Schöne Grüße aus Berlin! Recent subscriber, enjoying your videos, Danke! Just flashed my ThinkPad following your skulls video ^_______^" I road tested Dvorak for a couple of weeks before developing my own custom Colemak layout. I started with a 128key split ortholinear design positioning the numpad and some shortcut keys in the middle to space my hands out in more even alignment with my shoulders. A thumb cluster of 7 keys per hand. 4 layers. 0) Colemak 1) Fn 2) Qwerty 3) WASD/Gaming. www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/71b0eb4790ea5565ae34 The reason for the separate gaming layer is because I created my own dropped Colemak layout where rather than my home row being straight, I raised the ring and middle finger up a row so they can rest naturally. I found this to be the most comfortable layout for me personally when it came to typing, but it naturally sucked for games. I personally found Colemak even in it's generic form on a traditional staggerd laptop keyboard to be more comfortable than Dvorak after the same period of time and it has the additional benefit of retaining shortcut keys and many other familiar key locations. After completing my build I decided I wanted to have a trackball in the center to balance the work load from any mouse movements and eliminate strain from over extending my shoulder during mouse heavy workloads, so I set about building a 256 key split ortholinear keyboard which gave me the ideal distance between my two hands. Here is a reference in case you are interested: www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/3418e1b29839de60912ec36a24a557a1 The shortcuts are specific to my custom i3wm setup but are selected to maintain as much backwards compatibility with several Linux desktops, Windows and Mac OS in that order. Not that I would use them for anything other than compatibility testing XD
I just want to point out that that's a picture of the famous Czech romantic composer Antonín Dvořák, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Dvorak keyboard layout.
It’s interesting as if you search “august Dvorak” on google, you are given images of Antonín. As far as I can tell, there is only one image of August Dvorak available online and he looks nothing like his musical maybe-but-probably-not relative.
I converted over to Dvorak 'bout a year ago. I do a lot of editing and typing of documents. I no longer have an issue with Carpel Tunnel in my wrists. Some typing is as fast, some faster. And, no one else can type anything on my computer if I forget to lock it at work.
You no longer have problems? Less strain I'll believe for sure, but changing your keyboard won't magically cure RSI nor will it eliminate the chances of developing one! Typing on any keyboard produces strain.
@@tuananhdo1870 I have used my slightly customized(switched i and u and some minor improvements for my native language and for coding use) form of dvorak-layout for 2 years now. I can write 70 wpm but that is just me.
I dated a girl that used dvorak with a qwerty board and it made me want to punch myself in the face everytime I had to use her computer. How she learned it, I have no clue.
@@connorWithTheReallyLongHandle I actually learned vim after I switched to Dvorak, so I only really know the Dvorak mappings and can't make a completely fair comparison, but there's really nothing that's awkward or uncomfortable. J and K are still next to each other (the QWERTY layout's C and V keys), and H and L are your right hand index and pinky, so they should feel similar (and H is still to the left of L, otherwise yes, it would be really unintuitive. When using vim both hands should be on the keyboard, so it's not much of an issue to be using two hands rather than one. I tend to use {, }, w, t, and f for navigation more than HJKL, and you stop thinking about the actual letters after a bit anyway.
@@danilodeklerk7422 I know but I still like having it there. I am probably going to switch despite the hell of getting used to the Dvorak directional keys. The biggest pain will be that my entire setup revolves around VIM keys and not taking my hands off the home row, that's y I'm so hesitate to switch.
@@danilodeklerk7422 I think vim is mean to work with qwerty, so using the default key bindings is inefficient. I just got it though, and haven't put the time to learn it yet, so I don't know much about it.
@Kurt M. Fair, but if youre on for over, say, 10 minutes, itd be way easier to just go into their settings and add Dvorak, its not that hard, and on Windows you can easily change it back using CTRL+Shift
Well I've written with qwerty for about 14 years with touch typing and now I've been trying to learn workman layout, it took me about 2 hours to learn were the keys were, but I couldn't write fast, but practice made me write a little bit faster and I usually take about 10 minutes and can go back to qwerty without a problem, it's just those 10 minutes of remembering muscle memory.
I type in both Qwerty and Dvorak. Took about 3 months to get really good. Dvorak is way more comfortable, definitely prefer it. Never forget how to use Qwerty though because you’ll always need it. I use a Typematrix keyboard which has hotkeys in the normal Qwerty positions, check it out.
@@jetowl57 I actually just quit my job and switched careers, I only use a laptop now, so no. If I go back to sitting in front of a computer all day then I’ll use it again.
