ‘/’ and ‘?’, and those are not common enough to worry about. The others? never.
BTW, IMO typing the C with the middle finger, the X with the ring finger and the Z with the pinky seems ridiculous to me, even though that’s what pretty much any typing tutor I’ve seen recommends. (As for the right hand, the brain-dead ISO mechanical layout makes it ridiculously easy to accidentally end lines with the key immediately left of the Enter key, e.g. ù on the Italian layout—and there are several Facebook pages about that.)
Except for “(” (mistake on my part), QWERTY and Dvorak touch-typists do. Twisting your wrist to hit those keys (not to mention the backspace key) with a finger other than your pinky is a good way to get carpal tunnel...
I am a QWERTY touch typist and I do not, nor do I twist my wrist to hit those keys with my ring or middle fingers. Rather, I move my hand to the correct position. Touch typing does not mean your hands have to remain in one location, unless of course I am misapplying the term.
Incidentally, the reason I did not switch to Dvorak long ago was that my vim keybindings work much better with a QWERTY layout and I was not willing to remap those.
Yeah, if you’re going to move your hands, it’s important to move your whole arm and not bend at the wrist, as you say you’re doing. (I used to bend my wrist to hit the backspace key; I got a keyboard with the backspace key in the middle and it made a huge difference.) But my recollection is that you’re supposed to do as little moving of the hands as possible. Wikipedia seems to confirm my recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FingerHandPosUSA.gif
I was lucky enough to not know VIM when I switched…
Likewise. I am a touch typist in that I can type while the keyboard is nowhere near my field of vision, I may not be a touch typist by any more specific definition (I certainly don’t consciously follow a particular approach). I will move my hand to be more or less centered on whatever I’m doing, only twisting it when I need to hit several keys at once (which seems likely to be necessary with any keyboard).
This is the kind of thing that I’m worried about. Changing over any particular application is undoubtedly doable. Changing over everything is undoubtedly a headache, and in some cases may not even be possible (flash games, say, not that I play a lot of those).
For momentary games, it’s easy enough to switch back and forth as necessary. My xmonad config has shortcuts for the appropriate xmodmap calls, and Windows is nice enough to put up a layout-switching tray icon if there’s more than one keyboard in your list.
For momentary games, that’s quite reasonable indeed.
Is typing speed your bottleneck? If not, why bother, 80wpm is plenty fast for most uses.
I increasingly have mild pain in my finger muscles and hand bones; it’s mostly a safety concern for me.
And to complete my earlier answer above, I did switch because I was beginning to have hand pains, and now I don’t. Pirates decline and global warming, etc.
It took me about three weeks.