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Comment by nightcracker | Hacker News Reader

The metric that a top dvorak typer is 20 WPM faster than a top qwerty typer is not true. Dvorak is more ergonomic, but doesn't make you type substantially faster.

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If I was going to go to all the trouble of learning a non-qwerty keyboard layout, I wouldn't choose dvorak, but would probably choose something else that's supposed to be even more efficient and ergonomic.

But for me it's really not worth switching from qwerty, as I don't want to have problems typing on someone else's qwerty keyboard when I need to -- which is a problem I've heard many non-qwerty typists report having, even if they were once fluent in qwerty. Some do report that they can make the cognitive switch from one to the other relatively easily, but some can't.

So for me it's not worth the risk of spending all that time to learn another layout just to find it hampers my qwerty-typing ability when I might need it.

If I was going to learn anything, it would be steno -- as at least it being on a radically different keyboard should mean that learning it shouldn't impact my qwerty-typing ability.

I was just trying colemak, from what I read the loss in qwerty is dued to people making the fast jump, I will see if learning the different layout in like the evening and keeping qwerty for the rest of the day preserves both memories

I'm a dual qwerty/colemak touch typist. I was able to learn colemak quickly with low risk of losing qwerty because I was already a very good touch typist. A large amount of typing skill is transferred which is why people with poor typing skills have such a difficult time learning a new layout.

As far as say Dvorak or colemak gaining you faster speeds, I'm pretty doubtful of that claim. It has more to do with how much effort you decide to put in.

Note that Dvorak was optimized for standard mid-20th-century typewriters. (Just as QWERTY was optimized for the original late-19th century Sholes/Remington typewriter design.)

In that context, it’s a very significant improvement over QWERTY, in particular by avoiding the bottom row, which on a typewriter is slow and awkward to reach. 15-20 WPM advantage sounds pretty plausible to me.

On a “modern” mostly flat keyboard, some other layout would be better than either QWERTY or Dvorak (personally I don’t think any of the popular layouts are properly optimized for common current keyboards, but to be fair the modern keyboard is a pretty terrible design). Dvorak is still a significant improvement over QWERTY though.

Er, but your fingers move less distance on average with Dvorak, thus it's more efficient, thus faster?

But you will have less training than on qwerty and the travel might be neglectable. Or maybe even something else, I have trouble but pressing the wrong vocals in the home row somehow (not typing Dvorak, but something similar, the german neo layout). I will still never go back to qwerty.

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