@@fuumax7969 I grew up with AZERTY and it's just annoying af. W and M are on a terribly uncomfortable place, games RARELY automatically adjust the mappings, the numbers on the top row only work with caps. AZERTY is however great for accents and what not, I can probably type most European special UNI characters with this keyboard while with a QWERTY you would have to use ALT codes.
belgian AZERTY guy here! honestly i love it! one thing to mention tho is that i grew up never changing game controls, so i still use WASD even tho it should be ZQSD on azerty, wich leads to an interesting finger placement while gaming! the W is where the z is and the A is the top key, so you can kinda invision what that looks like
@@tank1503. Yeah, but my point is that the sentence is not true if you live in France, because then you'll see an azerty layout in 99% of the cases Edit: Also, remember that not everybody has access to technology, so it's false to assume that 100% of the Earth's population get to see computers on a regular basis
I learned Dvoark for awhile, but stopped when I realized that it made using the terminal (and programming in general) less comfortable in my opinion. I then did more research and found the workman layout (derivative of Colemak), and got the best of both worlds. Typing speed even increased over Qwerty (100wpm instead of 80wpm) but I attribute that to learning to touch type properly in the process instead of the modified method that I naturally learned. Based on the research I've done I've pretty much come to the conclusion that, as the second most popular layout, Dvorak is riding on notoriety than anything else and Colemak and derivatives are just plain better is basically every metric. When I get asked about learning an alternative keyboard layout I usually recommend Colemak, since while I personally have never used it, it does have better ecosystem support than workman et al and should generally be similar in experience.
@Soniku Raharu Sounds like an ad hominem argument to me, but I'll bite. I never said I wasn't touch typing, I said I wasn't doing it properly. (You can type without looking at the keyboard in more ways than what a tutor will teach you.) Specifically I hated split keyboards since I would always use the wrong hand to type the letter "b" and I had a "floating right hand" which shifted between two home positions (one key to the right) which is apparently somewhat common for people who learned to touch type by just doing a lot of programming. I have not personally seen a lot of evidence to suggest that alternative keyboard layouts actually increase typing speed (clearly a lot of people can type qwerty faster than I could by a wide margin) so given that there are two variables at play here: the layout change, and the fact that I now type the way everyone says one should type it is likely that the latter is the cause for the increase in speed. The best of both worlds comment meant that I get the increased comfort of typing without the addition of awkwardness that's inherent to Dvorak for technical use cases. If you type mostly prose then I would agree that Dvorak is comfortable, but when one of the most common Linux commands "ls" is typed exclusively with the right pinkie it became obvious to me that the layout was not designed for what I do. I realize that Wolfgang found the layout just fine in his opinion, but that's just that my opinion and his opinion. They can differ, which is why they're called opinions. As a side note here, the reason I switched layouts was specifically for comfort as my RSI was getting pretty bad. The flare ups have mostly gone away since then. It riding on being "the first" is entirely my point. People think about switching keyboard layout and immediately go to Dvorak which seems to be forgetting why they might want to switch away from Qwerty in the first place. That is, that the first is not the best. When doing research it appears that Colemak, Workman, et al can outperform Dvorak in most metrics while having specific benefits for non-prose workloads due to the additional design considerations that they made. I'm not saying that Dvorak's work is without merit, just that when you look at the landscape today the only thing I see keeping it alive is that it's a relative household name. Recommending something you never used is not as weird as you think. For example if someone asks me to recommend them a computer to buy I don't say "get a Threadripper" because that's what I use. A car person might only drive sports cars but hopefully would recommend other types of vehicles if they theoretically suit the person better. Everyone has different needs, and while I might want to put in the extra effort to learn a more obscure layout, I can look at the perceived benefit it gave me and weigh it against external factors and come up with a reasonable default. I do of course mention that I use Workman and I will tell them I like it, but I don't know for a fact it's better than Colemak or any other derivative like for example Norman. Which brings us to what I mean by "ecosystem." If you look for typing tutors they're more likely to have Colemak support than whatever random derivative. If you're buying a new keyboard you can find keyboards with hardware support for Colemak so that the OS doesn't need to be set to Colemak. By default Colemak is supported in macOS, where as Workman is only Linux and others probably not at all. Keep in mind this is compared to Workman, obviously Dvorak is even better in terms of ecosystem but that goes back to my original point where I think Dvorak is just not that great of a layout. Ultimately if you like Dvorak and it works for you great! I just think that since Dvorak's time we've made progress and thus the layout is now overrated.
Hell yeah man, I also use Workman & I love it! I feel like it's the least known layout out there, which is too bad. My personal complaints about Workman, is the placing of 'F' & 'L' makes things like the word 'fly' kinda weird, but once you learn to hit 'L' with your thumb after 'f's', then it still feels pretty damn good. At times I can type around 50-60 WPM. Also, replacing the Caps Lock key with Backspace (I used Keytweak) helped heeps, & recommend it to everyone, regardless of layout.
I use Colemak and I like it but it does cause my left hand to cramp up something terrible within a minute. It may be my keyboard (TypeMatrix), but I've considering heading to Mod-DH or some derivative.
