DVORAK is remarkably easy to learn, all things considered. I just started today after checking out jmilton's links, and while the going is a bit slow, it's not as bad as I expected. I'm not sure yet if it will really be beneficial, but I figure I'll give it a shot for two reasons:
1. I like to challenge myself. I'm currently learning to play Guitar Hero left-handed, and it's been interesting. This is along those same lines, but it might actually benefit me.
2. It will be fun to mess with my friends when they try to use my computer.
In my limited usage so far, yes, the typing is slow. It's really frustrating that I can no longer type as fast as I can think. The hardest thing, however, seems to be re-learning applications' keyboard shortcuts. If Firefox and GMail is hard, what's vim going to be like?
After some more research, I think Colemak (http://colemak.com/) is going to be a better alternative. The bottom row stays the nearly the same, which means that a lot of the common application shortcut keys remain the same. It's also based on more modern, computer-assisted research into English word frequencies. One cool idea it uses is to change Caps Lock to Backspace.
I'm still worried about vim, though. One nice side effect of my planned switch to Colemak is that I now have a legitimate reason to put off learning Emacs. After my switch to Colemak is complete, I'll try to tackle SLIME.
1. I like to challenge myself. I'm currently learning to play Guitar Hero left-handed, and it's been interesting. This is along those same lines, but it might actually benefit me.
2. It will be fun to mess with my friends when they try to use my computer.
In my limited usage so far, yes, the typing is slow. It's really frustrating that I can no longer type as fast as I can think. The hardest thing, however, seems to be re-learning applications' keyboard shortcuts. If Firefox and GMail is hard, what's vim going to be like?
(This message was typed using DVORAK.)