Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - dvorak keyboard layout to learn touch typing

Nico Kempe · 11-04-2006, 03:55 PM

I haven't tried dvorak, but I can give you one advise on learning to touch-type: paint your whole keyboard black.
I saw this keyboard on Thinkgeek one time, and totally fell in love with it.
But, not allowing to spend 80 bucks on "a" keyboard, I went for the poor-mans solution: I spray-painted the whole thing black.

I learned to touch-type within two weeks.

To me, having a blank keyboard is the best way to learn to touch-type, and it looks really cool too

About the dvorak thing, yes it would be more efficient, but I imagine it would be nasty if you need to use qwerty boards often, switching back and forth could be a real pain in the [...], but then, I may be wrong about that.

=====edit

by the way, I believe dvorak was designed mainly for typing machines, so you use the stronger fingers for the most used keys. Nowadays however, we have keyboards with keys that hardly require any strenth in the fingers, and the keyboard I linked to above has weighted keys depending on the individual finger, so if it's about strength, qwerty is hardly a problem anymore.
Ofcourse dvorak is about more than that, but just so you know..)

11-04-2006, 03:55 PM	#2 (permalink)
Nico Kempe Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Netherlands Posts: 142	I haven't tried dvorak, but I can give you one advise on learning to touch-type: paint your whole keyboard black. I saw this keyboard on Thinkgeek one time, and totally fell in love with it. But, not allowing to spend 80 bucks on "a" keyboard, I went for the poor-mans solution: I spray-painted the whole thing black. I learned to touch-type within two weeks. To me, having a blank keyboard is the best way to learn to touch-type, and it looks really cool too About the dvorak thing, yes it would be more efficient, but I imagine it would be nasty if you need to use qwerty boards often, switching back and forth could be a real pain in the [...], but then, I may be wrong about that. =====edit by the way, I believe dvorak was designed mainly for typing machines, so you use the stronger fingers for the most used keys. Nowadays however, we have keyboards with keys that hardly require any strenth in the fingers, and the keyboard I linked to above has weighted keys depending on the individual finger, so if it's about strength, qwerty is hardly a problem anymore. Ofcourse dvorak is about more than that, but just so you know..) Last edited by Nico Kempe; 11-04-2006 at 04:01 PM.