Ask HN: What is your experience switching away from QWERTY keyboard?

[aliceyhg]

I'm trying to switch to dvorak because the people I know who switched raves about it. I went cold turkey in my switch and I'm having an incredibly hard time adjusting. I now actively avoid the computer because typing in dvorak is so mentally draining. I'm close to giving up. Does it get better? Has anybody successfully switched to another keyboard, and what are your experiences?

[Loic]

For the context, I have been using the Dvorak layout since February 2009, so nearly 8 years. My keyboard is the TypeMatrix 2030[0].

The first 4 to 6 months where really hard, having the feeling to go back 10 years or more in the past with respect to typing speed. But after that, I improved a lot my typing speed and I am now to a point where I type as fast as I can formulate the sentences in my head. What is impressive is the feeling that the keys are where they are supposed to be, I never have to try to remember where are the keys, they are just there, my fingers are nearly not moving because most of the keys I use to type the text right now are on the home row. This is also definitely an effect of the TypeMatrix, I cannot recommend enough this keyboard.

The only drawback is switching back to the Qwerty layout when travelling with my laptop or using the keyboard of someone else (once a month for 2h maybe). So sometimes, I wonder if I should not simply go back to qwerty with a TypeMatrix, maybe I would get the same relaxing grid layout without the need to adapt between Qwerty and Dvorak. Maybe I should simply use my laptop as laptop a bit more, like in the bed in the evening to go through my family/friends emails. This is a point in the day where I do not need to be fast and this could help me ease the switch between the two layouts. The people who are using two different layouts everyday have no problems switching from one to another, a bit like one switch from a language to another as foreigner.

Do not hesitate to ask me more and do it, it is worth it.

[0]: http://www.typematrix.com

[aliceyhg]

Thank you for your suggestion. I'm usually on my laptop so getting TypeMatrix (cool keyboard!) is currently not an option. Using 2 different layouts everyday is an interesting concept, I think it might ease my transition into dvorak.

[CraftThatBlock]

Is there any keyboard similar to the TypeMatrix (for ease of use and helping with RSIs) with mechanical switches?

[hartator]

Is it easy to use with MacOS or shortcuts are messed up?

[miguelrochefort]

Why don't you use Dvorak on your laptop?

[ludicast]

It gets better in terms of ease, especially if you practice and drill a bit. And it's really cool when you realise one day that you can type in both keyboards at about the same speed (because you will encounter qwerty more often than you think). The human brain is wacky.

But the fact is we live in a qwerty world. Even though I used dvorak for a while, I switched back. Partly because I'm a vim guy. The hjkl religion has a different god with a different keyboard and it all goes to shit. I mean there's dvorak-friendly vim mappings but at that point you're going down a rabbit-hole of ridiculousness.

That said, if the world was more dvorak-friendly (or you could convince your smaller world to be), that would be a good thing. And I would jump back in a heartbeat.

Also, I think I've read some keyboards like colmak are supposedly even better, so in terms of bang for buck it might be best investigating alternatives so you can optimize your degeneracy.

[Libbum]

hjkl is indeed an important aspect of the choice to switch. I found the answer to this SO question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/165231/vim-dvorak-keybind...) to be extremely helpful in that regard. Keep your fingers where they should be and remap less important actions to replacement keys.

[teilo]

I have switched layouts 3 times in the last 27 years. I began with Dvorak. That wasn't a switch. It was the first layout I learned to touch type on. I think I was 16 at the time. Back then you either needed a keyboard which supported the layout, or a DOS TSR. (I had the former: a Northgate Omnikey). Years later I switched to Colemak, then to QWERTY using Kazantsev fingering, and finally back to Dvorak.

My observations are: Cold turkey is the only way to go. It will take you a couple weeks to a month to regain your old speed. Then you will be faster. Your speed has nothing to do with the advantage of one layout over another. There is no speed advantage to Dvorak or Colemak because the intrinsic efficiency of one layout over another is dwarfed by the mind's ability to establish a skill in autonomic memory. The additional speed comes from the effort of re-training itself, and unlearning bad habits in the process.

