Some background
- Previously a Qwerty touch typist for 15 years or so.
- Qwerty speeds were decent... around 65 wpm with near perfect accuracy. I found it more than fast enough to be productive.
Why try a new layout?
- Mostly just out of curiosity.... I wanted to see how my brain and fingers reacted and adapted
- I was also curious as to whether another layout would be better for RSI
- I tried Dvorak first for a day but the keyboard shortcuts (Z,X,C,V, etc) were deal breakers, and the heavy right pinky use did not look promising
Learning Colemak
- I've been using Colemak almost exclusively now for a month, both at home and for programming at work.
- The first few days were heavy on typing tutors and tests, but after about a week my daily typing was my only practice.
- Typing speed is currently peaking at around 40 wpm with 85-95% accuracy.
- I am learning on a few Windows 7 machines.
- I currently use a modified Colemak layout (created with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator) that enables me to keep most keyboard shortcuts in Qwerty. It doesn't seem to work 100%, but it does for Firefox (Ctrl-L, T, N, etc) which is my main concern. I normally do not have my fingers waiting on the home row during casual browsing, so Qwerty works much better for me.
My impressions
I really like how much less my fingers move in Colemak. When I switch back to Qwerty it really feels like my fingers are all over the place. On the flip side though, sometimes it feels like my fingers (especially pinky and ring) are being restrained or cramped, especially since more typing is done by the strongest two fingers on each hand. I almost want them to break free and move more at times. Some finger combinations still feel a little awkward to me (not sure which combinations, I just know that I run into them from time to time), but I feel it would be remedied in time. Overall though I feel that typing in Colemak is a little more pleasant and a whole lot more efficient than Qwerty.
I haven't been keeping up on my Qwerty very much, and when I do switch back for a few minutes at a time (one of my computers at work is heavily locked down and I am not interested in even trying to install Colemak) I find myself looking at the keyboard a lot, and even hunting and pecking on occasion. My touch typing seemed to suffer a lot, so much so that this afternoon I made a decision to switch back Qwerty because I didn't want to lose it. However, after about 4 hours of returning, I was a little surprised at how fast it all came flooding back, so now I think I'm not so worried about losing it. I'll just have to make sure to keep going back to it once in awhile. I'll give Colemak a few more months to see how it goes and report back.