I never properly learned QWERTY in grade school. I always had to look down to type. Learning Dvorak was an opportunity to rewire my muscle memory and switching during my 2nd year of university definitely encouraged me to learn faster.
Sounds like you're typing it wrong then o.o. Index - F pinky - A Ring finger - S Index - T Middle - E Ring - S Index - T has a nice lil hand slide over while doing it
@@ryanzwe I type it like this: Index - F Ring - A Middle - S Index - T Middle - E Middle - S Index - T I guess I use my index and middle finger a lot lol, I only use my pinky for ctrl/shift and... That's pretty much it I think lol
@@Weroleytor Thats so weird lol.. Your fingers should naturally be sitting on on A S D F , so you should be able to type FAS without moving anything at all
I'm a radical Dvorak user and I agree with all points in this video. Also here's a simple 4-step guide to learning dvorak: Step 1: Switch your phone keyboard to Dvorak step two: get a girlfriend who likes to text with you a lot StEpThRe3eE: ???? Step Four: Profit
Haha, I use Dvorak when using a keyboard, but use a swipe keyboard in QWERTY on my phone. I've tried switching my phone to Dvorak, and feel like a complete beginner again when I try to swipe-type anything.
I know the 4-step guide thing was kind of a joke, but here's how I learned if anyone's interested. Tutorials for learning it are a waste of time imo. I just used the "show keyboard viewer" option on macOS in the corner of my screen along with having my keycaps labelled in the QWERTY layout to force myself to learn it. It took 2-3 weeks to not need the keyboard viewer anymore, and maybe a month to be able to touchtype quickly in it - keeping in mind that I couldn't touchtype in QWERTY prior to this (my QWERTY speed has gone up as well in this time, but not nearly as much as my Dvorak speed), I quickly became much faster in Dvorak than QWERTY. TL;DR: typing tutorials are a waste of time, put a keyboard viewer in the corner of the screen and do what you'd normally do in the day using it and you'll learn it within a month - or at least, that's what happened with me.
I never actually practised touch-typing qwerty, so the day I actually tried to learn to do it, I learned Dvorak. On linux, I have aliased "asdf=xsetkblayout dvorak" and "aoeu=xsetkblayout us" so that I can switch easily on the homerow.
When I was younger I really wanted to be able to talk to people and continue to click with my mouse simultaneously while playing games, I found that very hard with QWERTY but in my quest for a solution I discovered DVORAK for left hand users which is a specific form of DVORAK made for typing solely with your left hand. I just decided "ok, I'm going to make this my keyboard layout and use it tell I don't need to think about it." Took about a year and a half until I was set, I type at ~60wpm with my left hand.
Learn stenography instead, it’s much more work because it’s an entirely different system but if you are dedicated, it’s the only way to achieve 300+ WPM. You are essentially trading memorization for massive gains in speed and ergonomics. Once you practice enough the muscle memory will simply take over.
YES!!! For anyone else reading this (I'm sure Thomas Vu already knows or he wouldn't be recommending this), look up Plover. It's an open source program to convert steno into text so that you can use it to type in any program you would normally use a keyboard for. And if all you want to do is equal your typing speed, it really isn't that bad to pick up, though it can do a whole lot more.
stenography is pratically useless if you a programmer who spends most of the time typing arbitrary keywords, variable names, mathematical operators and keyboard shortcuts.
I'm German and I learned Dvorak at around 2003. Umlauts have been a problem, but there was the Dvorak with Umlauts. Not on Windows, only on my linux machines. I learned it, because I was a search typer and couldn't get touch typing in my brain. I was falling back to my old habit all the time. I switched to dvorak in a holiday without putting stickers on my keyboard. I just did all the practice lessons to force me learn touch typing. I then discovered the NEO layout for Germans after around a year and it has a lot more features and fits better to the German language. I used the same principle. I used stickers for a keyboard once that just had all the symbols, but no letters on them. This helps in finding all the symbols you don't need very often. I'm lucky enough to use it at home and at work. I can switch between layouts and my brain needs around 2 seconds to adapt. I feel more comfortable with NEO, than with QWERTZ. I forgot dvorak completely. I am faster with NEO than with QWERTZ, but there are a lot people faster with QWERTZ than I am with NEO. For games and other incompatible things, I just switch to QWERTZ for that time. On my phone, I don't use it. Like you mentioned, it doesn't help there and not all phone keyboards on Android have these layouts anyway.
The thing I'm most curious about is whether after learning Dvorak, how hard is it to switch between them? It might be worth it for example, if I could use Dvorak only when typing in MS Word or something, but Qwerty the rest of the time. So literally switching between both methods on the fly depending on which window you have open. I imagine the brain could learn to do it given enough practice but I wonder what it's like initially.
