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Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

So did you actually get any faster?

I switched to Colemak pro'lly 15 years ago, and while my fingers certainly move around a lot less, I don't think my top speed on typeracer.com has improved over what I was able to do on QWERTY before switching, nor do I seem to make fewer errors.

On the whole 1) I do like Colemak a bit better, but 2) I don't think it was worth the switch, although 3) it's certainly not worth a switch back. I think 4) if everyone started with Colemak things would be better, but 5) given that they don't, I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone else choose Colemak over QWERTY if they're learning, based on my own experience.

What's kind of weird is that with all the ink / bits spilt over this issue, all we have are two 50+-year-old studies whose raw data are unavailable. How hard would it really be to re-run an RCT?

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I type Dvorak around my old qwerty speed. It’s probably not possible to be faster. For really fast qwerty typists, the brain has multiple fingers with the right hand contortions in motion, hitting keys in order, just in time. Dvorak eliminated hand pain by reducing motion, but it didn’t give my brain the ability to orchestrate my fingers with tighter timing.

The less-movement thing is also why I switched. Wrist pain instantly gone and never returned. Qwerty is torturous.

Also a Colemak (DH) user. I agree completely with everything you've written but I'll add that I'm happy I switched even though it was definitely not "worth" it by any quantitative measure.

As a Colemak (DH) user for ~5 years, I share these experiences.

I did a monkeytype benchmark before switching, and I still barely hit the same numbers, so it's certainly not a magic fix for more typing speed. What is left then is the argument concerning ergonomics: which I am not sure is worth the trade-offs.

Every time I now sit at another's computer I am unable to type without glancing at the keyboard. Moreover, I am trying to switch to (n)vim, and am completely at a loss navigating, as the hjkl keys are now scattered across the keyboard -- beating their purpose.

I'm happy I switched to Colemak around 13 years ago. Mostly due to elbow pain. I do find it made a difference there.

In general, I do type faster than before, and faster than many people around me. That's likely only because I actually had to practice.

Right -- see, I basically maxed out "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" in high school. (That is, I practiced with it regularly until it couldn't find any particular problem with my typing, and resorted to giving me practice typing symbols, at which point I got bored and quit.) What prompted me to look at Colemak (and mechanical keyboards) was when some friend/colleagues at work were playing with typeracer.com, and I clocked in at 120WPM on one of the first races. One of my friends didn't really believe it and asked me to repeat the performance in front of him, which I did.

That made me think, maybe if I switched to Colemak and got a better keyboard, I could go even faster. I did both; and though my forearms certainly feel less tired on the odd occasion that I have long bouts of continuous typing to do, I'm neither noticeably faster nor more accurate.

So, both our anecdata seem to match the conclusion of the 1956 study mentioned in this article: That it was the intentional practice that primarily resulted in the improvements, not the keyboard layout; intentional practice on QWERTY would probably yield similar speed improvements to practice on Colemak or Dvorak.

I've had a similar history, and also switched mostly to reduce fatigue & the risk of RSI. Colemak seems easier to use, even if it's not any faster. Of course it's quite possible that the improvement is simply due to the deliberate practice needed to switch layouts; even more than learning to type in the first place switching layouts takes focus and therefore makes it easier to notice & correct bad habits.

I don't actually care if I get faster.

My fingers currently feel sore from hours at the keyboard.

THAT I can do without.

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