Isaac as a Dvorak keyboard User
I learned the standard keyboard during Form 2. When my sisters have to learn it during type-writing lessons, I learn it for nothing other than fun. Practically speaking, there is nothing that I really need to type that time. I don't even have a computer to type on.
But that turned into a real asset once my mother bought me my first computer, that I can interact with the computer so naturally. Everything to learn was speeded up by a factor of 2 to 3, just because I can touch-type.
On the other hand, the standard QWERTY
keyboard has left much
to be desired. One had to wonder why keys are located in such strange
locations. Given that I have spent some time even to try learning the
Esperanto language, it is not really surprising that I try to learn the
more scientific keymap,
Dvorak,
for again nothing more than fun.
As advertised, Dvorak helps to reduce finger stress because it reduce the amount of finger movement. It is specially designed to maximize the utilization of the keys that are in the home position, and also to balance the load between the two hands. They also say that it allows one to type quicker. Partly by curiosity, and partly because I think it is cool to type on a keyboard that nobody else can work on, I spent a month trying to get myself more efficient in the new keymap.
There were a lot of bumps on the road to Dvorak. The first one is computer programs, since computer programs are very different from pure English, and hence the amount of finger movement savings is less. There are keys like { and } that are quite easy to type in a standard QWERTY keyboard but are quite difficult to type on a Dvorak one.
The second problem is editor commands. As everybody who really use a text editor knows, they won't move their hands to the mouse. Instead, work are all done with the keyboard, as that is where their fingers are on, and hence is the natural place to get work done. But like programs, editor commands do not follow the pattern of English at all.
The third problem is... Chinese. This should be more or less expected.
After a while, I continue to work on the keyboard, and I started to regain or even slightly exceeds the speed of typing that I have had when I work on QWERTY. It turned out that most of the road-blocks just needs a couple more days to get used to. What one had to find is that the mind does not conciously think about what place to hit a key when one type, whether it is text in natural language or programming language or just commands to the computers. The brain builds reflex to do all that. So once the painful period is over, everything is back to normal, with the exception that one can type longer, in more strange orientation, before one cannot withstand the pain and had to stop.
On the other hand, I'm among the lucky ones who can switch between QWERTY and Dvorak at will, which is quite important if you have to work on the computers of others.