Depends on how often you practice QWERTY! If you keep typing in both layouts, your brain will probably adapt eventually. Though I had to learn two layouts when I was a teenager (Russian and English), so maybe it helps? At the same time, ditching QWERTY and its poor ergonomics is kind of the point of Dvorak, and forcing yourself to type QWERTY regularly defeats the purpose.
I can help you answer too as I've been using Dvorak for about 8 years now. Sometimes I have to use QWERTY on other computers which might take a second or two for my brain to adapt and "remember" the layout but I have very little problem going between them both. At the most, when I use QWERTY now I get annoyed and want to go back to Dvorak. I feel that my fingers have to move so much more on QWERTY haha
@WolfgangsChannel When I was studying Russian, I insisted on learning the Russian keyboard format (which, now that I've not been studying for a while, means I can uselessly type in Cyrillic), and at least for me, I couldn't type out Russian words phonetically in the Latin alphabet or vice versa without a lot of mental effort. Once I was in "Russian mode", my brain associated sounds with the proper keystrokes, and it was really hard to revert unless I was, in fact, typing in English.
Another longtime Dvorak user here. Over time I've gotten out of practice at QWERTY, to get back into the mindset I have to type my name or an old password first and launch straight into whatever I actually need to type. Once I get into the flow I can do it, but if I think about it too much, suddenly I can't find the key I'm looking for lol
In French there is a keyboard like Dvorak called Bépo. It’s the same sort of layout except it has a lot more accented characters available (like è, é, ê, æ, œ, ß, etc.)
I don't use dvorak on phone (I prefer gesture) but one of the tenets of the layout is alternating hands. this is why the vowels are all on one side. this would arguably be beneficial for two thumb typing.
The default keyboard layout here in France is azerty. It's close to qwerty, but with a few keys switched. It's even worse than qwerty, since there are some capital letters with diacritics used in French that you can't even type (except on Linux thanks to caps lock). Back in 2012 when I built my first computer I decided to learn bépo (the equivalent to dvorak, but for French). I never learned to touch-type on azerty, and decided I would learn touch-typing in bépo, on a TypeMatrix 2030 keyboard (which is orthogonal). To teach myself, I read that the best way is to place a paper sheet with diagram of your layout next to your screen, so that you have a reference, and don't need to look at your fingers (so that your muscle memory is used, instead of your visual one). After a week or so of typing like a retard, I could type pretty comfortably. This was one of the best choices I made in my digital life. I can't fathom how anyone can touch-type on azerty, as there is absolutely no logic to this layout whatsoever. Also, it's time we get rid of the stupid diagonal layout of keyboards. It was made to make room for the sticks that hold the keys. We don't need that on computer keyboards. I used "regular" keyboards next to my orthogonal one, and the difference in comfort is very noticeable. Also, having the enter and backspace keys right in the middle makes much more sense.
I always had used QWERTY, and then I moved to France and discovered AZERTY. Ctrl+Z becomes Crtl+W caused me many problems. The worst thing was when I found out my French friends were using AZERTY when gaming, without remapping the WASD keys. The W falls bellow the S and the A is higher than the rest. It's impossible!
@@inigo8740 They are the exception, then. Basically everyone remaps their keys to ZQSD. I believe some games even have these keys as default on their French client. Though sometimes developers don’t give the option to remap the keys and everyone who doesn’t use qwerty is stuck with stupid controls.
@@eyjzdrkxjqzfuhqyzybf When I used to play browser games only I had to use WASD on an azerty keyboard. It was kinda awkward but I got used to that. Then when I played "real" games I had the option to remap luckily.
You might find this interesting, that the Korean language keyboard layout actually follows Dvorak design principles putting the most commonly used keys on the home row and dividing vowels and consonants on between the left and right hand. If you're interested in this kind of thing you might want to take a look at the Korean keyboard layout.
I spend ton of hours a day in front of a computer, and I'm thinking seriously to try this keyboard configuration to see the results myself. Really informational video, and thanks for sharing your experience. Best regards!
I have also moved to Dvorak around the turn of the year. It was an interesting thing to learn. You did a nice overview. I also didn't change the vim control scheme and I still use the cvz controls when I'm at work and on win10. I hope to get to my speed back up to where I had it when I was on qwerty. Nice video!
I started learning Dvorak in high school. ... I can't type on qwerty at all kinda, I have to use the "peck and hunt" method on qwerty, but I touchtype on dvorak, and I'm NOT spending 2-3 months learning qwerty touchtyping
Dvorak is undeniably better, but everything is geared towards QWERTY and everyone has learnt it; and that is where every one of your grievances stems from(and I agree with you completely). However, if you imagine a world where everything used Dvorak and everyone learnt that instead, then everyone would think you were batshit crazy if you then tried to introduce QWERTY. It's like how us Europeans have an aneurysm when Americans try to tell us how great the imperial measurement system is compared to metric. Concerning the typing of different languages on English-based Dvorak, that only seems like an issue because us Westerners mostly use the same script(and there are Dvorak lay-outs for every common language). If a Korean had to learn to type Japanese, they would have to relearn where the keys are anyway, because the keys have different characters. We just have the luxury of seeing mostly the same script when we go to a neighbouring country. In fact, it's a luxury that we can even type French with English Dvorak *at all*, if you think about it. It's literally impossible to design a lay-out which is ideal for every language, so it's sort of a non-argument.
