I designed my own keyboard layout. Was it worth it? | Hacker News Reader

I designed my own keyboard layout. Was it worth it?

jonashietala.se

29 pointslawn13 comments

I switched to Colemak-DH on a split keyboard. My hands thank me too much. They are always rested!

And the shoulders, the best part of split keyboard is the open shoulders! It feels good to work on the split keyboard. One of the best investment!

I am glad you created a layout for yourself!

Considering speed, I am all recovered and even surpassed by QWERTY speed. I am average (~60wpm) when it comes to typing speed so it wasn't hard to catch up to it.

My switching experience was also similar to yours. Get to ~35 wpm and start using. It took me 14 hrs to reach there (1hr deliberate practice everyday for 2 weeks.)

I did the same but just went cold turkey (from a TKL mechanical with a QWERTY layout to a split using Colemak-DH). The one I got is also programmable and I eliminated the need to do a lot of weird hand gymnastics. It's only been a couple of weeks and I'm not back up to my old speed, but my shoulders and wrists feel so good!

And I can do about 40 wpm now, so I know I'll get there eventually.

Do you have large hands? I was wondering if Colemak-DH has less utility for people who don’t feel the stretch is significant when using Colemak. I’ve been using Colemak for 11 years and it’s saved my wrists from RSI

Not at all! That is also the reason why I used DH because I didn't like the stretch.

It's my understanding that in general Colemak-DH is an improvement (that I agree with), but it's not that significant that you should feel the need to switch, especially if you're happy with what you have.

I'm also under the illusion that Colemak-DH is more preferable if you have smaller hands, because lateral movement is more demanding the smaller hands you have.

Huh, I also designed my own keyboard layout a couple of years back when pain showed up in my left wrist.

Well I didn't do a "real" hardware design - only remapped all of my keys so that I press shift as least and possible to not curve my left wrist.

And the small hardware adaptation of taking two keyboards and using one for each hand, because who has time to make their own ::)

I once tried to learn Dvorak but after 4 different letter words my brain started aching around the spine. Like it had been rewiring. I stopped and have never tried again

is it worth it to learn colemak? learning it rn and it's messing with my brain

Colemak (and in particular Colemak-DH) is a great layout and if you can just get past the painful learning process then you should see a sizeable comfort boost.

Now depending on your goals and preferences there might be other things you can try (which is outlined in the article). Using a more ergonomical keyboard for instance will probably give you more ergonomical benefits for less effort.

There are also tips for making the learning process more efficient in the article.

Is answer yes or no? Not reading article.

Yes.

That is FAQ #1 (at the bottom of the page):

"You dodged the question; Was it worth it? Hell yes it was. The massive amount of nerd points alone is enough."

> I’m not close to my old QWERTY speed of +120 wpm simply because I got bored of practicing typing.

What I learned from going down that rabbit-hole is that typing even though I sit in front of a computer all day (and then some), isn't what I do most. I'm paid to think and come up with solutions. Typing them up is so small that I barely got past 50 wpm after months without extra daily practice.

That said, my hands are so much more comfortable all the time. I used to sometimes get cramps or rarely debilitating shooting pains along the backs of my hands that put me out for days.

What I fear is that when I'm really old and start to forget, I won't have what would have been older Qwerty muscle memory to fall back on. And there will be no-one around to make my personal custom layout on the device of the day. Maybe a hardware inline USB-C mapper would work. But just in case, I leave one of my computers on Qwerty.

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