Just another blog!

I have been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for a little less than a year. This post is the recollection of my experiences as a Dvorak user in a world dominated by stubborn dogmatists inclined on worshipping the most inefficient keyboard layout users, manufacturers and perpetrators of the QWERTY keyboard layout. I too was a user of the QWERTY layout until a little less than a year ago. I could say that my typing speed was rather decent, reaching around 50 words a minute under optimal conditions. I had over four years of practice touch typing on the QWERTY layout, and felt rather proud of my typing skills, which I can modestly claim were better than most of my friends. However, I have always tried to be a maverick, and what better way to claim that I speak geek than to have a keyboard layout as esoteric as the Dvorak? I tried switching to the Dvorak, but the cost of switching was extremely high, and I barely managed to type at 5wpm. It sucked so much while typing code, that I gave up ...

This is a post that I have been meaning to write from quite some time. Long hours spent typing code on my computer left my hands fatigued, and left me with a lot of pain in my wrists and fingers. That is when I decided to use the Dvorak. But I have got the same bad habit as Dr. Watson, to tell a story backwards. Of course, you must be wondering what the Dvorak is. The story of keyboards starts with the invention of the typewriter. Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, tried with a two row piano style keyboard. But then, he got into many difficulties with the design. Then he finally settled for a four row design. This was similar to the QWERTY layout that most computers and typewriters today possess. The engineers at Remington, to whom Sholes had presented his design modified the layout a little further, and then the QWERTY was born. As typewriters became popular, people got used to the layout, and started practising touch typing, i.e. typing without looking at the keys...