After 10 years of switching to Dvorak, I wouldn't do it again. I don't live in one app, I use Office, Photoshop, Emacs, IntelliJ, Visual Studio, and each one, obviously, has different shortcut keys. I often have to think whether I'm in Dvorak or qwerty mode; and the muscle memory of shortcuts went away.
I can't deny that typing prose in Dvorak is extremely pleasant. But switching between Dvorak and qwerty (I often use others' computers) and between a regular keyboard and a Kinesis requires me to remember 4 different shortcuts sets for each program that I use.
If you are mostly a writer of prose, I recoomend the switch. But the ROI is not there for the jack-of-all-trades programmer.
Comments
After 10 years of switching to Dvorak, I wouldn't do it again. I don't live in one app, I use Office, Photoshop, Emacs, IntelliJ, Visual Studio, and each one, obviously, has different shortcut keys. I often have to think whether I'm in Dvorak or qwerty mode; and the muscle memory of shortcuts went away.
I can't deny that typing prose in Dvorak is extremely pleasant. But switching between Dvorak and qwerty (I often use others' computers) and between a regular keyboard and a Kinesis requires me to remember 4 different shortcuts sets for each program that I use.
If you are mostly a writer of prose, I recoomend the switch. But the ROI is not there for the jack-of-all-trades programmer.
Life is too short to forgo muscle memory.
For me personally switching has been surprisingly transparent.