Also: Don't try to retain the ability to touch-type on your existing layout. I tried this every time. I could do it, but only at the expense of speed and accuracy. When I gave it up, both improved dramatically.

[aliceyhg]

I can't imagine switching keyboard layouts 3 times, your mind must be extremely nimble. Currently, I have a picture of the dvorak keyboard pinned as my desktop wallpaper so if I forget location of a key I can look at desktop quickly.

[danieka]

I also went cold turkey a couple of years ago. The reason for me was that I experienced pain in my fingers after typing. After a day at work I was guaranteed to be in pain. At the time my productivity plummeted and it took me maybe two months to get to a level where I wasn't constantly frustrated.

That said, I've never regretted the switch. Even though I still feel pain sometimes when using a laptop keyboard the pain is mostly gone. Other benefits include that I've properly learned how to type and I am able to type without looking at the keyboard, something I could never do using QWERTY. I don't know if I write faster, but since the pain is gone I'm satisfied.

I suggest you stick with it. It will get easier and you won't regret it.

This site is great for practicing: https://learn.dvorak.nl

[giblet]

With programming/shell using Dvorak I experienced pain noticed most in pinky-heavy commands (e.g. ls<RETURN>).

I now map right alt to return and that's helped:

   xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

in ~/.Xmodmap:

    ! 108 = Right Alt
    keycode 108 = Return

[aliceyhg]

Thank you. Mild wrist pains is what motivated me to start in the first place, will stick with it.

[wwkeyboard]

Once people know you don't type QWERTY they won't shut up about it. Every time there is an HN post about colemak or dvorak you'll get the same stream of jokes and references to 20 year old reason articles. Some people seem to think the only reason to switch is that you are secretly a keyboard evangelical, and treat you as such. It's pretty annoying.

/rant

My only metric for Dvorak's effectiveness is that my wrists used to hurt when I argued with people on IRC. I switched to Dvorak and my wrists got better, then I stopped arguing with people on IRC and my life got better. ymmv

[willis77]

Hey, wait, aren't you that guy that does the funny nerd keyboard thing? Type me a sentence. Dance monkey, dance!

[peeters]

I switched to Colemak for a couple of years. The trick for me was using a typing tutor relentlessly over a weekend, enough that I could do around 40-50 wpm. Then I went cold turkey and never used QWERTY.

Colemak is a little bit friendlier than Dvorak because it leaves a bunch of keys intact, which is nice for preserving common shortcuts like CTRL-C, CTRL-V, etc. It also doesn't touch punctuation, which always seemed more disruptive than it needed to be in Dvorak.

In the end I switched back to QWERTY because I started working in a paired programming environment, and switching between the two whenever we would switch drivers became really annoying.

My main problem is that I was never really able to be proficient at Colemak and QWERTY at the same time. It was shocking how fast I lost my QWERTY muscle memory. When I switched back, it came back fast, but it was difficult for me to use someone else's QWERTY keyboard efficiently while I was using Colemak.

The other issue I've always had is that programs are designed to have a mix of positional shortcuts and mnemonic shortcuts. When you switch keyboard layouts, it's hard to keep both, even with customization.

For example, vim uses hjkl for navigation due to their position, not mnemonic. So you want to preserve those. But in Colemak that row is "hnei", so now you need to change "n" and "i", but those are both mnemonic (next and insert), so what do you change them to now?

[aliceyhg]

CTRL-C on dvorak is incredibly annoying. I have to use both my left and right hands. I should be using just my right hand and the right control key, but its quite hard getting used to. I didn't do any mapping so I haven't encountered any mnemonic problems :)

[EduardoBautista]

I use Colemak and vim and never bothered with remapping the keys. It didn't seem to affect my workflow.

[marten-de-vries]

When I started my study (Artificial Intelligence), I came to the conclusion that yes, I was going to spend a lot of time behind a keyboard, and yes, switching might be worth it. At that point, I looked into possible alternatives for QWERTY and decided to try Colemak, mostly because of its closeness to QWERTY which I knew pretty well then.

I went in cold turkey, which was probably easier than for Dvorak, but still a pain. Anyway, after a couple of days I could type slowly again, and from that point on (taking notes using my laptop daily), the situation improved.

