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lavalamp comments on Spend Money on Ergonomics - Less Wrong
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It took me about a month to get up to speed when I did it a decade ago, but at the time I was a measly 30 or 40 WPM hunt-and-peck QWERTY typer. Hearsay says that if you want to maintain proficiency in both layouts, it takes a little longer. (I now type at something like 70 wpm.)
I wouldn't switch unless you're looking for more comfort. From my totally unscientific reading of numerous anecdotal reports on the internet, good typists don't typically gain much if any speed when switching.
Oh, and all programmers: figure out how to rearrange your keyboard layout. The []{}()+=/?-_ keys should NOT be typed by the same weak finger, that's total insanity. You can rearrange one or two keys per week and it won't slow you down too much. (I have a keyboard that lets me swap key positions.)
Remember that the rules about keeping your hands in the home position are for typing long stretches of normal text, i.e., prose. When I’m programming my hands always move up and to the sides as needed, and for most of the keys from 7 to backspace I use the first three fingers (and the left hand for shift, not the left pinky). The pinky goes to those keys only if they come up in prose by accident.
Who types []{}()+=/?-_ with their pinky? I occasionally type ']' and '}' with the pinky, but more often I use my ring finger. The only characters in that set that I always type with my pinky are '/' and '?', and those are not common enough to worry about. The others? never.
BTW, IMO typing the C with the middle finger, the X with the ring finger and the Z with the pinky seems ridiculous to me, even though that's what pretty much any typing tutor I've seen recommends. (As for the right hand, the brain-dead ISO mechanical layout makes it ridiculously easy to accidentally end lines with the key immediately left of the Enter key, e.g. ù on the Italian layout -- and there are several Facebook pages about that.)
Except for "(" (mistake on my part), QWERTY and Dvorak touch-typists do. Twisting your wrist to hit those keys (not to mention the backspace key) with a finger other than your pinky is a good way to get carpal tunnel...
I am a QWERTY touch typist and I do not, nor do I twist my wrist to hit those keys with my ring or middle fingers. Rather, I move my hand to the correct position. Touch typing does not mean your hands have to remain in one location, unless of course I am misapplying the term.
Incidentally, the reason I did not switch to Dvorak long ago was that my vim keybindings work much better with a QWERTY layout and I was not willing to remap those.
Yeah, if you're going to move your hands, it's important to move your whole arm and not bend at the wrist, as you say you're doing. (I used to bend my wrist to hit the backspace key; I got a keyboard with the backspace key in the middle and it made a huge difference.) But my recollection is that you're supposed to do as little moving of the hands as possible. Wikipedia seems to confirm my recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FingerHandPosUSA.gif
I was lucky enough to not know VIM when I switched...
Likewise. I am a touch typist in that I can type while the keyboard is nowhere near my field of vision, I may not be a touch typist by any more specific definition (I certainly don't consciously follow a particular approach). I will move my hand to be more or less centered on whatever I'm doing, only twisting it when I need to hit several keys at once (which seems likely to be necessary with any keyboard).
This is the kind of thing that I'm worried about. Changing over any particular application is undoubtedly doable. Changing over everything is undoubtedly a headache, and in some cases may not even be possible (flash games, say, not that I play a lot of those).
For momentary games, it's easy enough to switch back and forth as necessary. My xmonad config has shortcuts for the appropriate xmodmap calls, and Windows is nice enough to put up a layout-switching tray icon if there's more than one keyboard in your list.
For momentary games, that's quite reasonable indeed.