Colemak is great until you jump on another machine. Then it's really weird.
One year with Colemak
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: One year with Colemak
#32I'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 ke…
The position of the "L" is what convinced me to stop learning Dvorak and instead learn Colemak.
Re: One year with Colemak
#33I 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.
Re: One year with Colemak
#34I 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 :)
Re: One year with Colemak
#35I'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.
Re: One year with Colemak
#36I'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.
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.
Re: One year with Colemak
#37It'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...
Re: One year with Colemak
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stenography might also be an option: 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
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/ / Veyboard http://www.veyboard.nl/en_main.html is…
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...
Re: One year with Colemak
#39I'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 ke…
The position of the "L" is what convinced me to stop learning Dvorak and instead learn Colemak.
[deleted]
Re: One year with Colemak
#40I 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…
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!