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Comment by izzydata | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who can't type on this kind of keyboard because I often use my left hand to type some right side keys and my right hand to type some left side keys. I'd constantly be clicking off into the air on this thing.

I can type near 150wpm, but it is a completely random style that mostly only follows using whatever finger happens to be closest to the next key regardless of which hand it is after leaving every finger wherever it was last used.

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I think you’d be constantly doing that for like two days. Then you would adapt and stop using the wrong hand. (Provided that you don’t use another keyboard simultaneously that let’s you keep going with the old habit.)

I was in a similar position, but highly motivated to switch due to advancing RSI symptoms. I waited to switch until a low-code, long-duration project came across my desk and was pleasantly surprised by how quickly my old habits were replaced. The trick seems to be that with split keyboards (especially orthilinear models) the finger closest to the next key is usually the one you ought to use anyhow. When home-row is mandatory, it's easy.

After a month or so at most, I was back to full speed. It did ruin me for laptop keyboards, though, I can't type on those at all anymore.

Similar experience, except I was surprised to find that my laptop typing have actually been improving without trying despite (or due to?) also using a qwerty but otherwise quite different layout.

I had to re-learn the B and the 6 when I moved to a split keyboard, but it was totally worth it. Just plan to spend some time in typing drills/tests and you'll get the hang of it soon enough. It really is amazing what you can adapt to.

I'm a bit of a n00b for QMK firmware based keyboards, but I think there is a function for flipping the mapping of each side so you can do stuff like that.

I did have this issue with the 6 key specifically, but as a single key that was easy enough for me to get used to eventually.

You can check unified orthos like planck. But imo selling point of these keebs is comfort not speed.

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