garron.us Cubing & More

Switching to Dvorak

Dvorak

Why? I might as well learn to touchtype, and Dvorak is a sort of unofficial standard among cubers.

Here’s what got me to switch:

• A wiki link in an
  arbitrary post
  led me to Macky’s familiar site.
• I decided to peruse his Dvorak page.
• He linked to the Dvorak Zine. I was still
  unsure, so I decided to read it. If it didn’t convince me, I would just forget about switching.
• It was enough. :-)
• March 11, 2009, 20:35:33PM, #rubik on irc.ircstorm.net:

  “lgarron: shellie: This is the first sentence I’ve written in Dvorak. :-)”

  Forgot to ;tell, but who cares? Further lines from my first Dvorak conversation (selected, related lines from others in parentheses):

   20:36:48 <%lgarron> This is going to be messy for a while. :-/
  (20:36:29 <+Ethan_Rosen> lgarron, keep going)
  (20:36:34 <+Ethan_Rosen> never look back)
   20:37:24 <%lgarron> Ethan_Rosen: Tryingv
  (20:37:32 <+Dene> lgarron: YAY!)
  (20:37:38 <+Dene> JOIN US!)
  (20:37:49 <+Dene> Oh man all us dvorakers are such a good influence)
   20:38:55 <%lgarron> Hmm, keyboard shortcuts are going to be annoying.
   20:40:33 <%lgarron> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
   20:41:04 <%lgarron> "The" is fun. :-)
  (20:41:30 < qq> it's like you make a mistake every time you type a word)
   20:42:26 <%lgarron> qq: I'm doing that right now. :-P

I haven’t looked back. I use “Dvorak – Qwerty ⌘”, which preserves he arrangement of shortcut keys like copy/paste.
I used Keyboard Viewer for a while, but since I’d memoed the Dvorak layout, I eventually dropped it
(I began this page as my first blind touch-typing practice). For encouragement, I also got two friends to switch.

I almost got sick of typing too slow, but to prevent myself from ever reverting (even temporarily), I decided to switch my keys around physically (see picture).
I can now cheat by looking at the keyboard, but at least I can get used to it before I gain actual speed.
I’m also trying Caps Lock for Delete,
especially because of frequent learning errors.

Most credit definitely goes to the Dvorak Zine for simple, entertaining inspiration.

Trivia:

• I did not switch because of this thread, nor had I seen the then-current xkcd comic yet.