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    Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    • Started by sjguy
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    • Registered: 23-Mar-2007
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    23-Mar-2007 15:49:17#1 Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    I've been touch typing in QWERTY for about 10 years.  I learned Dvorak about 3 years ago, but gave it up eventually b/c of difficulties with shortcuts (ctl-Q,ctl-X,ctl-C,ctl-v) and moving the curly braces killed when I tried to program.  I was going through wikipedia the other day looking at the Dvorak entry and found a link talking about Colemak which seems great because it seems to avoid both those problems.

    In QWERTY according to http://labs.jphantom.com/wpm/ I type around 75-80 wpm right now.  And TypeFaster suggests I type around 35 wpm.

    I've been using TypeFaster about 2 hours a day to learn Colemak and currently type about 28 wpm on lesson 3.

    I look forward to becoming faster and more accurate!

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    05-Apr-2007 13:23:25#2 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    I am now about 2 weeks into this.  During my 1st week R and S were a huge problem (why were they switched?), now days my biggest problems are with K,J, and U/Y.

    In TypeFaster I can do about 40-50 wpm on the lower lessons and 20-30 on the higher ones.
    According to the jphantom sight I'm at 27wpm
    More importantly I'm finally good enough that I can play Typershark! (on easy - 70K points).

    Aside from those keys mentioned above things are progressing ok. 
    Oh, and as a side note: Programming in Colemak is infinitely easier than in Dvorak.

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    • From: NYC
    • Registered: 02-Feb-2007
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    05-Apr-2007 15:54:42#3 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    you're doing great with your progress :).

    btw, I also had that question of why R and S had to be switched and here's Shai's answer:

    Shai said:

    In the old Colemak I wanted to keep the S in the QWERTY position in order to maintain the Ctrl+S shortcut, however the new Colemak layout doesn't make that compromise.

    The advantages of the new layout:
    * Lower same-finger ratio.
    * Slightly lower same hand row jumping.
    * Slightly better finger balance.
    * Keeps the W in the same place. It's more important to keep the Ctrl+W shortcut (Close Window under MS Windows) because Ctrl+W is a potentially destructive shortcut.
    * Less frequent keys take longer to learn, so it better to keep the W in the same place rather than keeping the S in the same place.

    source: https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=14

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
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    05-Apr-2007 19:44:48#4 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    <Command>+W  closes a window on Mac OS X .

    makes inward and outward rolls of the very common "ra" and "ar" possible also.

    Last edited by keyboard samurai (18-Apr-2007 11:28:50)

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    • From: Köln, Germany
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    17-Apr-2007 13:09:43#5 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    I always wondered why I keep typing an R instead of S! It never occured to me its because the R is on the QWERTY  S position. However I still don't really get why I have that many problems with my S since I didn't touch type with QWERTY before, I used to hunt and peck, because  those annoying "fj jf fjf" lessons kept me from learning to type properly!

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    18-Apr-2007 11:37:13#6 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    I had problems with R and S even though I was not a Qwerty touch typist either and had actually been practicing Dvorak for several weeks just before.  Perhaps it is just because they are very frequent letters ?

    or maybe even though I was not a touch typist I still had positions "AS" memorized just visually.

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    • From: Köln, Germany
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    18-Apr-2007 11:49:46#7 Re: Comp Sci Grad Student learning Colemak

    Perhaps... And that would make sense, as I used to type on QWERTZ, and now I sometimes press "Z" instead of "Y", although not that freqently.

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