Learning Dvorak – Day 4

I skipped the review today and finished all the letter lessons. It feels good to know where all the letters are, but my wpm is only 10. And typing with Dvorak hurts my head. I have to concentrate really hard. It’s like holding a door open in my brain.

Don’t type the old way – Type the new way.

If I let the door shut then my fingers just go right back to qwerty without even thinking about it. My fears about switching back may be unfounded.

At this point, the letter placement with Dvorak does not seem to have any natural advantages like I thought it would. I was buying into the idea that the letters were placed in qwerty with the purpose of slowing people down and keeping keys from jamming in the old-fashioned typewriters.

Now, I feel like qwerty is superior because the most frequent letter combinations (like T-H) are NOT right next to each other. (Which might jam a traditional typewriter…) But also alternating hands when typing seems to be the fastest way to type…so the more combinations that alternate left to right, the faster I can make the transitions.

I’m not giving up on Dvorak yet. I don’t think I’ve given it a fair shot with only 4 days, but I am not as sure that I will end up loving it in the end.