kodiak

Dvorak in the house

Well, I guess it was inevitable, but I have started developing RSI. Eight years of coding and writing have added up and the sum total is pain. I began having trouble about a month after I started at Google- but that is just coincidence. In order to counter the effects, I have had to make a couple of changes- the most notable of which was switching to the Dvorak keyboard layout.

I have to say that the first three weeks were very difficult. I basically had to re-learn to type. Not easy. My productivity was near zero which is so frustrating!!! Having to think about typing is laborious at best, and almost reduced me to tears more than once. Consider going from 40-60 words per minute down to under 10. The simplest action and commands took forever, much less writing an email or chatting with friends on AIM.

I think the hardest part has been unlearning the years of muscle memory for Emacs shortcuts and UNIX commands. I still type “je” sometimes when I really want “cd”, but at least the new layout of Emacs shortcuts has pretty much stopped my single-hand chording, which was probably the source of many of the issues.

After four months on the Dvorak wagon, I am so glad I made the switch. Most of the issues have gone away entirely and I am almost back up to my previous typing speed. I am not out of the woods yet, but things are on the upswing and definitely much better than they were three months ago. Fingers crossed!