Dvorak / Linux / Vim user here! This video definitely earned a subscribe from me. And no, no one can use my laptop but me, haha. For those of you who are thinking about switching and want another voice heard from, here has been my thoughts and experience... I used to be able to type Qwerty with with bursts of up to 100WPM. I wouldn't say I'm any faster necessarily with Dvorak, but I do feel like I have to make fewer / smaller / more comfortable movements than with Qwerty. Truth be told, I do like Dvorak a little better, but I also don't think it's probably worth it for most people to make the switch. You've really got to use a computer often enough that eeking out a few percentage points of extra comfort is worth all the upfront discomfort it takes to make the switch. But if you're somebody who types a lot and enjoys a challenge just for the heck of it, then read on. For learning, even though you want to be able to touch type, I found it helpful to switch the key caps for those frustrating moments when you have to glance down. I still do this for my laptops, but not for my external keyboard. On the rare occasion that somebody wants to use my computer, they can hunt and peck, or if they are good Qwerty touch typists, I'll just quickly swap back to Qwerty layout for them in the software. When I first switched layouts I was on a Mac and I used the Dvorak + Command Qwerty as that was convenient. The problem with this is that this layout is only easily available on Mac OS, and I want to be able to hop on another computer, switch layouts, and 10 seconds later be completely comfortable typing. This was great on my computer, but it was a hindrance when I switched to Linux as my daily driver earlier this year. Honestly, if you associate the shortcut with the letter with the muscle memory, it's really not that bad. You lose the one-handed ergonomics of Ctrl+C/V/Z/X/S but with two hands on the keyboard as I am for the most part when I'm typing or editing text with Vim it doesn't bother me too much. (Plus with Vim that's not how you copy and paste anyways.) I do use Android but since the muscle memory of typing with thumbs and swipe/glide movements is really separate from touch typing on a full keyboard, I didn't see any benefit in switching on mobile, and that makes it easy for me to pick up and type on other phones if I need to. One of the big disadvantages is if you need to hop on other people's workstations frequently. I've been typing Qwerty for decades, so I'm sure the layout is still rattling around in my brain, but I have to hunt and peck on Qwerty as I don't practice it regularly. The other critique I might make is that as a programmer I wouldn't say there's really any layout advantage for commonly used programming characters such as: ;',.[]/=\- as Dvorak was invented before personal computers. You could argue that certain key placements like that are arguably worse, but that largely depends on your preferred programming language, IDE, etc. There is a sub-layout called Programmer's Dvorak that might make minor improvements here, but it's bad enough I've committed to typing on a dorky alternative layout without going into an even more obscure niche of the niche. At least you know that you can switch any major operating system to Dvorak in a manner of a few seconds without additional software. Programmers Dvorak and other sub-variations of layouts may not be supported out of the box and you might have to download additional drivers. I'm not a heavy Photoshop / Adobe user (go FOSS alternatives!) but if you're really used to those keyboard shortcuts, that's something to consider. As for Vim shortcuts, I really learned Vim after I switched to Dvorak, but I don't know that there's really any disadvantages in the shortcut layout. I suppose the HJKL for movement might make slightly more sense all on the home row, but once it's muscle memory it's really no problem. I don't do much PC gaming, but I'd probably switch back to Qwerty for WASD layout, but again, that's just muscle memory. There's nothing intuitive about the letters WASD for arrows other than the key positions. If you're the type of person that types on a keyboard all day, could benefit from a minor increase in typing comfort, you use a lot of command line / Vim / keyboard shortcuts rather than reaching for your mouse, you like a challenge, and you don't mind / like being different then Dvorak is a fun challenge. Honestly the challenge of rewiring my brain was half the fun.
I learned Dvorak in college, and gaming controls are eventually what make me drop it. I could deal with learning the new layout no problem, but the never ending cycle of remapping controls was too much apparently.
Tbh you probably could have just had two language modes on your computer, both English, but one where the keystrokes on the keyboard were QWERTY, and the other were Dvorak
In my case I still use qwerty, but one day I could see a developer who used the Programmer Dvorak distribution, his keyboard was a split Corne and he used vim as editor, his typing speed was enviable in every way, one day I hope to get to that levels
Dvorak DID get rid of my Carpal Tunnel, and all of my friends at Ivy League use it. You are giving people incorrect advice NOT to use it. People SHOULD use it. I now have Dvorak on ALL of my computers, laptops and tablet. I have been using it for 98 years now, and VERY happy. And yes, my typing speed DOUBLED.
