Why I Use The Dvorak Keyboard Layout And Love It

So everyone in the English-speaking world uses the qwerty keyboard. It's a huge seemingly universal standard. And it has been for ages. But one day, my friend Michael (aka Seze) showed me the Dvorak keyboard and explained why he uses it and loves it: It's comfortable, it makes a lot of sense, and it's just amazing. One does not simply go back to qwerty after having used and learned Dvorak.

What in the world is a Dvorak keyboard? It's this:

Compare that to your keyboard.

Notice how lots of stuff got moved around. Before you call this stupid or weird or whatever, consider the genius of its design.

Qwerty was literally designed to be awkward. It was designed in the days of typewriters such that the chance of two adjacent key hammers sticking would be as low as possible. It was by no means designed to be ergonomic or fit well with comfort and ease of typing. It's just so your typewriter doesn't jam.

But now, No one really ever uses typewriters. Everyone uses computers. So that problem is now irrelevant. But the keyboard layout has never changed. Because no one likes change, even if for the better and for comfort. It's just too inconvenient, I guess.

Dvorak was actually designed to not be awkward. It was designed for maximum comfort and speed and minimum finger movement distance. All the vowels are on home row. All the most commonly used consonants are on the rest of home row. Therefore, a huge amount of legitimate English words can be typed on home row alone, without ever moving off it. Then from there, all the other letters frequently used are close by. The design totally minimizes two-row jumps (look at qwerty, at how you have to type words like decade, because, but, deceased, etc. then look at Dvorak how those would be typed)

To me, It just makes sense. It's just so comfortable to type on. Every time I try to type on a qwerty computer keyboard, it just feels so awkward and wrong and horrible.

I use the Dvorak layout on all my devices that support it. Basically, everything that isn't an Apple device. (Mac supports it, but for some reason, iPad, iPod, iPhone do not.) My Netbook, my Chromebook, my Nexus 7.

Trust me, It is very worth it to learn this layout. And the best way to learn it is to just permanently switch to it and practice it. Force yourself to use it. Your brain will get used to it and once you're used to it, it's a dream to type on. Try it, and once you are used to it, you'll love it. (check out this website) You'll wonder WHY in the world does ANYONE still use qwerty?