i haven't been here in a while

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[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I am to understand that's not actually typical

That's the exact reason I never learned it. I can do 100-120 wpm on a qwerty so the idea of doing 140-150 wpm on dvorak was very enticing. But the inability to switch was just a deal-killer, especially when I was in college and working in an office and using lots of different computers.

Did you notice wpm speed gains from switching?

[–]theFriendlyDoomer 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Did you notice wpm speed gains from switching?

I've been pretty decent at touch typing most my life, so not really. The thing is that most of our speed comes from learning multi-key combinations. Dvorak realistically can only increase speed 10% or so. But I really feel the difference on how much I get to keep my fingers on home row (one of those Pareto 80/20 deals).

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That sounds like a nice feel. Thanks for telling me about your firsthand experience with it.

Speaking of multi-key combinations... I once looked in to learning how to use a stenographer keyboard, which can do like 250 wpm (it's what they use in courtrooms and for tv closed captioning). I'm still kind of half-considering it. I watched a talk about a programmer who added programming functions as multi-key combinations as well, so they could code very fast. (I found the talk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g )

Steno is a "chord" based system, where you hit like 5 keys at once, and basically type whole words simultaneously rather than letter-by-letter: https://www.huseby.com/blog/2019/court-reporting-more-than-just-typing-fast

But I guess it involves a lot of shorthand as well, so it needs an interpretation system to make it back in to full English. But I guess this is already solved with real-time closed captioning, so it seems like it should be doable on a computer too... anyways I always thought that would be a cool thing to try, going even beyond Dvorak.