Ditch QWERTY – Your Hands Need Colemak

As someone who types 100+WPM on plain-old QWERTY, I don't see the point - the limiting factor is obviously not the distance between keys or switching between hands. In any case, it's been beaten to death that in real work, you're never going to be typing at a volume where WPM matters anyway.<p>As for the ergonomic argument, it doesn't seem like the claims made (assuming they're true) have a huge effect on your health (again, you're almost never typing for a continued period of time). You might achieve 50% more key-hand alternation (is that metric even useful?), but when you're typing twenty words at a time, that doesn't come out to very many.<p>And in the end you have to deal with QWERTY anyway, every time you use a foreign computer.<p>That said, there's no real reason why QWERTY is intrinsically <i>good</i> either, other than that it's "good enough", and happens to be the standard.

A while ago I wrote a small program[0], that measures effort to type a passage with different keyboard layouts.<p>It accounts for reach and alternation. I just added Colemak in response to this discussion, and from the texts I include in the distribution (some public domain from archive.org), it looks like Colemak is better on reach, Dvorak is better on alternation, and they both spank QWERTY for substantive texts[1].<p>It's just a quick experiment, I'd love to hear input on methodology.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/bak/keyboard_battle" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bak/keyboard_battle</a><p>[1]<p><pre><code> texts/alice_underground.txt: colemak: alternation_effort: 29962 reach_effort: 29403 raw_score: 59365 dvorak: alternation_effort: 24476 reach_effort: 30312 raw_score: 54788 qwerty: alternation_effort: 32118 reach_effort: 51842 raw_score: 83960 texts/declaration_of_independence.txt: colemak: alternation_effort: 2725 reach_effort: 2469 raw_score: 5194 dvorak: alternation_effort: 2237 reach_effort: 2693 raw_score: 4930 qwerty: alternation_effort: 3049 reach_effort: 5129 raw_score: 8178 texts/gullivers.txt: colemak: alternation_effort: 100074 reach_effort: 97327 raw_score: 197401 dvorak: alternation_effort: 81836 reach_effort: 103371 raw_score: 185207 qwerty: alternation_effort: 110812 reach_effort: 181778 raw_score: 292590 texts/qbf.txt ("the quick brown fox..."): colemak: alternation_effort: 9 reach_effort: 22 raw_score: 31 dvorak: alternation_effort: 13 reach_effort: 21 raw_score: 34 qwerty: alternation_effort: 11 reach_effort: 30 raw_score: 41</code></pre>

&#62; Colemak is easier to learn, since it’s designed to be as similar to QWERTY as possible without compromising on efficiency.<p>I actually suspect that's a fallacy. When you learn &#38; use something new, it's actually confusing when it's similar to something else. I have no issue with typing either Qwerty or Dvorak, but Azerty, where only a few keys are different from Qwerty, drives me nuts.

What if I told you that you could get these same benefits with only a 10-20% drop in WPM? And that you could be faster on the newer layout in two weeks?<p>Believe it. Go to carpalx's key swaps page ( <a href="http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?partial_optimization" rel="nofollow">http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?partial_optimization</a> ). Make the first change on their list - swap K and E - and use the new layout until your brain gets used to the swap. Once you're comfortable, make the next swap.<p>Once you've made about 7 swaps you're on a layout that's on par with both Dvorak and Colemak, and you never had to waste a single hour in typing trainers.<p>Each swap takes me about five hours of typing over about 3 days to get used to. I imagine if your job has you typing all the time, your day-count will be lower. I have currently swapped E/K and O/J, and this post has reminded me to swap F/T as well.<p>There are plenty of keyboard remappers available for windows and osx, and it's not difficult to do yourself in linux either.

I switched to Dvorak back in the summer of 2005 and I've never looked back. Colemak may have been a better choice for certain metrics on certain keyboards, but one that cannot be stated enough for Dvorak is the way your hands alternate keys so much more than they do on QWERTY. I'm not sure if that has been studied for Colemak.<p>Thoughts on changing keyboard layouts:<p>1) If you're gonna do it, I agree with this article, touch typing = #1 priority. You're not going to see a colemak keyboard, most likely.<p>2) QWERTY actually seems to work pretty well for big thumbs on a small screen. I don't use tablets, so I don't know the state of affairs on Android or iOS keyboard layouts. This has notably not been a problem for me, even though I was initially concerned about using BlackBerrys (oh 2005 me..)<p>3) IRC/Instant Messaging are a massive way to learn how to type because you'll prioritize learning words that you type often, and natural patterns for you.<p>4) Buy a better keyboard if you're gonna go to this effort for your hands. I swear by my Kinesis Advantage Pro.<p>This process is frustratingly slow, but after ~3 weeks of going cold turkey, I have not once switched back. I was even a sysadmin for 1000's of desktops in labs, and it took 2 seconds to switch them to dvorak and back.<p>Finally, while we're at it, if your company offers ergonomic consulting, <i>DO IT</i>! You'll be amazed how much more comfortable your typing is when you've fixed how you sit, your monitor height, and your keyboard tray.