Really appreciate that you took the time to demystify the Dvorak keyboard. I had heard about it and was curious but I now I know the advantages would not be worth the effort. Great research.
>not useing wayland >german & not useing neo what are you on mate? But seriously I use Programmers Dvorak, it has the number row set up the way Dvorak desighned it. I switched whilst takeing classes, I had at least one paper due each weak and I didn't use any learning aids, just switched over and left it in that state. My main goal was to get rid of my habbit of looking at the keyboard whilst typeing because it was slowing me down (especialy when I needed to transcribe from abook). The first day was the worst, every day after that was a peice of cake though, and by the end of the second week I was back up to my old typeing speed. Now that I can actualy type properly, I've been thinking about switing over to a fully programmable split keyboard and setting up my own custome xkblayout. For anyone jumping into deep configuration I'd reccomend setting up shift lock and setting caps-lock to switching layout, especialy if you are useing Programmers Dvorak.
It's not worth the grind, but once you've done it you deff don't want to go back. One of my saving graces was that win 10 and kde both accepted win+space to alternate layouts
Having made the leap over two decades ago, there's no way I can ever go back. Having to use a QWERTY keyboard makes me want to throw it across the room because even though I know where everything is, I have to completely override my muscle memory. However, I've been asked if it's worth it for someone to learn Dvorak now, and I uniformly tell them no -- that they should try Colemak instead. I only gave Colemak a two week test spin but that was long enough to see that it had the same basic design advantages as Dvorak, without the disadvantages -- presuming you knew neither. I'm not going to switch again now.
I am as far from coding as anyone can be, but I still liked the video. And the your little laughs, they're really cute^^ And the way you lit the background is LIT. Me likey
I've been typing with Dvorak on all my computers and my phone for more than 4 years now. I actually started learning right as I started a college English class and I think that using it constantly without ever going back to qwerty made learning faster. I got up to about 40 wmp in about 2 weeks and now I'm around 75 give or take. That may not sound incredibly fast but it's way faster than I ever could type on qwerty. I had a really hard time memorizing qwerty and Dvorak just came a lot easier for me. Games definitely are a weak area for Dvorak but you'd be surprised how many games allow you to switch between keyboard layouts without restarting or just natively support Dvorak without changing anything.
Wrong when you say Dvorak is not much better than QWERTY. It’s much better. As a programmer I used to have hand pain after a day of work. Dvorak cured that. It’s MUCH more comfortable for touch typing. I switch to QWERTY with 2 clicks before playing games. And I have developed a hybrid layout which alternates between Dvorak and QWERTY through the Caps key. No problem with shortcuts anymore, best of both worlds. The OP’s level of experience with Dvorak must not be great.
Shortcuts: Kinda agree, copy paste is the worst, but there are good alternatives like CTRL + INSTER (copy ) , SHIFT + INSERT ( paste ) Games: Pretty much a moot point. You only need to remap the keys once, or just switch to qwerty, or in some games even that is unnecessary. Time: True it takes a week or two. But learning anything does...
I was a QWERTY touch typist of around 80WPM with pretty decent accuracy; I made the switch to Dvorak for the same reasons as Wolfgang; I hate to say it, but everything he says is true, except it took me more than a few months to get to my old QWERTY speed. To say learning Dvorak was painful is an understatement, and had I known how difficult it would be with not a great deal of benefit, I wouldn't have attempted to learn it in the first place; that said, I'm glad I did; as Wolfgang says, it's actually not that bad, and the look of confusion on my friends faces if they ask if they can check their email is priceless. People likely type faster using Dvorak than QWERTY, but the difference is negligible, and had I spent countless hours improving my QWERTY speed instead, I would be a lot faster than I am now with Dvorak. Typing with Dvark is definitely more comfortable than QWERTY, and I find it easier to type accurately with Dvorak; it feels more natural when typing English, that is, once you reprogram your muscle memory. If you do not know how to type in QWERTY and are learning to touch-type from scratch (in English), it could be worth learning Dvorak, as long as you don't mind the other negative reasons stated by Wolfgang. Maybe, just maybe! If you like a challenge and are prepared to put in a lot of effort, sure, learning Dvorak is a fun and rewarding experience, but do not learn Dvorak if you think it will make you more productive. People learn to touch type to be more productive, although, again, if you don't already know QWERTY, I'd imagine you'll ultimately be a better typist if you choose Dvorak. It's a shame Dvorak never caught on because it is a superior layout, but QWERTY is not terrible; alas, it never took on, and as someone who went through the PAIN of making the switch, I can guarantee it never will.
