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Comment by weavie | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint, my ability to type on Qwerty is shot now that I am on Dvorak. I'm back to searching around on the keyboard with my eyes and tapping with single fingers. I feel sure people question my ability to work on computers when I have to go and fix something on their computers and spend ages just typing out basic stuff..

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Same problem here.

I learned to type on Dvorak 20 years ago and my ability to type on QWERTY still did not recover to even 1/5th of my previous speed.

It is pretty embarrassing sometimes.

On the other hand I use completely unmarked keyboard which coupled with Dvorak makes me largely invulnerable to pranking by coworkers by writing mail in my name (assuming I forget to lock my workstation which happens about twice in a decade).

I can still type on QWERTY without looking at keys but my skill definitely took a hit because I never use it. I bet I'd be up to par if I spent a day or two only on QWERTY again.

One time I had an interview where they handed me a Windows laptop on QWERTY to code some problem and I looked like I could barely use a computer :D

I never had any problem in switching forth-and-back especially because the layout are completely different and this prevents confusion.

Besides, why would you need to use qwerty other than occasionally?

Reminder: sharing keyboard with other people is really bad for hygiene, due to the shape of the keys preventing any deep cleaning.

It took me two years before I could switch between Dvorak an Qwerty without much difficulty. Four years later, I can now rapidly switch between the two. The only problem is remembering which layout I have turned on, but once that's clear, there's not a problem anymore. I haven't practiced since the first year, but all that time I frequently switch because I work with multiple computers and RDP sessions where the layout doesn't carry over. Touch typing with Dvorak came after learning the muscle memory for typing characters, and afterwards with Qwerty, it was muscle memory for words/phrases that got me typing well again.

I was in this boat as well for quite some time. Early COVID, I bought a programmable (QMK-based) keyboard and hard-coded the keys to match the Dvorak layout, since most of my interactions with PCs was via RDP-like situations (Horizon Web Client, VMs, RDP). This way, I could keep everything configured to QWERTY and just use my keyboard. On my laptop, I have it set up with both layouts, so that if I don't have my QMK keyboard connected (in my lap, travelling, etc), I can just hit Ctrl-Shift and switch the built-in keyboard to Dvorak.

To me, this is the best setup. Only pain point is that it required me to configure the 2 PC games I play to fit with my Dvorak configuration, since the PC sees it as me typing on a QWERTY keyboard with alien hands.

Maybe you weren't all that good with qwerty before? I always felt it's like learning an extra foreign language: learning French doesn't make your German worse.

YMMV but after 3-4 weeks of dvorak, I actually did have difficulties when using qwerty. I gave up dvorak because I don't want to have to modify every keyboard/system I'm on, as opposed to just sitting down at a terminal and getting work done.

I think you might have tried a bit more. I'm typing this on my wife's qwerty laptop and have zero issues with blind typing on it, just a little more strain from having to move fingers more that it is possible on Dvorak.

But not using German makes your German worse.

True. But you can't be isolated from QWERTY in the real world: my wife's computer uses it, as do a lot of computers out there, so I still do get practice with it from time to time.

I’ve met people who lost their native language for another one (Portuguese —> Italian).

So maybe GP was that good

I could touchtype like crazy on qwerty before. It's possible because I learned dvorak when I was older - early 40s - I only have space in my brain for a single layout now..

I have to agree with the other poster. My typing speed was in the 70+ WPM on qwerty prior to learning dvorak, and now I'm a glorified hunt-and-pecker on qwerty keyboards.

The only exception to this is typing on my mobile device, which is configured to qwerty.

Really? I always feel like I'm mixing up my 3rd/4th/5th languages.

I can type Qwerty, Dvorak, and Colemak all over 100wpm (https://youtube.com/watch?v=mQ6iSYMMHv0). You definitely have to practice all three together if you don’t want to lose them.

Also happened with language learning. I speak English and Spanish natively. Learned Italian (very similar to Spanish) in high school. After college learned Chinese in China. One day I ran into an Italian person in China and tried to talk to them in Italian. I kept jumbling Italian and Chinese, even though on paper Italian is so much easier for me than Chinese. It was like my brain only had space for all native languages, and just one foreign language. I’m sure with practice I could speak both Italian and Chinese, but that’s the whole point of this comment. It takes practice to maintain them all.

I agree with this. Colemak is a skill. Qwerty is a skill. Switching between the two is a separate skill. But all 3 can be learned.

I think it is exactly the opposite.

If your speed did not fall it means you did not learn well.

I actually learned to type at school (yeah, funny business school my parents sent me to). We had an actual specialist teacher to teach us to type on electric typewriters using pretty nice methodology.

To learn to type well is to train "muscle memory". This means you think the letter and your body does it for you, automatically, without any part of your conscious brain involved.

I don't know where keys are on my keyboard. It is unmarked, so I can't look it up. If somebody asks me, I need to lay my hands on it and think the letter and see which finger "wants to" press the button. In that regard I am a passenger and once I think a word or sentence I don't have any further control -- it is some uncontrollable part of my brain that takes over and does it for me.

Even when typing at speed I am still free to think about anything else. Just as when you walk you don't need to think about walking itself and can concentrate on whatever else you want.

It does actually. The time you spend practising French is time you are neglecting German and hence, your knowledge will decay. If it's not a long time you won't notice it (maybe some very specific words that you rarely use will be forgotten).

Any long-term migrant learns this over the years, sadly. Obviously you can still use the language, but the farthest borders of language-specific knowledge become frail and tend to fall off the edge of your brain. I now struggle to give "flourish" to my speech in the "old" language, and have to make a conscious effort to remember difficult words.

Some folks seem to be able to switch and keep their old ability and some can't. I was able to switch back to Qwerty pretty easily, but it made my wrists contort in such odd ways that I never noticed before. So I generally wouldn't go back to it.

Colemak all muscle memory for me, so it's nearly impossible for me to remember my Qwerty muscle memory now.

One place that really sticks out is job interviews. Asking your interviewer to change keyboard layouts is a bit intrusive. It's not a huge deal on a Mac, but it's a challenge on Windows since Colemak isn't built in.

When I was around 12 I learned Dvorak and lost the ability to touch type in Qwerty, then my parents forced me to go back to Qwerty because I kept leaving the family computers in Dvorak. Because of that I can type in both, though my Dvorak is still faster.

Same for me. My fingers remember dvorak and can't work with qwerty with just using the fingers' memory.

I use qwerty on mobile just fine. I don't think dvorak on mobile would be of any help since I type with thumbs.

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