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As for being proficient in two keyboard layouts (I call it "bikeyboardal"), it's definitely possible. I type extensively at work in QWERTY and extensively at home in dvorak. I can mentally switch without taking a hit. Sometimes I'll come into work on a Monday and start furiously typing in dvorak and have to delete it and switch. It's just a mental on/off switch, though. Once I remember to type in the correct layout, I'm just as fast.

It took me a long time to get there, though. As soon as I started learning dvorak I lost most of my proficiency in qwerty and for a long ramping up time measured in weeks, I would be terrible in both. Muscle memory is strong. I kept having to figure out which layout I was using at the muscle/nerve level. So learning a new layout, especially when you've been typing so long, will be a hit on your productivity and will be a lesson in humility (at least it was for me as I naively assumed it would be easy). I'm a touch typist who doesn't look at the actual keys much, if that helps.

The only thing that bothers me about typing in dvorak is that a lot of games or programs want to use WASD or hjkl to control a game or to move the cursor around. I have learned to use dvorak in vim without issue, but if I'm playing a roguelike (angband, for example) I'll switch back to qwerty to make it easier. On the plus side, it completely solved the problem I was having, which was pain in my pinky fingers and the side of my hand. That went away after I added dvorak and never came back.

I saw a post on HN a while back and the poster was talking about using pinky for backspace because that avoided twisting the wrist. While that is true, it requires stretching the hand and fingers. To avoid this stretch, you have to move your whole arm.

I hit backspace with my ring finger because while it does require flexing the wrist a bit, it doesn't require any stretching or arm movement (on my hand). I play piano, and figuring out which fingers to use is a big deal to minimize stretching that can lead to tension.

So for anyone stretching their hand or fingers to reach keys, I'd suggest you give a longer finger a try. I touch type also, but never use my pinkies for anything on the number row.

Interesting. I'll do that. I can't hit the key without removing my finger from the 'J' key but I can still do so if I move my wrist and not my arm.

You want to remove your finger from the J key. If you don't, you're back to stretching your hand.

Here's an experiment: stretch your hand out as wide as you can and try to move your fingers up and down. Doesn't work so great. Now leave your fingers relaxed, like they are laying on a ball and try the same motion. Much easier!

When I hit Backspace, my index finger is on the bottom edge of the 0 key, where 0, O and P intersect, because my index finger is shorter than my ring finger. While hitting Backspace, all my fingers are straight - no hand stretching. I do have pretty big hands, so that's a factor too. If I wanted to (I don't!) I could leave my index finger on J and reach backspace with my pinkie by twisting my wrist. Or I can leave it on J and stretch to reach BS with my ring finger, but that's an uncomfortable stretch that would put my head in an uproar within a day.

Just to add my two cents as someone who recently switched to Colemak-DH after getting a moonlander (I used a das ultimate for years though), but I am currently typing this on my laptop using QWERTY.

I feel like switching between the two isn't always 100% painless with a small lag time especially if I've been away from one or the other a few days while using the other one predominantly. But generally it's not too bad. The worst of it being typing on my laptop, messaging friends late at night and having a sudden forgetfulness which is easily overcome by just looking at the keyboard for a moment while typing till my hands remember.

To give my personal impression, as someone who switched to neo [0] about 2 years ago. To be fair I only had about 20 years of QWERTZ & QWERTY experience before that.

1. For me it took about a year or so until I surpassed my QWERTY typing speed with certainty. I typed about 80-90 wpm on QWERTY and currently type at about 90-100 wpm on neo.

2. Yes, it's not a big issue. I rarely type QWERTY nowadays, but whenever I have to it clicks after a few minutes and I can type at maybe 70% the speed I typed at before. I'm certain were I to use it more, I would be able to type both at my "native" speeds. I also relearned all my emacs shortcuts pretty quickly. Using emacs is harder on QWERTY now, but fortunately I pretty much never have to do that now.

3. Due to 2, it's not really a problem. The actual problem is the other way round. You cannot easily give someone else access to your computer. It can be a bit annoying to change keyboard layouts each time someone else wants to quickly use your computer.

Hope that gives some perspective.

[0]: https://neo-layout.org

> I typed about 80-90 wpm on QWERTY and currently type at about 90-100 wpm on neo.

This is really fast and a true improvement. I am currently at 90 wpm and do not feel I could improve that much (German has special characters äöüß and a lot of capitals).

