Why I use Dvorak

I’ve been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for about 20 years now, easily comprising the vast majority of the written content I’ve ever produced. I’m often asked why, and the answer usually surprises people: accessibility.

I’m not sure what answer people are expecting, but accessibility is unfortunately a forgotten consideration for most things most of the time. In my case, when I started University I began typing substantially more than I had previously; which is not exactly a surprise when studying Software Engineering. However, fairly quickly into my degree I began to develop a lot of pain in the joints of my hands. This was seriously concerning, and I worried at the time whether this would prevent me from pursuing my career.

Up until that point I was using the “normal” QWERTY keyboard layout. I was decently fast at typing but I had terrible form. Generally using only 3 fingers, hovering my hands high above the keyboard, and using far too much force. The cause of my joint pain was pretty obvious.

I tried and tried to correct my form, to put all of my fingers on the home row and to use the correct digits for the correct keys; but it was slow and frustrating and every time I’d quickly and subconciosly revert to the habbits of my poor form. Some of this was probably caused by the fact that I grew up around computers from a very early age.

My earliest memory is of my Dad setting up a 286, which clearly had a huge impact on the trajectory of my life. Back then there weren’t many resources for developing computer literacy in children, but one that I remember was Mario Teaches Typing. And so I got a pretty early start at learning bad typing habits (heh, go figure) as my too-small-to-do-it-properly hands smashed the keys from above so that I could get “better” at the game.

Anyhow, trying to consciously undo 15 years of bad typing habits wasn’t working for me so I decided to do something more drastic. The only way to develop better habits was to fundamentally break my existing mental model for typing.

IT. SUCKED.

I went so far as to pop all of the keycaps off of my laptop at the time and rearrange them into the Dvorak layout, which felt weird (difficult to align hands on the home row when F and J are elsewhere) but helped a lot. Even though I forced myself to type coursework in the new layout it was still an exasperating experience for chatrooms, so for the first few months I moved back and forth between layouts whenever I’d get frustrated. However, over the course of several months I was able to use Dvorak for more and more of my work and soon enough I was typing faster on it with proper form than I ever did with QWERTY. Success, finally.

The results have been huge for me, the pains that I regularly experienced went away entirely. Now, 20 years later I’m again starting to experience slight pains in my hands periodically from typing; but it’s manageable for now with breaks and hand exercises. Still, a 20 year reprieve is an excellent outcome and easily worth the frustration of re-learning how to type.