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    Hi there! A cold turkey switch experience

    • Started by yngwin
    • 9 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • Registered: 28-Jan-2010
    • Posts: 4

    Hi there! I'm new here. I switched cold turkey today!

    Yesterday I stumbled on a topic on Reddit where the Dvorak layout was discussed, and someone recommended Colemak. I knew about Dvorak as I had tried it some years ago. But I found it too hard to pick up then, so it remained on my "to do some day" list. But Colemak was new to me, so I let Google give me a quick tour. :)  I was quickly sold that this was worth trying.

    I taught myself Qwerty 25+ years ago and I've grown quite comfortable with it, although I never learnt proper touch typing. I did about 45 wpm, using ~6-7 fingers. I also have some experience typing on a standard Modern Greek layout.

    But then this morning I switched --cold turkey-- to Colemak, and touch typing to boot! I spent about 6 hours (plus breaks) on the on-site typing lessons and now I know pretty much where all the letters are. But I still need to think about it a lot, so it's slow. I'm doing about 12 wpm now. So it's a question of (re)training muscle memory and I should be picking up speed. :)

    As a Linux developer I do quite a bit of coding. But having so many of the often used symbols assigned to the pinky doesn't sound very handy to me. So I'm probably going to do a programmer's variant and assign them to the number keys, along the lines of Programmer's Dvorak.

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    • Registered: 18-Dec-2009
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    Don't worry. Stick to it and you will surpass your original typing speed soon! I found the fastest way was to simply not touch QWERTY at all, which I managed to do for a while. Now I actually ENJOY typing. Pretty cool!

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    • From: Belgium
    • Registered: 26-Feb-2008
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    Seconded.  Once you decide to go cold-turkey, don't use QWERTY anymore (during the learning phase) because it will only confuse you and slow down your progress.

    (When using "Qwerty at work, Colemak at home" it's different, because your mind will associate the keyboard layout with the environment.)

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    • Registered: 07-Aug-2007
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    Liquid_Turbo said:

    Don't worry. Stick to it and you will surpass your original typing speed soon! I found the fastest way was to simply not touch QWERTY at all, which I managed to do for a while. Now I actually ENJOY typing. Pretty cool!

    "Stick to it" is good advice, but I'd caution against any expectation of surpassing one's QWERTY speed.  It didn't happen for me, and based on eyeballing the speeds of celebrities on keyhero.com, it doesn't really happen for anybody.  I don't think this is the fault of Colemak -- I think there is a hard biomechanical "twitch" limit that each individual has, and that they approach it pretty quickly on any layout if they touch-typed with application for any significant volume.  Fast typists continue to type fast: slow ones continue to be, um, stately.  With a good layout, all typists fatigue less, which is nothing to sneeze at.

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    • Registered: 28-Jan-2010
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    Thanks for your encouragement! I do expect to see eventually some improvement over my qwerty speed, as I never learned proper "blind" touch typing before. I sort of half did. Now I am making an effort. So...

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    • Registered: 05-Jan-2010
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    I expect to surpass my QWERTY speed too. If it takes 3 years, then so be it. QWERTY took me 9 years.

    Last edited by kqr (29-Jan-2010 22:34:59)
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    • From: New York, New York
    • Registered: 22-Nov-2008
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    Oh, it'll be sooner than that, you have some kind of acquired ability to type already, so once you know where the keys are it'll be easy. My QWERTY max used to be 60, with avg 50. Now it's like tops 115 and avg 85.

    Colemak typist

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    • Registered: 18-Dec-2009
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    I find that typing is actually FUN on colemak. Its really quite bizarre.

    Also I found that keep training on the "most common words" lesson on typefaster. I really felt that brought me up to speed the fastest.

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    • Registered: 28-Jan-2010
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    It's still really slow. I suppose I should do more exercises. For some reason I keep mixing up the r and the s.

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    • Registered: 05-Jan-2010
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    Everyone mixes up the r and s in the beginning. There's even been some discussion regarding swapping their positions, but the outcome of those discussions has always been, "don't do it", because that creates a lot more same-finger awkwardness. If you feel the mixing up is a problem, I suppose you could focus on getting those two right while you type, and you'll soon notice they're no problem anymore.

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