As a French, I have started to learn the layout "BÉPO". That is specific to the French language. Learning it have taken some time, and after two month training, I am not yet as proficient as my normal layout, but feel confident enough to use it every day at work, where I guess it will improve greatly. To bypass some problems like the "ctrl + c / v / x" shortcut, I invested in a typeMatrix keyboard (as I also wanted to have aligned keys)
As I was a bit of a hipster at the time, so I switched to Dvorak at the age of 12 (I'm 26 as of now), It took me a month to learn and I use it to this day. Gaming and other compatibility issues aren't that big a deal because you can set up ctrl+shift to toggle between the two layouts, so you just get in the habit of switching when you need to The biggest challenge honestly is having to use public computers where Dvorak isn't an option. The windows hotkeys are also a bit awkwardly placed for Dvorak (namely ctrl+c and ctrl+v). In hindsight, you could probably rebind them somehow, but I'm used to their new locations at this point
6:00 Worse than that. Many keyboards rely on the idea of you 'near missing' what you intended. So if you type wjsy instead of what it sees that h and j (etc) are close and has an easier time correcting. Another context clue. If all the most common keys are on the home row you'd reduce that heuristics effectiveness somewhat. I wonder what the anti-dvorak is and if that's better for this use? Something that makes every near miss utter gibberish and reduces the potential confusion between potential off by 1 words. I've abandoned standard phone keyboards because they're very conservative in this what they allow as misses without accepting it as your intent in my experience. It might face people's expectations better but I'm sure they'd be faster with something more assertive. Proofreading is faster than typing precisely on a phone. For me at least.
So you type incorrectly on purpose and get upset when the program doesn't understand your wrongness? I don't understand why typing and spelling properly is so hard
I started learn Dvorak in college; but abandoned it because L and S are both typed with the right pinky, and it made using a terminal a pain. I learned Colemak instead, and still use it. It's definitely more-comfortable than QWERTY. However, I do not type any faster. For those wondering, I use both QWERTY and Colemak daily. Would I say it's worthwhile to learn? Eh, well, if you type for a living, there's no harm in it. It can help prevent RSIs in the long-run, and that's important because a typing RSI can threaten your livelihood. But for everyone else? Eh, QWERTY's probably good-enough. Oh, also: It took me a month to get decent at Colemak. I never learned how to type properly in the first place, though, and basically just learned Colemak by using my computer normally. Messagease, an alternative layout for phone keyboards, only took about a day to get good at. I've used it since 2011, and it puts all other phone keyboards to shame.
tbh qwerty is way better then qwertz bc of the [{ stuff. but i wont change to colmak or dvorak bc if i have to use a qwertz (im also from germany), i would be fcking confused. and it sometimes happens that I do something at a coworkers keyboard (pair programming in scrum, you know). its hard enough to change from qwerty to qwertz, so no thanks. AND VIM
Another annoying thing I find about Qwertz (meine frau ist deutsch) is undo. They moved the Z so far away, now requires two hands! Why would they do that? >___< but I would agree the most annoying thing is /[{}]\ how do people even use a command line or program with Qwertz? I thought Germans love efficiency? That's at least the impression I had before living here. I think reading German would be more efficient and ergonomic with a few spaces in between words. Feels like I need a knife and fork every time I try to read German. Japanese you only need chopsticks and English you can pretty much eat with your hands haha.
@@aeroglass The Keyboard is made for efficient typing. In German you use y soooo seldom that it got changed with z. Yeah, undo is crap, but you use z so much more often than y. And /]{\ is way less often used than Umlaute in german. So it's efficient, but efficient for normal typing. Most people do not write code :P German isn't really ergonomic, thats right. But the less spaces make it more efficient because you can pack many many informations in one word, but you dont have to. Gewinner eines Wettbewerbes des schnellen Schreibens = Schnellschreibewettbewerbsgewinner = Winner of a fast typing contest.
I've been using Dvorak for about 2 years now, but only on my phones. I did it for the proposed efficiency, but mainly to learn something new, and now I can go between the 2 easily, and I get the added benefit of whenever I hand my phone to someone they think they're having a stroke and it's great
I’m a Dvorak user and I only really recommend learning Dvorak if you dont have the muscle memory for touch typing on QWERTY. I found it much easier to learn to touch type with Dvorak than to re-learn QWERTY with Touch typing.
I never tried very hard to learn touch typing with QWERTY, but when I first heard about Dvorak, I really wanted to give it a try. I liked it so much that I ended up becoming able to touch type, at the tender age of 20. So, I must thank Dvorak for teaching me to touch type. I agree that it's not really an advantage for speed, as I know plenty of QWERTY typists who can type much faster than me (I average 85-95wpm). But I do like the extra quirk that it adds to my life, and the fact that other people will struggle to use my computer unless I am personally with them. By the way, I can still type in QWERTY pretty fast (60-70wpm) if I look at the keyboard. I don't really know anyone who can touch type in BOTH layouts. One final note... Dvorak is HORRIBLE for texting on your phone! I still QWERTY there, too.
