One year with Colemak

I switched to Dvorak about 7 years ago. In hindsight I probably should have stayed with Qwerty.

Nobody can use my machines. My girlfriend already knows to Ctrl-Shift to change keyboard layouts, but that's on my PC where Windows is in English. On my laptop with Windows in Spanish it's Alt-Shift. Even I get confused sometimes.

Most games I play don't recognize layouts, so WASD doesn't work. I have to Ctrl-Shift before launching a game. And that's on Windows 8 that has per-session layout. Windows 7 is per window layout so if Ctrl-Shift doesn't work inside the game I have to manually configure keyboard.

Copy Cut Paste become Ctrl I, Ctrl B and Ctrl . I think this is not a problem in Colemak.

My first language is Spanish. After learning Dvorak I no longer use accents or ñ (just Alt-164'd that one) so it's a pain when I type something more or less official that can't have spelling errors.

After that rant, I'm still relatively happy with Dvorak. At least I have something to say on job interviews.

I switched to Dvorak in high school and have been using it full time for about 13 years. I find I can switch back and forth almost fluently, though I do have to look at the keyboard when typing on qwerty in order to switch my mind into that mode. As a test, I typed the last two sentences on qwerty and it was a bit painful, but not too slow. Maybe 40wpm. I hit 80 on dvorak without thinking.

The biggest thing I notice when going back to qwerty is how horrendously uncomfortable it is. I feel like I'm doing contortionist exercises with my fingers, and my wrists start aching very quickly. Going back to dvorak after that is like switching to the "walk" section of a walk/run interval training session.

I agree with kingmanaz that words just roll off your fingers. Dvorak is like cooking in a kitchen where everything you need is in just the right spot and you can grab it without moving, versus qwerty where everything is over the place and the spices are opposite the stove. You can still cook, and even do it quickly if you know where everything is, but you wind up expending so much more energy moving around.

I did have problems at work when co-workers needed to use my keyboard to do something on my machine. The universal reaction is "what's wrong with your keyboard", sometimes with gratuitous profanity thrown in. Maybe 10% of people realise that it's dvorak without me having to explain. A handful try to hunt-and-peck before giving up and making me do it. One person surprised me by knowing dvorak as well. So, I had work buy me a hardware-switchable dvorak keyboard that has double-labelled keycaps (qwerty in small blue letters). That's solved the problem.

Gaining dvorak fluency in the first place took me about 3 weeks of inability to type, which was hell on a shy geeky 16-year-old whose main social interaction was IRC channels.

The one place I still use qwerty is on my phone. Dvorak is very poorly suited to thumb typing because it breaks autocorrect. Most of the time when you mistype a word, it's still a valid English word, because all the common letters are next to each other.

If you're serious about increased typing speed you're probably better off switching to a two-handed chording system http://www.loper-os.org/?p=861&cpage=1#comment-16162 . Alternative layouts for conventional non-chorded typing don't seem to be worth the disruption.

It's been about 8.5 years since I switched to Colemak. The most interesting part is indeed working at other computer keyboards. But I managed to keep proficiency at QWERTY (at least for touch typing, perhaps not quickly and until I'm used to it, I look like a drunk...) and though I've since lost it somewhat, I discovered that my fingers were very happy typing different layouts on very distinct keyboards. Even now, a generic Dell keyboard has me thinking QWERTY, while it'd be impossible for me to type on my Das Keyboard Ultimate in QWERTY. Actually what's since messed up my QWERTY the most has been the unusual grid pattern of the Kinesis Advantage. I love it, but it's given me some bad habits at more traditional keyboards. Hardest keyboard for me to type on though, hands down, is a 7-8" tablet's. I'm writing on one now...

When I was in college I took up Dvorak for a while. It was definitely an interesting experience trying to switch between Qwerty and Dvorak with any frequency. I found that I could touch type in either, but to type Dvorak I had to look at the screen and to type Qwerty I had to `look' at the keyboard. When I wanted to type Qwerty it didn't matter if my eyes were shut, but my head had to be tilted down.

