Trust Tommy

Ugh, this post is going to take ages to do because I switched to Dvorak, which is a new keyboard layout. For my non-techy followers, dvorak switches around the keys of your keyboard to a new layout.

If you’re like all other people I’ve talked to, you’re probably wondering why anyone would want/bother to do something like this:

1. This is more a personal reason, but because of CP, my left hand is very weak. I know that everyone has a good hand and a bad but mine is especially weak. Dvorak has more commonly used keys on the left while Qwerty is the opposite. Basically, my left hand gets more action (not like that) because the common keys are on the left side.

2. Dvorak puts commonly used keys together. Qwerty was developed on/for the typewriter. one of the problems with the typewriter was that the keys were prone to sticking, so they didn’t place common keys together. When computers were invented, this problem wasn’t an issue, yet no-one did anything.

3. Key combinations are beside each other. ones like T and H or C and H make typing words like “that” or “choose” really nice. Having said that, there are some positionings that annoy me, like K and Y, but hopefully it’s just a case of practicing.

As for speed, on Qwerty I had a peak WPM (word-per-minute) speed of 49. That`s roughly halved since I switched. I’ve been 45 minutes writing this post.

I get really frustrated at this too. Dear family, if you happen to hear screams of anguish from my bedroom, I’m not in pain, I just can’t find the X key :)

Practice practice practice!