> I rarely type QWERTY nowadays, but whenever I have to it clicks after a few minutes and I can type at maybe 70% the speed I typed at before.

Interesting, so it might actually be possible to have multiple sets of muscle memory for the same thing!

> It can be a bit annoying to change keyboard layouts each time someone else wants to quickly use your computer.

Someone else will face much more difficulties using my computer than just the keyboard layout. 30 years of customization have made my computer very individual. ;-)

Thanks for sharing!

As someone who switched to Dvorak 6 years ago, I understand there is potential for a lot to be gained by switching to non-QWERTY layouts. I do wonder about what I should try next. Neo is one that looks especially interesting to me.

I think you bring up really great points, and it's probably the main reason there isn't more heterogeneity. There is a nice middle ground though, in customizable keyboards with macro buttons. I have the ErgoDox which is a split keyboard with these columns of three keys on each side of the split, and a cluster of thumb buttons. Really is nifty (once you get used to it) for programming. Even simple things like having one of the thumb buttons be a macro to enter "=>" which I use heavily in JavaScript is really nice.

> I have the ErgoDox

This keyboard sure looks extremely nice! The price tag, though!

On the other hand, the keyboard is my main tools of trade, and the perfect solution is certainly worth a price between 250 to 400 bucks.

I would want to try the hardware before doing the investment. That could actually be a business: renting out keyboards for evaluation.

I use a Keebio Iris [0] which is similar to a stripped-down ErgoDox. Careful part selection (especially keycaps) could have one for <$150, though you do have to solder it together yourself. I enjoyed the experience.

[0] https://keeb.io/collections/iris-split-ergonomic-keyboard

I value my input devices, for they are the tools with which I interface to the world.

If you want to dip your toes into custom keyboards, I'd recommend finding some 60%-ish board with hotswap switch sockets, since that will let you experiment with the choice of switches before you have to worry about soldering anything. Plenty of 60s are available as kits, or just interchangeable parts.

That is how I rationalized it. It has held up pretty well. Took some getting used to. One of my favorite things is that the shift keys on left and right can be sort of short single tapped to create quotes (). That's really improved my output when programming.

It also alleviated some RSI for me (which was why I bought it originally). It's excessively customizable—I honestly probably don't get as much use out of it as I could. You can basically assign a key to anything, including compound keys, macros, etc. And then on top of that, there are several layers you can swap between. So you have a button to press, and it swaps out the entire arrangement for some other keymapping (either momentarily or toggled). I got the RGB version too, so on top of that, you can customize per-key colors, which is helpful to map out keybindings when you're switching layers. (e.g. mine switches from blue to purple when I switch to my second layer).

It's really neat, and I would definitely invest if you're typing 8+ hours a day like me.

Simple answer is: use (self-)hypnosis.

The motor cortex can be "reprogrammed" (that's a metaphor) pretty easily. You already have the muscle memories, you just need to lay in a new "key map" (that's also a metaphor.)

I'll give you an example of what's possible: I was playing ukulele and a friend of mine said something about playing left-handed (I'm a righty.) I paused, went into a light trance, "rewired" my motor skills from left to right and vice versa, and then opened my eyes, turned over the uke, and started playing left-handed. It took maybe twenty seconds.

(I'm not saying the above to show off. I'm not special. Anyone can do this, you just have to learn how to operate your own nervous system.)

That's really impressive. I'm a bit skeptical at first but then I recall I've done similar feats (nowhere near as crazy) from time to time, I call it "jedi mode" when I seemingly just have a huge jump in motor cortex symmetry e.g. when juggling or spinning poi. I also taught myself to write left handed over about a few hours of bored free periods in high school. Quality is noticeably worse though.

Still, switching hands is super impressive. Were you already ambidextrous?

Cheers! I really can't emphasize enough that I'm not special, I think anyone could learn to do this sort of thing if they took the time and studied. I just read some books on hypnosis and experimented.

> Were you already ambidextrous?

Nope. I'm right-handed.

Subjectively, I "went in", went through the fingers one-by-one remapping the motions, then opened my eyes, turned over the ukulele, and started playing. It was a little rough compared to the other way for a few moments and then it tightened up and was the same quality. My friend who was watching me was pretty impressed too, but I swear it was easy.

