> I was curious about vim as well. I wonder if the defaults of vi are somehow optimized for QWERTY.
A few are, such an hjkl being on the home row, but the rest are more semantic (for example, "t" is "unTil", "f" is "From", "a" is "append", "i" is "insert", etc. So all of those lend themselves to muscle memory from repeated use but aren't particularly better or worse on any keyboard layout. Dvorak keeps "j" and "k" together (in the place where "c" and "v" are, respectively), which is a nice touch.
> This thread convinced me to try switching to Dvorak but I'm a bit scared after reading your comment. It's not clear from your comment, did you switch back to QWERTY or are you still giving it a shot?
I switched to Dvorak about a month ago, and have no plans to switch back! It is a definite improvement in comfort, which I expect to translate to a speed improvement eventually. Nowadays when I type anything at all in QWERTY I wonder how I ever put up with contorting my fingers into such strange shapes to type the simplest words -- not to mention how so many words have almost zero hand alternation.
A few are, such an hjkl being on the home row, but the rest are more semantic (for example, "t" is "unTil", "f" is "From", "a" is "append", "i" is "insert", etc. So all of those lend themselves to muscle memory from repeated use but aren't particularly better or worse on any keyboard layout. Dvorak keeps "j" and "k" together (in the place where "c" and "v" are, respectively), which is a nice touch.
> This thread convinced me to try switching to Dvorak but I'm a bit scared after reading your comment. It's not clear from your comment, did you switch back to QWERTY or are you still giving it a shot?
I switched to Dvorak about a month ago, and have no plans to switch back! It is a definite improvement in comfort, which I expect to translate to a speed improvement eventually. Nowadays when I type anything at all in QWERTY I wonder how I ever put up with contorting my fingers into such strange shapes to type the simplest words -- not to mention how so many words have almost zero hand alternation.