I made thi switch to Dvorak at the tail end of college, just to prove that I could keep learning new things. It was really difficult; work machines were shared so I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home. This bit really struck me:

> After little more than a week, I got to a point where I started to make lots of mistakes typing Qwerty, but I could not type proper Colemak either. This was something I had not anticipated: I expected to learn Colemak in addition to Qwerty, not instead of it!

I felt the same way! Eventually I was 85% proficient at both. Finally, I left for a job where my machine is mine, so I’m 100% Dvorak and my WPM and accuracy has dramatically increased. Unfortunately, those times I -have- had to type in QWERTY, I find myself looking at the keyboard. (I wish there was some form of Dvorak + Kana keyboards for JP).

One upshot to this is that I learned Vim AFTER Dvorak. I’ve never had to worry about hjkl not being on the home row; they never have been for me! Big plus.

Also, I’ve found that most games don’t care about your input language, they tend to key off of the key signal so traditional wasd keys still function as expected.

I wish this would have gone more in depth in his experience with colemak and vim. I've considered switching keyboard layouts in the past, but applications with lots of keyboard shortcuts (like vim) make it seem too difficult.

I have tried Dorvak (I can touch type with it, but a lot slower than my non touch typing on QWERTY).

One thing I noticed since then is that as a programmer typing speed or touch typing is not so important. On the command line I have tab completion, and in my IDE I also have the equivalent. It rarely takes more than three keyboard strokes before I can get a sensible list to choose from. Its a lot more efficient than tying top learn to touch type.

I've been using Colemak for about 6 years now. The difference for me wasn't just speed, but rather that I learned to type "wrong" on Qwerty. I could never get myself to touch type, I always had to look at the keyboard. It turns out that forcing myself to switch layouts fixed that, for whatever reason. To this day I can type with Colemak without looking but have to look if I want to use Qwerty.

I'm just over the year mark with Colemak as well. Used the Tarmak transitional layouts to get to full Colemak and now use wide-angle mods as well to further improve keyboard ergonomics. On a good day I can hit 70wpm which is faster than I could ever manage with Qwerty. To find out more about this stuff visit the Colemak forum and get chatting with the legendary DreyMar..

I'm using Colemak for 2-4 years and I have the same Experience(helping someone using another layout, non-blind typing previous layout, games) as you have. I used Azerty 95% and Qwerty 5% before the switch. Because I don't type much French anymore, I'm not missing Azerty layout.

I'm even using Colemak on Android.

Anyone have any experience with minimak [1]? It seems like the 4 key layout would be much easier to handle within Vim than most other alternative keyboard layouts.

1 - http://www.minimak.org/

Colemak is great until you jump on another machine. Then it's really weird.

I'm a full time dvorak typist after years of having used qwerty. I re-learned vim's shortcuts for dvorak. The transition took approximately one month. My wrist used to ache after 10+ hours a day typing querty. The fire finally died after I switched and became comfortable with dvorak.

My first impression when revisiting qwerty is a revulsion at the placement of the "t". What a horrible location for such an oft used key. However, most qwerty users will have a similar response when typing "ls -l" on dvorak. Actually, a lot of unix commands were clearly written with qwerty in mind, their letters centering on qwerty's home row. The unix monikers get easier with repetition for dvorak typists, but dvorak's true power comes in writing English, which in my case is most of my typing. Vim works well with either layout, luckily. Most of the programming languages I use - SQL, golang, python, and c# - seem about the same in either layout.

Once you become fluent with dvorak it "rolls" off your fingers. You'll know what I mean once you're there. "The", "another", "masticate", "friend", and most other words with vowels and common consonants spend most of their typed lives on the home row. Both hands share evenly in typing. The common punctuation and quotes are right where you need them.

If you use RDP for most of your remote work the transition is surprisingly easy. Switching between layouts is simple in Windows and Unix. Hell, even my copy of Amiga 3.1 supports dvorak out of the box.

Some here seem to switch their keycaps to a dvorak arrangement. I did this in the past with my Model M but eventually set it back to querty. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I need to look at the keyboard now to type qwerty, thus having the keycaps set to querty serves as a convenient reminder. When typing dvorak I never look down.

I noticed an interesting gender stereotype.

"Want to help someone out? She will probably use a Qwerty layout."

I'm not perfect and guilty as well mistakenly defaulting to a user on the internet as a male. Let's try to welcome both genders equally :)