
One year with Colemak - vdloo
http://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2014/07/17/one-year-with-colemak
======
nanexcool
I switched to Dvorak about 7 years ago. In hindsight I probably should have
stayed with Qwerty.

Nobody can use my machines. My girlfriend already knows to Ctrl-Shift to
change keyboard layouts, but that's on my PC where Windows is in English. On
my laptop with Windows in Spanish it's Alt-Shift. Even I get confused
sometimes.

Most games I play don't recognize layouts, so WASD doesn't work. I have to
Ctrl-Shift before launching a game. And that's on Windows 8 that has per-
session layout. Windows 7 is per window layout so if Ctrl-Shift doesn't work
inside the game I have to manually configure keyboard.

Copy Cut Paste become Ctrl I, Ctrl B and Ctrl . I think this is not a problem
in Colemak.

My first language is Spanish. After learning Dvorak I no longer use accents or
ñ (just Alt-164'd that one) so it's a pain when I type something more or less
official that can't have spelling errors.

After that rant, I'm still relatively happy with Dvorak. At least I have
something to say on job interviews.

~~~
hkmurakami
As a person with RSI in both wrists, I'm glad I changed to Dvorak last year,
including a change to the kinesis keyboard.

That being said, I can never apply to grad school anymore because I can no
longer type in qwerty and won't be able to take the way portion of those
electronic tests very well. (And that would affect my performance in other
sections)

~~~
stronglikedan
I've been looking at the Kinesis keyboards to try to get some relief from
wrist pain. Which do you use? Have you tried the MS Natural, or did you go
straight to Kinesis?

~~~
StephenGL
Kinesis can strain your thumbs. I used one for 14 years. Still got major wrist
pain and really bad thumb pain. Microsoft Sculpt Mobile and that style of
keyboard ended up being my best option.

~~~
stronglikedan
I use the Natural. I bought a Sculpt, but took it back because of the top row
of keys being so small, and a couple of other gripes. I bought another
Natural, but I always ponder the Kinesis line. Besides the unknown experience,
the price is also a factor.

~~~
tomsthumb
My cube-mate has a natural and I use a kinesis. We both thing the keys on the
kinesis have noticily better action, but he just can't (doesn't want to) wrap
his head around the grid layout. Unless you have very small hands, or you just
absolutely hammer on your keyboard, it would be unlikely for the kinesis to
make your thumbs sore. The space button on the ms naturl is junk compared to
cherry mx brown switches.

------
cecilpl
I switched to Dvorak in high school and have been using it full time for about
13 years. I find I can switch back and forth almost fluently, though I do have
to look at the keyboard when typing on qwerty in order to switch my mind into
that mode. As a test, I typed the last two sentences on qwerty and it was a
bit painful, but not too slow. Maybe 40wpm. I hit 80 on dvorak without
thinking.

The biggest thing I notice when going back to qwerty is how horrendously
uncomfortable it is. I feel like I'm doing contortionist exercises with my
fingers, and my wrists start aching very quickly. Going back to dvorak after
that is like switching to the "walk" section of a walk/run interval training
session.

I agree with kingmanaz that words just roll off your fingers. Dvorak is like
cooking in a kitchen where everything you need is in just the right spot and
you can grab it without moving, versus qwerty where everything is over the
place and the spices are opposite the stove. You can still cook, and even do
it quickly if you know where everything is, but you wind up expending so much
more energy moving around.

I did have problems at work when co-workers needed to use my keyboard to do
something on my machine. The universal reaction is "what's wrong with your
keyboard", sometimes with gratuitous profanity thrown in. Maybe 10% of people
realise that it's dvorak without me having to explain. A handful try to hunt-
and-peck before giving up and making me do it. One person surprised me by
knowing dvorak as well. So, I had work buy me a hardware-switchable dvorak
keyboard that has double-labelled keycaps (qwerty in small blue letters).
That's solved the problem.

Gaining dvorak fluency in the first place took me about 3 weeks of inability
to type, which was hell on a shy geeky 16-year-old whose main social
interaction was IRC channels.

The one place I still use qwerty is on my phone. Dvorak is very poorly suited
to thumb typing because it breaks autocorrect. Most of the time when you
mistype a word, it's still a valid English word, because all the common
letters are next to each other.

~~~
peatmoss
I've acquired a reasonable number of friends, family, and associates who use
dvorak. Every so often, I'm surprised when I find someone who uses my keyboard
without issue!