Same thing with martial arts. A friend of mine ran a kung fu studio for many years. I came by to visit one day and participated in an intro class. I could "lay in" the movements he was teaching by imitation and then repeat them perfectly. Again, everyone was impressed and said things like, "I've never seen anyone learn so fast." but it wasn't really learning the way people do it. Just like a computer doesn't need to "learn" a program, it just loads and runs. The real learning already happened back in the day when I learned-to-learn using hypnosis.

It's pretty cool to be able to do this stuff, but as with everything, there are trade-offs: my problems now are boredom and loneliness. I lot of days I feel like a time-traveler from the future. If only people would get a clue and stop running around doing things the hard way...

I learned typing on German QWERTZ, too. I started using eurkey [0] a few years ago. For me it hits the sweet spot between good position of special characters used for programming (it's effectively QWERTY in that regard) but with common European special characters easily available. So instead of dedicated keys for ä/ö/ü, it became AltGr+a/o/u.

The switch was not to hard and in the beginning I kept using my QWERTZ keyboard. After about a year I decided to stick with it and bought a QWERTY keyboard.

Having to switch back to the QWERTZ layout of coworkers is a little awkward but it's not too bad.

[0]: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/

I'm 50 and learned to touch type years before there were personal computers. I switched to Colemak a couple of years ago and it took a year to get really proficient.

I can no longer type in Querty, though I have no trouble using swipe keyboards on phones. I'm a faster typer now.

But the real benefit is that it no longer hurts to type. Typing in Querty hurt my hands after a while to the point where I couldn't type or use a mouse. Typing in Colemak fixed that, even though most of my work is on my non-ergonomic Macbook keyboard.

Everyone thinks I'm crazy. "Just use qwerty, don't be weird. My hands are fine."

But the pain after a few hours typing was horrible, until I moved to Colemak.

> Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout?

In my experience with dvorak no after testing for two years I had the same wpm as qwerty. If you can touch type you have maxed out your speed, the tiny reduction in travel time for your fingers just doesn't add up to anything measurable.

> Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the same time?

I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but when I learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it with qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I defiantly couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be able to touch type.

> If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer.

Yes! You look like its your first day using a computer. Once I could touch type I didn't really care what the key caps said and its fairly easy to switch between dvorak and qwerty on windows and I don't use other peoples computers often so it wasn't a deal breaker.

The only benefit I seen from using dvorak was that no one else could use my computer, as soon as they realised it wasn't qwerty they ran.

> I can switch between mac and pc layout no problems, but when I learned to touch type on dvorak I forgot how to do it with qwerty. When I used a friends computer with qwerty I was searching for every key with two fingers hovered over the keyboard like a raptor. Maybe others can do it but I defiantly couldn't and found it very embarrassing to not be able to touch type.

It takes practice. I switched to Dvorak around 2001/2002, and my QWERTY typing speed dropped from 50-60wpm down to about 10. But I then spent a lot of time in offices and labs where I didn't have control over the computers, they were closer to "kiosk" systems (single-user). I could have added Dvorak, but it would have been a bit rude. If I forgot to change it back it would create confusion. If I had a keyboard shortcut to switch layouts, it could create confusion. And having to manually change it was too tedious to bother with, for me. So I just sucked it up and used Dvorak on my own workstation and at home, and QWERTY in the lab environments. I got my QWERTY speed back up to 50-60, and my Dvorak speed never dropped below 100.

> Is it really possible to improve 42 years typing practice with a new layout?

Definitely NO, the reasons I have written down in another branch of this topic. Maybe your grandkids would have a chance to get rid from a layout with "typewriter" word on an upper row for some marketing goals.

> - Is it possible to be proficient in two keyboard layouts at the same time?

I know a guy who uses Programmer Dvorak for emacs and QWERTY for rest of his life. It is hard to understand why he is doing so but I know this is possible. Maybe he just wants to get rid of anything except emacs :)

> - If you get accustomed to a non-standard keyboard layout, isn't it a problem if you have to use some other computer (where you cannot change the layout) for whatever reason, for example in an Internet cafe?

Yes, typing QWERTY is a problem for me, but there are not any Internet cafes nowadays. I mean if I need to enter my email into somebody's device I will do it in one-finger mode while everybody thinks I am kidding. If it is needed to write more than one line on somebody's PC there are always some ways to negotiate.

Look up Sean Wrona -- one example of typing skill that can't be improved by changing keyboard layouts. People looking into Dvorak are often warned that it isn't a magic bullet to make them faster, only possibly more comfortable.

> Look up Sean Wrona

Yeah, insane!

