Tag: dvorak

Dvorak transition nearly final

It took a bit longer than it did the last time I switched (I’m older now, I guess), but I think my transition to the Dvorak keyboard is nearly complete. I now “think” in Dvorak – my fingers are naturally finding the right keys without any intervention. Most of the time. Occasionally I have to pause to think about where a letter is – mostly when entering passwords or shell commands.

The biggest stumbling blocks at the moment are the slash keys ( /=\ ) and their shifted counterparts ( ?+| ) which tend to slow me down mostly when editing code (html lately – haven’t been spending much time hacking real code lately).

I had to use the old home computer to check email this evening, and found the antiquated QWERTY layout absolutely furiating. It makes no sense whatsoever, once you’ve seen the light of Dvorak.

So, now I’m about 75-95% of my previous QWERTY touch-typing speed, and seemingly getting faster every day. Wrists feel fine, too. See ya, QWERTY!

It took a bit longer than it did the last time I switched (I’m older now, I guess), but I think my transition to the Dvorak keyboard is nearly complete. I now “think” in Dvorak – my fingers are naturally finding the right keys without any intervention. Most of the time. Occasionally I have to pause to think about where a letter is – mostly when entering passwords or shell commands.

The biggest stumbling blocks at the moment are the slash keys ( /=\ ) and their shifted counterparts ( ?+| ) which tend to slow me down mostly when editing code (html lately – haven’t been spending much time hacking real code lately).

I had to use the old home computer to check email this evening, and found the antiquated QWERTY layout absolutely furiating. It makes no sense whatsoever, once you’ve seen the light of Dvorak.

So, now I’m about 75-95% of my previous QWERTY touch-typing speed, and seemingly getting faster every day. Wrists feel fine, too. See ya, QWERTY!

Dvorak Keyboard Layout – point of no return

Well, I guess I’m committed to Dvorak now. Prompted by some tips from Ryan Poling, I just rearranged the key caps on my Powerbook’s keyboard. In the office, I use an external USB keyboard that has already been fixed to support the Dvorak layout. But, this afternoon on the bus ride home, I cracked the ‘book open to hack on my Rails bookmark manager – and realized that although the key caps were still QWERTY, I was starting to think in Dvorak. Light at the end of the rainbow…

Ryan suggests buying a little wire tool for popping the key caps off. I just followed the tip of very carefully pushing down on the bottom edge of the key while gently pulling straight up on the top edge. Worked like a charm.

It also strikes me that Dvorak should be a touch more efficient for writing code, with the curly brackets and punctuations positioned a bit more optimally. If I pay attention while typing, I’m really surprised at just how little finger movement is required.

Well, I guess I’m committed to Dvorak now. Prompted by some tips from Ryan Poling, I just rearranged the key caps on my Powerbook’s keyboard. In the office, I use an external USB keyboard that has already been fixed to support the Dvorak layout. But, this afternoon on the bus ride home, I cracked the ‘book open to hack on my Rails bookmark manager – and realized that although the key caps were still QWERTY, I was starting to think in Dvorak. Light at the end of the rainbow…

Ryan suggests buying a little wire tool for popping the key caps off. I just followed the tip of very carefully pushing down on the bottom edge of the key while gently pulling straight up on the top edge. Worked like a charm.

It also strikes me that Dvorak should be a touch more efficient for writing code, with the curly brackets and punctuations positioned a bit more optimally. If I pay attention while typing, I’m really surprised at just how little finger movement is required.

Dvorak Keyboard Layout

Back in 2000, I was working on a very large project, writing a lot of code. So much that I started to suffer the early stages of the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (with the übersexy wristbraces, too). I’d heard of a different keyboard layout that was designed to optimize typing efficiency by minimizing the amount of movement by each finger. The keys were arranged so that the most commonly used characters are on “home row” and exact placement of keys was determined via statistical analysis.

I find something elegant and compelling about a keyboard layout that was designed for efficiency. It’s also rumoured to help alleviate CTS. So, I pulled out my screwdriver and rearranged the key caps, and configured my Mac to use the Dvorak layout (this was way back in the paleozoic MacOS 9 days). It took me about two weeks to really get into it, and I wound up being able to type faster, with no pain.

When MacOSX Public Beta was released, I was horrified to find that it didn’t have a Dvorak layout – so I rolled my own (which was replaced by a better official layout in MacOSX 1.0). I eventually reverted to QWERTY when I started working with the Learning Commons because it was too difficult to mentally switch between Dvorak and QWERTY (I was using a shiny new Powerbook G4/400, and wasn’t about to rearrange the keys on that bad boy).

Fast forward a few years, and I’m starting to have that familiar wrist pain again (still no keyboard tray, a month after moving into the new cube). I’d decided to give Dvorak another shot, and just finished fixing my inherited Apple Pro keyboard. It’s taking me a little longer to type, but It’s starting to come back to me.

Now I just have to use more words with the letters “A” and “M” – since they are in the same position in both layouts.

Back in 2000, I was working on a very large project, writing a lot of code. So much that I started to suffer the early stages of the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (with the übersexy wristbraces, too). I’d heard of a different keyboard layout that was designed to optimize typing efficiency by minimizing the amount of movement by each finger. The keys were arranged so that the most commonly used characters are on “home row” and exact placement of keys was determined via statistical analysis.

I find something elegant and compelling about a keyboard layout that was designed for efficiency. It’s also rumoured to help alleviate CTS. So, I pulled out my screwdriver and rearranged the key caps, and configured my Mac to use the Dvorak layout (this was way back in the paleozoic MacOS 9 days). It took me about two weeks to really get into it, and I wound up being able to type faster, with no pain.

When MacOSX Public Beta was released, I was horrified to find that it didn’t have a Dvorak layout – so I rolled my own (which was replaced by a better official layout in MacOSX 1.0). I eventually reverted to QWERTY when I started working with the Learning Commons because it was too difficult to mentally switch between Dvorak and QWERTY (I was using a shiny new Powerbook G4/400, and wasn’t about to rearrange the keys on that bad boy).

Fast forward a few years, and I’m starting to have that familiar wrist pain again (still no keyboard tray, a month after moving into the new cube). I’d decided to give Dvorak another shot, and just finished fixing my inherited Apple Pro keyboard. It’s taking me a little longer to type, but It’s starting to come back to me.

Now I just have to use more words with the letters “A” and “M” – since they are in the same position in both layouts.