After a shorter than expected time, I was up to my old typing speed again. The downside: I lost my ability to type blindly on a QWERTY keyboard. On Macs, smartphones and linux computers this is not a problem as switching them to Colemak is trivial when I have to use them longer, but for Windows computers it is occasionally annoying. I do have a portable executable that switches such a system on a USB-stick I carry on my key ring, but it's still a pain.

Anyway, the end result is that I type faster now then I did, and the smaller distance your fingers travel does result in a more comfortable typing experience. I would definitely make the switch again with the knowledge I have now. That said, it's probably only worth it if you actually type a lot.

[scrollaway]

I made my own layout years ago. I'm french and for years I typed on an azerty keyboard. When I switched to Qwerty, I found I really disliked the position of the m key. So I changed it.

Then I changed a few more keys so I could have easier access to them for programming. All the punctuation as well as putting some common unicode glyphs on altgr.

This is the end result: Drix EU Latin.

https://github.com/jleclanche/dotfiles/blob/master/X11/xkb/s...

It's an xkb file, only tested on Linux. I literally install it by replacing `/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us` with this file. (There's probably a better way nowadays, but back then the way was "submit your layout to X11 and get it merged in". I didn't want to do that.)

If you find dvorak too hard, maybe give this a shot. It should be self-evident how to move glyphs around as the file is well-commented. I find non-qwerty-like layouts to be a waste of time, to be honest, compared to studying how you yourself type and moving the keys you find problematic/out of reach.

[zokier]

That is similar to (if bit more extreme) what I've done too. It is truly baffling how bad European layouts are, especially for programming etc. But because my native language(s) have couple of accented characters, I couldn't just switch to US layout. So I ended up transplanting those characters to US layout, which required shuffling few things around. Overall I'm pretty happy with the end result, even if it is still "just qwerty". Some things could be tweaked bit more in altgr layer but that is fairly minor thing. It is especially nice that I can fairly easily use US layout if necessary.

http://zokier.net/stuff/nappaimisto.png looks like this old picture is somewhat out of date, but shows still the basic idea.

[linsomniac]

I've always felt like I should switch to Dvorak, but because of hjkl I never ended up doing it. What I DID do was get rid of my qwerty bad habits. I could touch type fairly well, but I just had some bad habits (typing b with the wrong hand, only using the left shift, looking when I type numbers).

Around 6 months ago my USB thinkpad-like keyboard died. Turns out if you shock the shit out of it with static electricity 3-4 times a day for 2 years, it'll eventually stop working). A coworker had an Ergodox with blank keycaps that I'd wanted to try...

I spent around 2 weeks feeling like I couldn't type. Every time I did the wrong thing I'd go back and fix it. After about a month, I was starting to get comfortable with it. After 2 months I felt like I could type dramatically better than before (and people previously would comment on how fast I typed).

And best yet, I avoid the pains of vi key mappings and of walking up to someone else's keyboard and having to switch back to qwerty.

LOVE the Ergodox.

[twoquestions]

Thanks for the recommendation! My keyboard is getting pretty old, and I've been looking at the Keyboard.io because of how it uses your thumbs, but you can't get one yet :(

[nhumrich]

I switched to colemak a year ago. Best thing I've ever done. The first month was REALLY hard. But I got over the slump and now I'm very grateful I did it. Typing is so much more natural feeling now. All the stretching in qwerty is not good for you. I was starting to get signs of RSI before I made the switch. But now almost no pain at all. I switched to an ergodox at the same time, so I can't tell you if the keyboard or the layout made the difference, but I think they both are a factor.

The one thing that really helped me make the switch was changing the layout on my phone's keyboard as well.

[aliceyhg]

I'm surprised that changing layout on your phone helped. In my experience so far on dvorak, I'm still used to typing on my qwerty phone. I think typing with thumbs uses a different muscle memory set from fingers on keyboard.

[sneak]

I've tried a few times but given up each time. I learned to touch type QWERTY at age 13 and use it at well over 100wpm. I'm in my early 30s and I think I'm stuck with it now.