------
leoc
If you're serious about increased typing speed you're probably better off
switching to a two-handed chording system [http://www.loper-
os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16162](http://www.loper-
os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16162) . Alternative layouts for conventional
non-chorded typing don't seem to be worth the disruption.

~~~
vanderZwan
Stenography might also be an option:

[http://plover.stenoknight.com/](http://plover.stenoknight.com/)

Here's a video by the stenographer half of the duo that started the project:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-
dB6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g)

~~~
leoc
I mentioned Plover and steno in my linked comment. Basically, classical
stenotype and other similar syllabic two-hand chording systems are a big bag
of hurt, and probably not well-suited for anything except transcribing spoken
English (or whatever natural language your steno system is designed for). A
more orthographic system like Velotype
[http://www.velotype.com/en/](http://www.velotype.com/en/) / Veyboard
[http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html](http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html) is
probably better unless you need to optimise for the last iota of transcription
speed in one specific spoken language, especially since most of us will never
reach professional real-time transcription speeds no matter what keyboard we
use. (And OTOH, Velotype is apparently fast enough to be in use for real-time
tasks in the Netherlands.)

EDIT: Also, most people would probably be better served doing something about
the time they spend moving their right hand between keyboard and mouse than
increasing their typing speed.

~~~
vanderZwan
Ah, I see now (for some reason the browser on the other computer I was using
before didn't jump to your comment, so I thought this was about Engelbart's
chording system). Apologies for the noise.

EDIT: Wow, wrist-button for spacebar. I gotta get me one of these! I always
thought it was a waste that we used our most flexible, well-controlled finger
for one dumb button.

EDITEDIT: Oh,€1500... Can't that be made cheaper with modern hardware? Wonder
if that could be remade as an Arduino (Leonardo) project...

------
lstamour
It's been about 8.5 years since I switched to Colemak. The most interesting
part is indeed working at other computer keyboards. But I managed to keep
proficiency at QWERTY (at least for touch typing, perhaps not quickly and
until I'm used to it, I look like a drunk...) and though I've since lost it
somewhat, I discovered that my fingers were very happy typing different
layouts on very distinct keyboards. Even now, a generic Dell keyboard has me
thinking QWERTY, while it'd be impossible for me to type on my Das Keyboard
Ultimate in QWERTY. Actually what's since messed up my QWERTY the most has
been the unusual grid pattern of the Kinesis Advantage. I love it, but it's
given me some bad habits at more traditional keyboards. Hardest keyboard for
me to type on though, hands down, is a 7-8" tablet's. I'm writing on one
now...

------
thesteamboat
When I was in college I took up Dvorak for a while. It was definitely an
interesting experience trying to switch between Qwerty and Dvorak with any
frequency. I found that I could touch type in either, but to type Dvorak I had
to look at the screen and to type Qwerty I had to `look' at the keyboard. When
I wanted to type Qwerty it didn't matter if my eyes were shut, but my head had
to be tilted down.

------
holyjaw
I made thi switch to Dvorak at the tail end of college, just to prove that I
could keep learning new things. It was really difficult; work machines were
shared so I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home. This bit really
struck me:

> After little more than a week, I got to a point where I started to make lots
> of mistakes typing Qwerty, but I could not type proper Colemak either. This
> was something I had not anticipated: I expected to learn Colemak in addition
> to Qwerty, not instead of it!

I felt the same way! Eventually I was 85% proficient at both. Finally, I left
for a job where my machine is mine, so I’m 100% Dvorak and my WPM and accuracy
has dramatically increased. Unfortunately, those times I -have- had to type in
QWERTY, I find myself looking at the keyboard. (I wish there was some form of
Dvorak + Kana keyboards for JP).

One upshot to this is that I learned Vim AFTER Dvorak. I’ve never had to worry
about hjkl not being on the home row; they never have been for me! Big plus.

Also, I’ve found that most games don’t care about your input language, they
tend to key off of the key signal so traditional wasd keys still function as
expected.

------
xiaomai
I wish this would have gone more in depth in his experience with colemak and
vim. I've considered switching keyboard layouts in the past, but applications
with lots of keyboard shortcuts (like vim) make it seem too difficult.

~~~
adovenmuehle
I've recently been making the switch to Norman and use vim. I initially tried
to remap a bunch of keys (especially hjkl) but you end up going down a path of
remapping more than you want.

So I've just started getting used to using the same keybindings just in a
different spot. So far it's not too bad. Like anything, you get used to it.

------
collyw
I have tried Dorvak (I can touch type with it, but a lot slower than my non
touch typing on QWERTY).

One thing I noticed since then is that as a programmer typing speed or touch
typing is not so important. On the command line I have tab completion, and in
my IDE I also have the equivalent. It rarely takes more than three keyboard
strokes before I can get a sensible list to choose from. Its a lot more
efficient than tying top learn to touch type.

