Still slowly learning Dvorak

I've been learning Dvorak very slowly over the course of this blog.

One often repeated idea about Dvorak (or any key layout) is that you can't learn it half-heartedly. For me this simply isn't true. For this is exactly what I've done. I've been writing all my blog posts in it, and doing occasional other tasks as well. I'm still faster in qwerty, but at times I'm sure I'm improving. They say (citation needed) that its confusing to switch between layouts, but again this is not what I have found. I can still type just as fast in qwerty and my brain doesn't struggle with the context switching at all. Just as polyglots rarely speak in the wrong language by mistake, so to do I rarely suffer mental interference between my typing knowledge.

On the downside, I have semi-conceded defeat. As a programmer I spend most of my keystrokes writing code. And unfortunately the world of code expects qwerty. Numerous keyboard shortcuts only make sense when the keys are physically where the UX designer thinks that they are. Try using 'Ctrl'+'X', 'C' or 'V' in Dvorak and you quickly realise that the letters aren't even near the left-hand 'Ctrl' key, let alone next to each other. Bearing in mind the number of shortcuts available in the average editor this is a big hurdle.

For typing, Dvorak seems from experience to be better by a clear mile. For shortcuts, not so much. I will carry on down this path. As I haven't suffered any great cognitive dissonance from learning both I will use Dvorak for English and qwerty for coding.