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    Currently making the switch...

    • Started by cemeth
    • 3 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • Registered: 05-May-2008
    • Posts: 1

    Just started today.
    I've been touch typing qwerty very fast for ~9 years, and the switch is really hard... despite being called "easy". :)
    But I can already feel that it'll be worth it. The fingers "jump around" much less. It feels awkward to have such an easy access to everything. :)
    My motivations to switch are to reduce the risk of ever getting RSI, and to become more efficient of course.
    This is a great layout. I only recently heard about it. Before, I only knew about Dvorak, which would be a bad choice for me.
    But colemak preserves almost all the special characters, and zxcv, which is just wonderful. (they have good positions on qwerty)
    I still have to look at the layout picture all the time though, and I'm incredibly slow... this post took me ~30 minutes. :(
    But I'm not giving up. This is a very smart and promising layout. I'm not going back anymore. :)
    I have the layout pic (Colemak_fingers.png from this site) set to "Always on top" and am now writing on colemak in IM, forums and the shell (Linux), always looking at it. I think that's a good way to learn it.
    Common mistakes so far: confusing i and L, e and i, r and s. I'm also particularly slow with the upper row, pgjl in particular.

    Last edited by cemeth (06-May-2008 02:37:27)
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    • Registered: 20-Oct-2006
    • Posts: 111

    I've been doing this for the better part of a year now, and I still mess up on R and S from time to time.  Not as much as I once did, of course, but still more than any other typo.  It does get a lot better, however, and fairly quickly.

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
    • Posts: 358

    Change is hard only because it is human nature to grossly overestimate what we can accomplish by spending all day on something but grossly underestimate how much we can accomplish and change in a year if we would spend an hour a day on it. 

    The key is not giving in to frustration.  It's worth it.

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    • Registered: 18-Apr-2008
    • Posts: 21

    I agree with all that's been said here.  I've been practicing diligently for a couple weeks now, and it really does get easier after a bit - surprisingly quickly. (And keyboard samurai's observation about human nature is spot on - good words to live by in all areas of life. FWIW, my biggest frustration to date has not been the fouled up letters (s in particular is a bugaboo), but the fact I must still devote so many brain cells to thinking about where the keys are, whereas in qwerty I could focus exclusively on what I was saying.

    Keep after it . . . it pays off.

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