Even after living in Germany for ~10 years, I still buy and import US keyboards and laptops so that the enter key (and backslash) are in the right place. (It's not just mapping - the physical buttons are laid out differently.)

I read about these people who switched and it seems totally impossible to me. Months of slow typing?! Ain't nobody got time for that.

[freeflight]

I'm pretty much in the same situation, after 20+ years on QWERTZ (German here ;) ), I can't even imagine using a layout that's so different. I already go borderline crazy when some programs/games change the layout to US QWERTY and a dozen or so keys stop doing what they're supposed to do.

Imho it's nearly impossible to retrain decades of muscle memory and end up with the same efficiency/speed without spending a comparable amount of time to train muscle memories on the new layout. Sadly we humans only have a limited lifespan, so I rather stick to what I know and already good at.

[anotheryou]

I switched to the german neo layout¹ years ago (after a year of dvorak).

Having done the jump twice: it takes some time, and in the beginning you really feel sooo handycapped, but it gets better quickly. I used to play some text centered ultima-online-like morpg which I used to get better at typing.

I don't know if it's faster, but it feels great. I can still type qwerty with 6-8 fingers rather quickly (I made the dive in to 10-finger typing with dvorak). I do change my keycaps, because I can't type blindly without using 10 fingers (like hitting any key with just you index finger while giving a presentation and standing a step away).

The big benefit of this layout for me: I have 2 more "shift" keys for these things:

1. (holding capslock)

    ¹²³›‹¢¥‚‘’    <- number keys
    …_[]^!<>=&ſ
    \/{}*?()-:@   <- homerow
    #$|~`+%"';

2.: (holding altgr)

for the left hand: arrow keys, del, backspace, esc, enter (really helps when your vi keybindings are all messed up)

For the right hand: number block (good on small laptops without one, space becomes 0)

The only downside currently: it's optimized for german wtih a bit of english, but I type more english. Vocals are popular everythere though, so it's mostly the same.

¹ http://neo-layout.org/

[Defman]

I've been on Dvorak for 4 months. First two weeks will be PITA and you'll lose your productivity at this point, so be careful about that. The most important thing is that you should forget about qwerty at all and don't make yourself switching to it. You must type on Dvorak even if you're very slow. There are a lot of online trainers you can use to learn how to properly type in Dvorak layout. After 2 weeks, you still will be slow but at least you can type something without a lot of troubles. After that, just do typing and you'll increase your wpm. I've printed a simple Dvorak keyboard layout because I were learning blind typing (I don't know the proper name of it, but the thing is that you type without looking at your keyboard) again and it was hard to me to remember new key positions. Don't forget about keybindings, they'd be changed too. I'm using dvorak-qwerty layout for that though, so when I press Ctrl, my keyboard uses qwerty layout. However, you can learn new keybindings if you want.

It's worth it and I don't have any problems using qwerty on other PCs. Not at the same speed as on Dvorak though.

[erikbern]

I switched to Dvorak about ~10 years ago. Took about 1 month to get comfortable. After 2-3 months I still wasn't as fast as qwerty, but it already felt more comfortable to type than qwerty for some reason.

Unfortunately I gave up after about 3 months, mostly because I kept changing computers at that point and it was a bit annoying to have to switch back and forth. In retrospect I regret that – maybe it's time to give it another shot

[jjoonathan]

My early experience agrees with yours: it was much harder to re-learn typing than I expected and a consistent mental load for a month or two until I internalized it. I did manage to get over the learning curve, and while I enjoy the noticeably reduced tendon strain (1/2 or 1/3 the movement, it's pretty amazing) and the fact that it cured me of touch typing, it does come with a few persistent annoyances, poor support on Windows being the worst. If you have AD-mandated password rotations, windows will copy your password from the login screen into "old password" and then silently swap the keyboard under you before you type your new password. It has three options for layout toggling keyboard shortcuts, all of which conflict with commonly used modifier key combinations, and the keyboard layout dialog seems to have a mind of its own, neither behaving like a global setting nor behaving like a per-application setting. On the balance, dvorak didn't save me time/hassle or make me faster, but it has made typing slightly more pleasant and it may have helped with RSI.

