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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to subthread hear from people if alternate keyboard layouts have made a difference. ?

I've used Dvorak for the past few decades. As suggested by one of the other comments, it took about 2 weeks to learn well enough to get back to my normal speed (>80wpm).

It makes a massive difference in comfort. 5 minutes typing at full speed on QWERTY and my wrists start to hurt. (I really don't know how people do it.) On Dvorak, I can type all day at full speed with no pain at all. Surprisingly, the keyboard hardware itself doesn't seem to matter.

(Details: I mostly use a Mac, with caps lock mapped to control, NSRepeatCountBinding set to ^u, and -- obviously? -- I rarely touch the arrow keys.)

> 5 minutes typing at full speed on QWERTY and my wrists start to hurt. (I really don't know how people do it.)

Wrist-bending to maintain the home row, I suspect. I have a different, self-taught style that partially involves holding my hands above the keyboard and using muscles all along my arms to move my hands without bending my wrists much - never had any problems.

In my case switching to a keyboard with each hand at an angle (Microsoft Natural Keyboard) changed my life as the pain went away like a switch.

It sounds like you're describing standard typing posture. Is your wrist position different than that somehow?

Same here. Dvorak is so much more ergonomic than QWERTY.

Wrist discomfort with QWERTY completely disappeared upon switching to Dvorak.

Moved to Colemak and learnt touch typing on it directly (to take advantage of the mental break). Really improved my "writing feeling", solved some nagging RSI issues and in general helped in "well-being". I don't type particularly fast, but I type way smoother, which is what feels good. I can't recommend Colemak enough, although I have never convinced anyone (in around 3 years).

Greetings to a fellow Colemak user. I've used Colemak for about 7~8 years now. It's really interesting to see home row keys polished to a shine, while others aren't.

I do always change one thing, and recommend it for others too, is to change caps-lock into a control.

For a long while I've had C-M-A mapped in caps lock, then I moved to using a Gergo (60% split ortho) programmed with QMK, so it's now mostly my own layout, specially for modifiers (see [here](https://mostlymaths.net/2020/01/new-keyboard-gergo.html/))

Yeah, it definitely did, re-learned to touch type in Colemak and also upgraded to ortholinear split keyboard. Yet it's takes quite some time after ~20 years of touch typing on Qwerty.

I use Dvorak exclusively and echo the other comment -- I'm not sure that it has made a dramatic difference in my speed, but it is much more comfortable! Your hands sit neatly on the home row, and do not have to reach much. The only downside is that I use vim and after many years of Nethack am pretty good at hjkl movement, and I can't even take advantage! :( Definitely something to consider though if you want to switch and are a vim user.

I use QWERTY but on an ergodox. Massively improved my experience at my usual workstation and it’s still seamless to jump on a normal keyboard if I’m using my laptop or someone else’s machine.

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