
Ask HN: How long did it take to learn an alternative keyboard layout? - karmakaze
I&#x27;m one week into my journey getting about 25-30 wpm.<p>Considered Dvorak and ended up making&#x2F;using an Asset variant.<p>I&#x27;m hoping it to be easier to learn than the Tarmak steps to Colemak.
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dredmorbius
I gave this a shot in the 1990s.

Took about two weeks.

Typing prose felt slightly smoother overall, but it was not revelatory. Unix
command were utterly fuxnored though, the defaults are 1) burned into my
muscle memory and 2) very QWERTY ergonomic.

Overall tradeoff ( _very_ modest speed gains, huge compatibility issues)
weren't worth it.

So I quit. Haven't gone back.

~~~
karmakaze
This is so different to expectations from readings. I thought perhaps month(s)
and much greater gains.

I'm hoping to get comfort and speed as a bonus. I had a couple days with
shooting (not really pains, more like) electric shocks along the backs of my
hands.

I too did notice that command-line muscle-memory is completely separate from
prose and has to be relearned.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's not so much that CLI needs relearning as that it simply doesn't map.
"cp", "ls", "rm", and worse, movement keys such as hjkl or WASD are highly or
entirely layout dependent. There are some possible exceptions -- "cd" isn't
great on QWERTY, though I forget its Dvorak equivalent.

As I live in shell and vi, this was a complete deal-breaker.

~~~
karmakaze
I thought about vi and don't yet know how that will go. I'm slowly relearning
my shell commands.

------
colemak_throw
I learned Colemak, for fun, really. There were several very distinct phases.

In the very beginning, just hitting the right keys most of the time was very
challenging. I'd have to actively think about where to put my fingers for a
few days or up to a week. I did a lot of training exercises then.

After that, I was able to type pretty good at 20-30wpm, growing quickly. I
played lots of type racing games.

Until I hit about 70wpm again (I started at QWERTY with around 100-120wpm,
depending on text types), it was super frustrating, because I couldn't type
fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. I would feel my thoughts slip away as
I was still typing the last thought out, thinking "Wait, nooo, I'm almost
there!"

I think it took about a month or two until I hit 70wpm again.

After that I felt like it was usable and I could probably be productive in it.

Oh yea, I should mention that I was on a sabbatical during that time and did
the Colemak switch full-time, cold turkey - I haven't typed in QWERTY since
except when some stupid 3rd party computer doesn't have Colemak (it comes with
every modern operating system) and I have to use that for a second. But
because I was on a sabbatical, I didn't need to be productive for months. It
would've taken me 1-2 months to be productive enough to write code or respond
to emails/chat quickly. Colemak is very coder-friendly in that it doesn't
change any of the special characters except ";" and the zxc keys are all the
same.

After reaching the 70wpm point, it was mostly smooth sailing, but I wasn't
100% yet. I'm a vim user, so a lot of my muscle memory was wrong. I simply
continued using vim as usual and ended up learning the hjkl keys on Colemak.
They're actually all under the left index finger, but spread around in a weird
way. I'd have to look at the keyboard to tell you what they are, but my
fingers know them.

So, eventually, vim and everything is just fine. Also eventually, I got back
up to my old speeds of about 100-120wpm, again depending on text. I've read
that Colemak is actually not as fast as QWERTY because it optimizes for low
finger movement, not speed. While I think it'd be cool to type 150wpm, I don't
really miss it except when doing type racing games. I seem to think somewhere
between 70-100wpm at most. My fingers move a lot less when typing than using
QWERTY, and people have commented over the years on that.

Another thing that took almost 2 years to go away was "awkward angles." You
know how some people who learned touch typing can't use the keyboard except
when their hands are exactly aligned with the keyboard? I had that. So
sometimes I would try to reach over to my laptop and hit the pause button, or
mute, or something like that, and just have no clue where to press, because I
only had that knowledge in relation to my index fingers being on the home row.
I'll admit that this is pretty unimportant, but I just used to know that by
heart, no matter the angle. I've since learned the Colemak positions for most
of these, probably just from doing it and getting it wrong for years on end ;)

By the way, as part of this, I also reconfigured my default movement keys for
video games. Why are people using WASD? Much too close together. I use EADF,
so I can play video games with my fingers on the home row in normal position.
Much more comfortable than WASD.

Programming keys/symbols were never an issue on Colemak because most of the
symbols stay the same. Only ; changes position, and ; is useless and languages
that use is except as comments should go back to the 7th century where they
belong. C can stay.

I've met several Colemak typists who are able to fluently switch back and
forth between Colemak and QWERTY, and one even also Dvorak. I had a hardware-
switched Colemak keyboard at work and this new guy shows up. He types for a
second, looks at the screen (git add == dug ass in Colemak), and begins typing
in perfect Colemak. Wow!

I seem to have completely lost my muscle memory for QWERTY. Maybe it would
come back if I tried using QWERTY, or switching between the layouts regularly.
But I don't have to ever use QWERTY, so I haven't even tried.

Colemak has the advantage that, as the third most popular layout, there are
off-the-shelf keyboards with hardware switches for it. I never got into
building/modding my own keyboards, so I just got some random Taiwanese
mechanical keyboard that offered a Colemak switch on the back. There are
several, all I've tried were very good quality and fun to type on. Dvorak is
even more widely available, of course.

Was it worth it? Hard to say. You kind of have to switch layout on every
computer you use, e.g. at work, or bring your own keyboard. But I bring my own
keyboard anyway, so that's not much of a difference. And Colemak comes with
Linux and OS X, and probably on Windows too. So it's really just a few clicks
away.

I'm not a faster typist. I didn't have RSI or any other wrist pain. Maybe I
would've gotten it and now I haven't. Maybe I'll get it later than on QWERTY.
It's a bit of a hassle when you get a new job or have to use your co-worker's
computer. Everybody finds it very fascinating and wants to talk about it for
exactly 30 seconds, then never hear of it again. It is hilarious to have
people type "git add" on your Colemak keyboard.

I was just bored on my sabbatical. I don't think it makes a huge difference.
If you have RSI issues, like I see people post here on HN all the time, go for
it. I've also never bothered to get an ergonomic keyboard, but for some people
it makes a huge difference in their typing ergonomics or strain. If you have
issues, you can definitely give Colemak a try. But don't expect any huge
productivity boosts.

~~~
karmakaze
Thanks for the awesomely illustrative story. I can relate to the early parts
of it. I looked at Colemak/Tarmak and thought it was too hard. Ended up
keeping same finger sequence for home-row ASET-GH-NIO(R). Other letters kept
close and shuffled for freq/bigrams. I switched cold turkey and am up to about
40 wpm after a week now. Great to hear that 70 wpm makes things good enough to
not be frustrated. My speed would be much faster if not for the errors which
are the most annoying part and the random pauses when my fingers forget where
to type.

Command-line/vi is a whole other story--don't know how long that will take. I
think I should practice QWERTY now after a week so I don't lose it. How do you
type on mobiles? Separate 'thumb memory'?

I was never a fast typist to start with and mostly did it out of boredom and I
did have pains once along the backs of my hands that made it impossible to
type for a day so may help. This time around I will learn to touch-type.

> Everybody finds it very fascinating and wants to talk about it for exactly
> 30 seconds, then never hear of it again.

So true.

~~~
colemak_throw
Didn't change on mobile. Colemak explicitly says it doesn't make sense for a
thumb-based layout, because it's optimized for touch typing. Never had any
issues, probably because thumb-memory is different.