> People looking into Dvorak are often warned that it isn't a magic bullet to make them faster, only possibly more comfortable.

That is an important point!

First, being fast in a competition is not only a question of fast finger movement, but also endurance and ability to focus. I would classify myself as a "burst" typer - pretty fast (about 460 characters per minute), but only for a short time. Because my typical typing operation is throwing out emails, short reports, jotting down notes and typing junks of code. I am lacking endurance when it comes to continouos typing. Sean Wrona certainly has everything it takes!

And then, of course, comfort is a coequal factor. Comfort means health! Because, when I look at Sean Wrona's shoulders I see a serious malposition. It might not originate from typing, but if it does than the comfort factor has been neglected.

So you are right! Improvement in comfort/health might justify an alternative keyboard layout, even if some speed is lost.

About 12 years ago, I quit qwerty cold turkey on an unlabeled das keyboard ultimate for Dvorak and my typing speeds went from about 102wpm to 5. I printed out a label of the layout and put it on a wall a good distance from my chair and referenced it to find the correct keys. It took me about 2 weeks to get back up to 40wpm and another year later I was typing at my normal speed.

I still think it’s one of the best layouts; others bring up the home row but Dvorak had a lot of other factors at play too. If you’re interested, I highly recommend this 1972 article[0] on the layout, it’s quite a story.

One benefit of learning blind without ever using labels was that I can jump on any computer with a qwerty keyboard, switch to Dvorak, and just start typing. I have never ran into a computer that actively prevented me from switching keyboard layouts, and I even have a word processor that comes with Dvorak as an option. Bear in mind, I am still typing on a QWERTY keyboard, but if I type the letter Q, it outputs on the computer a comma.

Most modern games can detect alternate layouts and remap keys automatically, and for those that can’t it’s not difficult to remap them.

Back to the question of switching though. I went five years exclusively using Dvorak and not QWERTY, and for me that was fine. I will papers, I was programming, and I would simply just switch to Dvorak when I went on a computer that was not my own. The few times I did have to use QWERTY, I would just hunt and Peck. However, I ended up getting a job where they did a lot of deskside support for various clients, and of course I could not just change the keyboard layout on them. At some point, I realized, that I was able to switch my mindset when typing in qwerty, and suddenly I was just as proficient as I used to be in Corti then in Dvorak. You have to have kind of an active change in your brain similar to if you are speaking in a different language. If I’m on a qwerty keyboard I’m in “qwerty mode” and on Dvorak, default mode.

I must warn you, even after two weeks and 40 words per minute, I found Dvorak so comfortable I didn’t even care about my typing speed anymore and stopped doing typing drills. Consequently, while I am capable of using a qwerty keyboard for short periods of time, I find typing on one so uncomfortable that if given the opportunity I just switch to Dvorak. Obviously I would not do this on a client’s computer, but an Internet café is fair game.

I must also warn you that since Dvorak actively spreads the load across all fingers, your pinky may get sore when you first start only because those muscles aren’t used to being used. If you’re interested in reading my experience, I wrote about it in 2010[1].

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20190125034817/http://infohost.n...

[1] https://aj.ianozi.com/2010/12/switched-keyboard-layouts.html...

That approximately describes my switch to Dvorak. It is so important to leave the keycaps qwerty or blank, and have the Dvorak reference strictly external.

I'm in the same boat. Learned Dvorak on a blank keyboard. Even when I was still building muscle memory and typing slow, it was and still is more comfortable than QWERTY.

I also used the external reference while learning (taped a printed-out layout to the top of my screen).

One regret: like the parent commenter, I stopped drilling early when "fast enough". Then I asymptoted to comparable speed to my qwerty days (and greater comfort), but worse accuracy. Years later some further drilling was worthwhile to end up actually better at typing than in qwerty.

Overall I'd say the Dvorak/qwerty diff was enough to justify choosing Dvorak when you start to learn touch typing, but probably not for switching later.

The increment of improvement from Dvorak to a newer layout seems considerably smaller still, and I'd weigh that against universality of support.

> Most modern games can detect alternate layouts and remap keys automatically, and for those that can’t it’s not difficult to remap them.

I have a wildly different experience, most games never manage to detect my AZERTY keyboard, and some don’t even let me remap easily (case in point, stranded deep does not even let you remap or see controls during the tutorial, which was a truly awful experience). Nowadays I force qwerty during games to avoid issues caused by developers not understanding that there are different layouts out there.