Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I switched to Colemak "cold turkey" last year and I couldn't be happier now that the transition is complete. I too never got as fast as I did with qwerty but it's so much more comfortable that I don't care.

I probably made a mistake by not practising typing much on places like keybr.com and about three months in I was starting to think that I had made a horrible mistake because at that point I was slow at both qwerty and colemak but by six months I was totally happy that I stuck with it.

I didn't struggle much with keybindings but I did end up creating an alias cs='cd'. In terms of using other computers I got a programmable mechanical keyboard or I just hunt and peck in qwerty now.



I liked COLEMAK until the second I had to use someone else's equipment I felt like someone broke my fingers every time.


I switched to Colemak in college and it was amazing. My relative strain injury went away and my typing speed actually exceeded my old pace.

Then I took a job that required me using a shared computer with a QWERTY layout. I hated being reduced to finger pecking like a complete n00b, and so I switched back.

15 years later I’m still on QWERTY, and wearing wrist guards to deal with the RSI. Every now and then I think about switching back to Colemak (or Workman), but I chicken out when I think of all the different keyboard interfaces I use—not just my laptop, but also my tablet, phone, wife’s laptop, etc.


Don't worry about getting faster, you'll continue to improve over time. I switched to Dvorak in ~2007 and I am faster now than I ever was on QWERTY. Probably would have continued to improve on QWERTY too, tbf.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: