I recently transitioned to the Dvorak keyboard layout from the traditional QWERTY style. This post will compare the advantages and disadvantages of each, and my experience of transitioning from QWERTY to Dvorak.

QWERTY

The most advantageous feature of QWERTY is its widespread adoption. It is used everywhere and is the default on 100% of the keyboards I have encountered. There is a real convenience with going anywhere and being able to fluently type without fiddling with settings. This comes most into play in public places like stores where you are asked to input your email or other personal information. Since I switched to Dvorak, those interactions have been painfully slow. Additionally, any time a loved one wants to use my computer (or I theirs), there would now be an extra step of changing the keyboard layout. In reality, however, I’m never actually using someone else’s computer, so in those very rare cases I usually just “hunt and peck.”

Dvorak

Since I switched to Dvorak, I have noticed it is easier to type. I move my fingers and hands less, which is less strain on them in the long run. Additionally, with ease of typing comes potentially faster typing speeds. From what I have heard, all of the fastest typists use Dvorak. While I’m not there yet, I’m sure I will reach a higher WPM than I had using QWERTY.

Transitioning

The transition to Dvorak was slow and frustrating. I will describe the process as three phases.

The first phase I was mostly messing around on https://learn.dvorak.nl/ and I didn’t really intend to fully switch. It was fun learning the layout, but then I started making more typos as my brain mixed the two formats. I decided to go all in with Dvorak.

The next phase was the most frustrating because of the many typos made and severely reduced typing speeds. I began thinking about what I wanted to express before I started typing so I wouldn’t waste precious keystrokes. In order to progress as quickly as possible, I would only use Dvorak for everything (vim included - this was also frustratingly slow because I had built up muscle memory).

From there on, my typing speed steadily increased and typo count steadily decreased. At the time of this writing, it has been about 3 months and my typing speed is 70 to 80 WPM.

Conclusion

To summarize, QWERTY is so widespread that using anything else will bring inconveniences. Despite the drawbacks, however, I believe using Dvorak is still worth it for me. I type every single day, and using a computer to write code is one of the biggest sources of my income. Because I mostly interact with my own computer and rarely with others, I find the ease of typing far outweighs the inconveniences associated with using anything besides QWERTY.