Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheRoque | Hacker News Reader

I learned Colemak a year ago so I could touch-type properly, because the regular layouts are so sub-optimal that the balance between fingers feel so weird, and being on the home row is actually not optimal. I definitely am happy with the change. I use Colemak mostly for coding, and writing short texts. I would switch to my native layout whenever I need to type fast and long texts (AZERTY, french layout). I definitely think Colemak is the sweet spot for someone wanting to get a better layout, without much hastle: it's already on MacOS and Linux, it keeps a lot of keys the same as QWERTY (for shortcuts), and it has a ton of built-in dead keys for European accents ! I didn't even need to remap the vim bindings using it. I may not actually type faster (actually I max at 80 WPM now, before it was 100 WPM), but the ergonomics just feels so much better.

View on HN

How does colemak work with the cardinal directions, hjkl?

I use Colemak on a Kinesis Advantage 2 and decided to keep the same vim keybindings (physical locations change/key letters stay the same).

I think it's less optimal than QWERTY but still really nice and I'm very happy with my choice. Of course I don't know what it's like remapping because I never went down that road.

I imagine it would get very confusing having to write vim commands in qwerty when your keyboard is Colemak. Almost like switching keyboards between insert and normal mode.

I agree with parent post of yours. I'm a much better touch typer on Colemak than QWERTY - partly because I had to learn again, partly QWERTY sucks for touch typing (try hitting the letter C with your middle finger while your first finger hovers on F!)

You use your index finger to type C on a Qwerty row-stagger board. Its actually an advantage of row-stagger that the most dextrous fingers have access to multiple keys less than a key unit away. In saying that I just learned colmak-dh on a columnar 36 key board and I am happy typing C with middle finger. I would say there are some factors that were not considered with these supposedly ergonic column-stagger and alternative layouts, such as something I term psychological contrast; the more distributed layout of qwerty (not optimised for home row) enhances the distinctness of movements, compared with pressing keys next to each other where the differences betweem them (contrast) is low. I also think that alternative layouts and ergonomic boards tend to discourage overall motion or encourage holding muscles in spasm, rather than the more chaotic/increased motion of less efficient layouts which provides opportunities to release tension via more varied motion to avoid injuiries! For anyone with RSIs, I would suggest working on ways to release muscle spasms (e.g. with hand stretches or subtle motions that can be incorporated while working, or by using the mouse sometimes! I know, blasphemy right?).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com