Due to excessive ctrl c and ctrl v during a website revamp last year, my left wrist started hurting. I have started my ergo journey by slowly replacing everything on my desk. Starting from the Deathadder, Logitech 502, Mionix 7000, to the Anker vertical mouse. These mice claim to be ergo but my shoulders still hurting. In the end, I ended up with Logitech trackball, Trackman marble to the left and M570 to the right. Then, I bought the split Kinesis Edge and that's when I learned about the other keyboard layout.
Just like things was expensive, they come with quality. And that's what I thought with Dvorak, the more keys rearranged, the "better" ergo they give. I was not convinced with Colemak at first. And due to popularity, I have switched to Dvorak. Starting with online practice, I would able to get my speed to 30-40wpm with 5 minutes typing session. Dvorak is fine in regular typing session, but not for me. My left pinky is in pain while coding. LS, LS -a , all the brackets, and equal sign while writing programs are putting so much workload on my pinky. Dvorak programmer is another solution. However, since I used a lot of number as well and consider I have to learn the complete number row has disband the thought of using Dvorak after 2 months.
Then it comes Colemak, the brother that's not far away from QWERTY but provides a bunch more benefit. Switching to Colemak was not hard at all. Giving my muscle memory in Dvorak is not mature and I have been using QWERTY for years. Started from November last year to now, around March, I have been able to get my speed to 60wpm in 5 minutes typing session. It is still far from my 80wpm in QWERTY, but I could feel the benefit already. My hand did not have to move that much. I did not have to crack my left wrist anymore. My right pinky is not overworked. Overall, less fatigue. Other than the Colemak Layout, I have used another extend layer for arrow and common shortcut and also implement the Angle Mod. This result in my hands not leaving the home row at all and without the awkward inward bending to type the bottom left row, feel AWESOME.
There was a super awkward period in learning Colemak. I would not able to type in QWERTY... My speed of QWERTY fell to around 30wpm and my Colemak was even slower, around 20wpm. My mind was not functioning properly switching between these layout. This rendered me useless for about 2 weeks typing with bunch of typo. My boss and colleges knew about this and laughed. This had given me more motivation to learn Colemak faster. Poor QWERTY skill, piece by piece, the letter is leaving one by one. I cannot type in QWERTY with 80wpm anymore, more like 30wpm now. The muscle memory still here in quick reflex, where I type a bunch of errors mixing the 2/3 layouts.
I have tried Mod DH on and off. Don't like it. Even though, until now, I still make a lot of error typing G and D because of QWERTY (the main reason I wanted to tried mod dh). For my left hand mod d, I have to shift my whole hand to focus on the middle and bottom row to focus on typing D and G. Stretching to type the number row and Function would take a lot more effort. The right hand mod h does not feel much better either. The H is definitely feel better. The M that stayed in Dvorak as well as QWERTY and Colemak is moved, this feel super awkward to the muscle memory. With the problem of shifting the whole hand to focus on bottom row, same as left hand, I was not able to type the number row without stretching a lot more.
In the end, due to some good placement of Dvorak punctuation and Colemak letter, I have stick with this Layout;
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
q w f p g j l u y ; ' =
a r s t d h n e i o -
x c v b z k m , , . /
I have brackets on the extend layer so it solves everything.
COLEMAK is lovely.
Now let time heals my injured hands...