------
xvedejas
I've been using Colemak for about 6 years now. The difference for me wasn't
just speed, but rather that I learned to type "wrong" on Qwerty. I could never
get myself to touch type, I always had to look at the keyboard. It turns out
that forcing myself to switch layouts fixed that, for whatever reason. To this
day I can type with Colemak without looking but have to look if I want to use
Qwerty.

~~~
thatswrong0
Exactly! I never touch-typed properly with Qwerty. It was trying to learn
proper touch-typing with Qwerty that I got so frustrated trying to unlearn old
habits that I picked up Colemak instead.

------
theRhino
I'm just over the year mark with Colemak as well. Used the Tarmak transitional
layouts to get to full Colemak and now use wide-angle mods as well to further
improve keyboard ergonomics. On a good day I can hit 70wpm which is faster
than I could ever manage with Qwerty. To find out more about this stuff visit
the Colemak forum and get chatting with the legendary DreyMar..

------
Seghers
I'm using Colemak for 2-4 years and I have the same Experience(helping someone
using another layout, non-blind typing previous layout, games) as you have. I
used Azerty 95% and Qwerty 5% before the switch. Because I don't type much
French anymore, I'm not missing Azerty layout.

I'm even using Colemak on Android.

~~~
Ruud-v-A
I still use Qwerty on my phone, because I always type with two fingers. Does
Colemak have any real advantage there? The muscle memory for two-finger
touchscreen typing is different from that for ten-finger blind typing, so that
is not an issue for me.

~~~
EduardoBautista
The official FAQ recommends against using colemak on smartphones:

[http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Is_Colemak_suita...](http://colemak.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ#Is_Colemak_suitable_for_smartphones.3F)

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crymer11
Anyone have any experience with minimak [1]? It seems like the 4 key layout
would be much easier to handle within Vim than most other alternative keyboard
layouts.

1 - [http://www.minimak.org/](http://www.minimak.org/)

~~~
hammerandtongs
Very interesting, for the 4 key, k and cntrl-d are really the only keys that
would impact my vim usage much.

For heavy vim/emacs (I use evil/emacs) making sure your esc/meta/control keys
are large and cleanly accessible is probably a better investment. I resisted
even remapping capslock for years but now I'm even working on using control-[
instead of esc (it's universal but may not be the optimum trade for the esc).

Thanks though, I'll put this away for later.

------
programminggeek
Colemak is great until you jump on another machine. Then it's really weird.

------
kingmanaz
I'm a full time dvorak typist after years of having used qwerty. I re-learned
vim's shortcuts for dvorak. The transition took approximately one month. My
wrist used to ache after 10+ hours a day typing querty. The fire finally died
after I switched and became comfortable with dvorak.

My first impression when revisiting qwerty is a revulsion at the placement of
the "t". What a horrible location for such an oft used key. However, most
qwerty users will have a similar response when typing "ls -l" on dvorak.
Actually, a lot of unix commands were clearly written with qwerty in mind,
their letters centering on qwerty's home row. The unix monikers get easier
with repetition for dvorak typists, but dvorak's true power comes in writing
English, which in my case is most of my typing. Vim works well with either
layout, luckily. Most of the programming languages I use - SQL, golang,
python, and c# - seem about the same in either layout.

Once you become fluent with dvorak it "rolls" off your fingers. You'll know
what I mean once you're there. "The", "another", "masticate", "friend", and
most other words with vowels and common consonants spend most of their typed
lives on the home row. Both hands share evenly in typing. The common
punctuation and quotes are right where you need them.

If you use RDP for most of your remote work the transition is surprisingly
easy. Switching between layouts is simple in Windows and Unix. Hell, even my
copy of Amiga 3.1 supports dvorak out of the box.

Some here seem to switch their keycaps to a dvorak arrangement. I did this in
the past with my Model M but eventually set it back to querty. I'm not
embarrassed to admit that I need to look at the keyboard now to type qwerty,
thus having the keycaps set to querty serves as a convenient reminder. When
typing dvorak I never look down.

~~~
EduardoBautista
The position of the "L" is what convinced me to stop learning Dvorak and
instead learn Colemak.

------
winslow
I noticed an interesting gender stereotype.

"Want to help someone out? _She_ will probably use a Qwerty layout."

I'm not perfect and guilty as well mistakenly defaulting to a user on the
internet as a male. Let's try to welcome both genders equally :)

~~~
axman6
Some people are of the school that the term 'she' should be used by default,
switching from the traditional assumption that people are male. I personally
prefer 'they' but some people seem to take offence/feel it's incorrect to do
so. There's quite a tradition in CS writing where people being spoken about
are female (can't think of any exact references off the top of my head
though).

