I used it for about 3 years, and it sped me up greatly when writing text, as in large blocks of English language text, it didn't help with programming at all. However before that I was only ever a 5 finger Qwerty typist, the speed gain from Dvorak came from forcing me to touch type properly.<p>2 things made me abandon dvorak and switch back to qwerty. Keyboard shortcuts. I never got the hang of mentally mapping between individual keys, so I when I had to push a Ctrl-X for example, I would have to stop and think for too long trying to work out which one X is.<p>The other thing was pair programming, was a pain switching back and forth when grabbing and relinquishing the keyboard. Sometimes pair programming meets enough resistance as it is without my stupid keyboard layout adding to it.<p>Another bonus, is that with qwerty you can work single handed, and e.g. hold the baby or eat or use the mouse or whatever.<p>So right now I am back to my 5 finger qwerty, its slower for example for things like this message, but the bulk of what I do is just typing in little bits of text and source code here and there so the speed loss is acceptable.<p>If I were typing in large blocks of English text for a living I would switch back to dvorak, but for a programmer qwerty is better.<p>Actually, if you are one of those programmers that use the mouse to use menu items, and never use shortcuts, you might be ok with dvorak.