Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomisimo
since I'm comfortable with it, I see no compelling reason to change.
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Let me tell you my experience. I started learning it because I intended to be a programmer (this was back in grade 8 or so) and had heard that Dvorak reduced the risks of repetitive strain injuries related to typing such as carpal tunnel syndrome. A bit of research proved this to be true (don't take my word for it, search for yourself). Qwerty was designed to be deliberately inefficient for the typist in the respect that it was intended to minimize the chances of a typebar jam. Dvorak was designed by analyzing English words for letter frequencies, combination frequencies, etc and placing the letters in the spots that were found to be the easiest (in Dvorak's opinion) for the human hand to hit.
To emphasize the difference easily, someone created a Java applet that allows you to enter text and then compare the differences in typing said text on QWERTY vs Dvorak (and later vs Colemak). Here is the URL of the applet for you to check it out yourself:
http://colemak.com/Compare
I pasted in a short story I wrote and came up with the following stats for finger distance traveled - QWERTY: 318.8m Dvorak: 175.5m Colemak: 167.7m. This shows you how much less work your fingers are actually doing on Dvorak as compared to Qwerty -- almost half as much! Subsequently, people are also capable of typing much faster on Dvorak. As you can also see, the Colemak layout is very slightly more efficient in some ways than the Dvorak layout. This has been true for most of the sample pieces of text I entered into the applet.
However, these are all just facts. Let me tell you the reason I feel should be the most compelling for you to change. I never heard this reason touted in all the reading about Dvorak I did, which is a real shame. I only learned it after I became proficient at Dvorak and would on occasion switch back to Qwerty. Even before I reached the typing speed on Dvorak that I had attained on Qwerty (125+ WPM) it already
felt so much better to type on Dvorak. When I switched to Qwerty and typed a paragraph or two I would start to see how sore my fingers felt. I never noticed it before, but it was really a pain to type on Qwerty. On Dvorak, typing just feels like a natural flow. My fingers feel like they are simply enabling thoughts. I don't think about the keys or the layout or anything, I just think the thoughts and they appear on the screen.
To sum up, I would have to say I feel there are many very compelling reasons to switch to Dvorak (or Colemak, I feel no prejudice against it although I don't think it is enough of an improvement to warrant me switching from Dvorak). If you do a lot of typing on a daily basis then try practicing for 30 minutes a day. There are some good websites to help you learn Dvorak which have typing tutor style Flash/Java programs specifically meant for the Dvorak layout.
Hope this helped you decide if it would be worth it
