It’s probably just my innate grumpiness and contrariness but I’ve never bought into the Dvorak hype. Adherents of the Dvorak layout will tell you that it’s much more logical and will make you a faster typist. I’ve never been convinced but even if it’s true, I’m already a pretty fast touch typist with QWERTY and could never see the point of enduring the pain of learning to type with the new layout just to achieve a modest increase in typing speed.
I was, therefore, interested in the views of Jon Porter who’s been a Dvorak typist for 10 years but agrees with me that it’s probably not going to make much difference in your typing speed. In an article in The Verge, Porter says that when he switched from QWERTY to Dvorak, he did see a large jump in his speed but not for the reasons given by Dvorak adherents.
He says that when he started typing on a QWERTY keyboard he used hunt-and-peck and could never break himself of the habit. He tried learning to touch type but always fell back to hunt-and-peck. Then he read about this wonderful new Dvorak system that promised greater speed and ease and decided to try it out. He learned to touch type with Dvorak and, of course, his speed was much increased.
A resounding win for Dvorak? Porter doesn’t think so. It is, he says, really a win for touch typing. The thing is, when he was learning Dvorak, he could no longer drop back to hunt-and-peck because the key caps—which he hadn’t changed—were all wrong. He had to rely on the key chart he was using to learn so he was forced to use touch typing.
People I respect, like Xah Lee and Sacha Chua, have put a lot of effort into learning Dvorak or some other alternative system and have great typing speeds as a result. I suspect, though, that those guys would achieve good speed no matter what system they used because they were willing to put in the time practicing and doing boring drills. Sadly, I’m too lazy for that so I’m sticking with QWERTY.