Dvorak was designed to be far faster than qwerty. That doesn't mean that any one person is going to succeed to tap its speed resource. Just keep in mind that the world champion typist for years used Dvorak.
Been using Colemak for a couple of weeks. It's pretty easy to get into, shortcuts are left untouched, and it's pretty neat. Then again, I never learned to touch-type and can rack up some 90 WPM through my "custom" (read: likely terrible) 6-or-7-finger typing pattern. Still type pretty slowly when in Colemak mode, but it's fun and I can recommend it. As for Vim... Hahahaha. Like I'd ever use Vim. Nano is all a _real_ OG needs.
I'm a programmer, just before I found there is another layout there as Dvorak. It's awesome and the finger moments are smooth. But I'm using blender too, I can't create anything because my muscle memory sticks to qwerty. So I'm gonna go on with qwerty 😥😥
I use Dvorak and I have not had problems with carpal tunnel ever since I started. It is annoying in some programming languages (like C#) because they use symbols that are close by on QWERTY but banished to the far pasture on Dvorak. On the other hand, having the hyphen on the home row is awesome.
You were smarter than me. I changed from qwertz to qwerty (US international layout with altgr combinations for Umlaute and no dead keys) and decided to learn ten finger typing a month before I realized that I had a bachelor thesis to write. Wasn't fun.
@@WolfgangsChannel It's not perfect, true, but I like those combinations. altgr-p(ö), altgr-q(ä), altgr-y(ü) are all more convenient to me than trying to reach {}[] on the German layout.
Eh, I'm okay with compose key sequences for intermittent German. I can also switch back to QWERTZ with Ctrl+Ctrl, if I have to type longer stuff. (Though somehow I can't get Xorg to use QWERTY as a default when starting up, and it doesn't mix well with my password manager's autotype...) Using AltGr for compose works surprisingly well, even on QWERTZ.
I have been typing Dvorak for 20 years. I learned it in college based on principle when I heard about it because I am a huge nerd. A new layout designed from the ground up based on letter frequency and finger comfort, sign me up! My fingers were cramped and uncomfortable from instant messaging with my girlfriend for hours every day. It took me about 2 months to surpass my previous QWERTY speeds. It made me a much better typist, and finally a true touch typist. I'm now a significantly faster typist, much faster than average, and anyone I know, about 110 wpm, and my hands are always comfortable. There are significant downsides, I agree with much of the video. I'm a programmer by profession, and being a touch typist for symbols like brackets, braces, and slashes is an extra challenge. Memorizing all your shortcuts in your IDE can also be painful. However most games nowadays adapt just fine to a Dvorak layout. You can do things like switch around your keycaps, but then the home position bumps are wrong... which defeats the purpose of touch typing to a certain degree. You can get stickers for your keys, but if you have backlit keyboard that doesn't work. I used to enjoy using the totally blank Das Keyboard, however there are rare cases where I HAD to use QWERTY, like when I remote desktop at work, I would be totally lost trying to figure out where the QWERTY keys were. So I just leave the QWERTY layout on the keyboard as a reference for when I actually need to know it for those rare situations.
thank you so much, i was hoping that someone wrote about it. It is incredible that you have to pass for that huge amount of pain to be confortable with that layout. Congratulations. I was trying for 15 minutes and it was a pain but it is some kind very confortable and maybe in spanish i will improve a lot my writing speed.
I had the same feelings! The best way to go about it is practicing every day without going cold turkey, the keyboard layouts won't interfere with each other and eventually you will be fluent in both QWERTY and Dvorak/Colemak
Too late, I already switched to Dvorak. For me it's not really any different at all compared to my years with QWERTY, but I committed to learning it without looking at my hands, and that difference has made it worth it for me.
Eu estava procurando algum conteúdo do meu idioma mas não encontrei nada tão relevante. Sua opinião é bem correta. Recomendo aprender o Dvorak com duas condições: Se for algum escritor (alguém que escreva muitas e muitas palavras por dia como relatórios extensos ou livros), e que tenha Windows. O Dvorak é excelente para apenas textos, nem para formatar o texto com atalhos ele serve, mas para apenas digitar sim. E o Windows pela facilidade de trocar de teclado com o atalho Win + Espaço ou Ctrl + Shift (caso habilitado). Mas já adianto que se não for alguém que realmente precise escrever milhares de textos, não recomendo, é muito frustrante e cansativo. Mas depois que se aprende você consegue ver os benefícios que ele promete.
Thing about QWERTY/QWERTZ is already good enough, but more importantly its standardized which is biggest reason why it will never change. Forcing a change to dvorak thriws a wrench into decades of standarization.