[miguelrochefort]

MY DVORAK JOURNEY

2009

- I type in QWERTY.

- I can hunt-and-pick at 60 WPM.

2010

- I discover Dvorak.

- I start to despise QWERTY.

2011

- I buy a Kinesis Advantage (https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage-for-pc-mac/).

- I learn to touch type.

- I learn Dvorak.

- I can touch type at 60 WPM (after 1 month).

2012

- I convert a fried to Dvorak.

2017

- I still type in Dvorak.

- I can type up to 100 WPM.

- I find regular (non-ergonomic) keyboards uncomfortable.

- I struggle to type in QWERTY (certainly can't touch type).

- I use QWERTY on my phone.

- I never suffer wrist pain or fatigue.

- I don't despise QWERTY anymore.

[chx]

I will offer an alternative, one you probably never heard about, the vertical keyboard. The first usable one I am aware of is the Kinesis Freestyle with the Ascent accessory, it was meant to be vertical. It's worth taking a look: https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/frre... you will understand better the hack in the next paragraph.

The Matias Ergo Pro is a split mechanical keyboard with the palmrests secured by standard tripod screws. So people went wild: some used a pair of small tripods to hold it near vertical https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=53184.msg1999684#msg199... some used clamp on mounts https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=78723.0. Spurred by the first post linked, as I described in https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 you can add your own feet to the side and cobble together a contraption to hold the two sides against each other (I use a 1/4" Male to 3/8" Male Threaded Screw Converter Adapter, a Manfrotto 259B Extension pole 6"-10", a"Triopo Short Column Ø24mm for MT-128 and GT-128 tripods" and a 1/4"-3/8" spigot like the Impact SRP-109). This makes you work with a high quality QWERTY keyboard in a position which doesn't kill your wrists. You might want to use a pair of tripods at first and slowly adjust to vertical (and then perhaps return the tripods...) -- it took me about a week to get up to 90 degrees with the Ascent which is adjustable.

[bunelr]

I switched to Dvorak three years ago. Mostly out of curiosity and because I heard it was better for my wrists.

One thing that I felt was really helpful was having different keyboards for the different layouts and not just a software switch. I started with a Typematrix and a year after bought myself a Kinesis Advantage. Both those keyboard have a grid layout (as opposed to the staggered layout of most standard keyboards). My experience (sample size of 1) was that this allowed me to have one muscle memory for the Dvorak/grid keyboards and one muscle memory for the Qwerty/staggered keyboard.

At the beginning, I was only using the Dvorak on the weekends and with some typing tutors for some exercise 10-20 minutes a day. I think I made the switch to Dvorak as my main driver after two-three months. I haven't looked back since and still feel much less comfortable using Qwerty (only use it on the laptop which might play a role), although I can still touch-type on it quite easily.

[Libbum]

I am competent in both dvorak and workman alternative layouts. Both took approximately two weeks of use to not be completely awkward, annoying and slow. Then probably about another month to be up to scratch with my qwerty speed.

Switching between the three layouts is completely painless for me, so in that sense I'm fine with using other peoples' keyboards or swap layouts on the fly (if you're worried about being confused if you need to swap back and forward in the future).

Specifically connected to dvorak: I found that the uppe right region of the keyboard is required more frequently than it should be, so your right pinky finger ends up performing more tasks than all others. This I found quite annoying - and one of the reasons why workman is now my default layout.

What works for you though will of course be different, but I do think changing from qwerty is worthwhile. So keep at it! It definitely gets better.

[mikeash]

It took me about a week to get vaguely comfortable when I switched, and maybe two weeks to really get good with it. But I was about 14 years old at the time, so that might be the adaptability of youth on display.

If I had to do it again, I'm not sure if I would. It's definitely more comfortable and maybe faster when typing English. Code is less clear, since the symbols are still often in weird places, but it's not bad. Keyboard shortcuts can get pretty strange. For example, the standard copy/paste keys get scattered all about instead of clustering in the lower left, unless you have your computer use Dvorak for regular typing and QWERTY for control keys, which is possible but has its own set of strangeness. Overall, though, I'm glad I made the switch and don't have any desire to stop using it.