I appreciate the fact that there may be technically <i>better</i> layouts than QWERTY (Dvorak, Colemak, whatever), I'm still unable to understand how this is going to help me as someone who can has been able to touch-type in the 100-120wpm range since middle school (that was over 20 years ago). How much faster do I need to type? By all personal measures, QWERTY is <i>good enough</i> and the fact that it is the <i>standard</i> means that I can sit down at any English keyboard and be able to type at my peak efficiency without having to switch my brain back and forth between two layouts. My fingers can already keep up with my ability to form coherent sentences and in programming/sysadmin work, typing speed is not very important once you get past a certain point. I literally never had the thought, "If only I could type faster, I could get this done more quickly..."<p>On top of this, as a heavy vi user, the main navigation keys are no longer on the home row for either Colemak or Dvorak, which means I either need to make my editing far less efficient, or remap nearly every key.<p>I have had many very intelligent people attempt to explain the switch to Dvorak to me, and never heard a good reason to invest the time. I am curious if folks invested the same amount of concentrated time improving their QWERTY skills (relative to the amount of time folks spend learning a new layout) if there would be a similar speed improvement.

I just made the switch from QWERTY to Colemak this summer. Basically I started with only using it at home doing typing tutors and using it as my system default. Once I was up to ~30-40wpm after a week or two I switched my work computer's default over too. I'm now ~10wpm faster then I was on qwerty.<p>I mainly program and email at work, and Colemak was my recommended keyboard by the analyzer listed in here. Loving the layout, feels easier on the hands, and a big plus for me is my most used keyboard shortcuts remain the same seeing as the bottom row is almost identical.<p>Negatives is I find it hard to switch back to qwerty on demand on foreign computers where colemak isn't set. Have to resort to hunt/peck, but hey at least any keyboard you come across will be labeled correctly.<p>I'm planning on going back to qwerty for a week sometime and then keep using it occasionally to keep in fresh to try to get around the issue of using other computers.<p>My recommendation? Start with it at home with the basics where productivity won't matter much, once you have the basics down where you know where each key is you just are slow/inconsistent to it switch work over. I then saw a rapid increase by using it so much. The layout is great! :) And if you might run into other computers try to keep QWERTY up with using it occasionally.<p>Oh, and it will piss off others who use your computer, so make sure you have separate profiles set up at home so it's not a language bar war. Wife and I used to just both use the one account.

I've used colemak for ~3 years and love it. I have it set on a programmable keyboard, with matrix layout, that I built myself. So I can take it with me if I have to switch computers. When I'm on a laptop, my body knows it's qwerty time, and I see no slow-down.<p>I had a burst of ergonomic problems that made me switch. I have had zero problems since, and I work just as many hours.<p>I can recommend colemak.<p>I learned it by typing a novel from an author I wanted to learn writing style from (Murakami, pinball 1973). Took me maybe a month.

I've been cutting-and-pasting the type of code I write into the Keyboard Layout Analyzer <a href="http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/" rel="nofollow">http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/</a><p>Now I want to switch to Colemak :/

To those of you trying to learn a new layout, I've found a good way to practice and increase speed is to compete with others online in a typing race game like:<p><a href="http://www.typeracer.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.typeracer.com</a>

I'm interested. But the article and the main site (colmak.com) fail to provide a full layout - or at least I gave up after being unable to check where my keys would go.<p>This is from a German that runs everything with a qwerty US english layout, because Germany uses a crappy qwertz layout where really every interesting character for programmers leads to pain and suffering to compose. What I get ~reasonably~ fine from US qwerty:<p>@{}[]~`/\|;':"<p>That's my measurement for any keyboard layout I'd be willing to try: If these letters are hard to type I cannot be bothered to switch, even if I certainly do type more prose than the chars above.

I really want to move to a better typing style but I'm nervous that I'll end up losing my current ability to type very fast and spend months typing very slow for no real long term gain. Has anyone tried re-learning typing after they've been typing 16 hours a day for half a decade? I can type at 120 WPM with 2 fingers (QWERTY) and don't want to end up typing at 60 WPM for 6 months while I learn to type with all my fingers in COLEMAK (or DVORAK) to find that I'm back at 120 WPM... I have no pain from typing 16 hours consecutively at the moment, so the only advantage would be speed.

I have hard time seeing how it may be worth my effort. Switching layouts will probably be very painful and result in productivity drop - and then if I do it, it would be only working on the computers I specifically configure for that purpose. I wouldn't be able to use it on anybody else's computer or on any mobile device. If I were professional typist, the speed increase might be worth it, but otherwise I'd stick with the devil I know and everybody else does too.

So, I've read in several places that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down. Therefore, there must have been an older layout that was actually faster. According to wikipedia this is not correct (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty</a>).<p>The first layout was a simple minded alphabetical layout which jammed, so QWERTY was designed to let typists go fast AND not have the mechanical stuff jam up.

I used dvorak but stopped because a) I developed wrist problems for a while (despite using dvorak) and reverted to hunt &#38; peck to minimize finger movement and b) ctrl-c/ctrl-v were almost impossible to remap on windows (at the time).<p>This is promising, mostly because unchanged x, c, v keys.

I don't think developers are often held back by typing speed. I certainly don't produce code at 75 WPM -- unless I am writing something trivial. Other times, I stop to think and consider what I am typing, so what is holding me back is my thought speed.

I spent a month with Colemak and got to about 40 wpm. The transition to a new keyboard layout is HARD and takes a lot of determination. I know some people find it to be worth the learning curve, but I migrated back to qwerty.

For people who are worried about being unable to use QWERTY after learning Colemak, have a look at the graph in this post: <a href="http://www.ryanheise.com/colemak/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ryanheise.com/colemak/</a>

Is it common to type 110-130 WPM on Colemak, and is it optimized for English or design for global usage?

I touch type at 125+ wpm using QWERTY. Don't see any reason to switch at this point.

Someone knows about other languages? For instance, what about french?