Hacker News Reader

Comment by d5ve | Hacker News Reader

I use a Glove80 keyboard, and even after 4 months I'm not back to my normal typing speed! This has cost me a fair bit of productivity, and was stressful at times. Almost feeling like I'd suffered a bit of brain damage, where I could picture what I wanted to do, but be unable to type it out.

Having the modifier keys in the thumb cluster feels a lot less awkward than using my left-hand little finger at odd angles. And I like the fit and finish and customisation.

Overall though, I think I would have been better served by a regular qwerty, not columnar, split keyboard. Maybe my middleaged brain ain't plastic enough any more.

<small>Plus I think the benefits of columnar are oversold. If I naturally curl my fingers in and out, they kinda fan in and out, rather move in parallel straight lines. And the right hand side of a regular keyboard matches that movement pretty well. The left hand side is backwards of course.

View on HN

These differences between people are really interesting. When I switched from a traditional keyboard to a flat column stagger keyboard, I did 15-30 minutes of exercises a day and after a week I was pretty much at my regular speed. Going from a flat column stagger keyboard to a Kinesis Advantage took me a few hours of adjustment at most. And from the Advantage to the Glove80 no adjustment at all.

I type Colemak-DH, but I am experimenting on the side with letter on thumb layouts. Over the past few weeks, I have tried rsthd, Maltron, and now aptmak (30 key variant). With aptmak I am at 40 WPM after ~5 days. I still type Colemak-DH during the workday at my regular speed, I can switch to a typing tutor and type aptmak at that speed again after two minutes or so (even though I have space on the other hand).

I am sorry for all those people for which this is a really long painful process. I am sure age is a factor, but I am also past 40, so it's definitely not the only factor.

Keep practicing! When I switched to KA2 I could not type with the same speed for months. I've also decided to switch from QWERTY to Colemak at the same time - it did not improve the situation.

But I am fine now, have a KA2 @work, Model 100 @home and have no problems switching between them whatsoever on a daily basis. I've also ordered Glove80 and I am sure it will be fine. What I have some problems with, are those rare occasions where I travel and have to use my notebook's keyboard. Everything - staggered layout, lack of thumb cluster, no split, scissor switches - is just a source of huge discomfort.

> I think I would have been better served by a regular qwerty, not columnar, split keyboard

I recc the ultimate hacking keyboard (UHK). It's as you describe, and I love it.

I couldn't type blind for 30+ years. Never bothered to learn it. Then I used https://www.keybr.com/ a couple of times, less than an hour in total and I was able to touch-type afterwards at an acceptable speed and error rate.

So when I'm experimenting with a new keyboard of key layout, I always practice on keybr.com 1st, because it tremendously speeds up the getting-used-to period!

I tried a columnar layout for a while (ergo dox kit if I recall) and gave up because when I was in meetings on my laptop keyboard I made so many typos. The worst was hitting Enter on my laptop when I was aiming for apostrophe. So many unintentionally sent IMs.

FWIW, I really can't do ortholinear. Maybe it's similar for you? I think it's just one of those things where you don't know until you try for a while. It's apparently right for some!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com