This is incredible and something I feel I've been waiting for for a while without knowing it. I transitioned to an alternative keyboard layout (colemak) several years ago in order to alleviate some RSI in my wrists. I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind.
How long did it take you to learn this layout? Is there a sequential method to learning it, similar to using tarmak for learning colemak? A difficulty I sometimes face is using a regular qwerty layout—do you experience difficulty using a normal keyboard?
I switched in college to Colemak when I wanted to learn how to properly touch type. Turns out that unlearning a weird QWERTY typing style developed to talk shit during Age of Empires 2 games as a kid.. is hard. While trying to learn QWERTY proper I also got frustrated by how inconvenient it felt. So I did some research and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try a different layout.
If you already touch type quickly on QWERTY, I only think it would be worth it if you wanted to potentially help with RSI.. although I'd try an ergonomic keyboard first.
This reminds me of the Tarmak transitional layouts for learning Colemak. Tarmak has four intermediary layouts between QWERTY and Colemak, each changing a few (3-4) keys at a time. Tarmak #1 gets the N and E keys in the home row, for instance.
I ended up going cold turkey Colemak, but for those who are interested in learning a new layout Tarmak seems like an interesting way to make gradual progress without totally decimating your typing speed. Plus, it leads into a well-established layout instead of resulting in a bespoke layout you have to work on yourself.
I've recently made the switch to Colemak on an ortholinear split keyboard. It's different enough that I can switch back to qwerty on a standard keyboard without my brain getting too confused, but Colemak is similar enough that I was able to learn it relatively quickly. An added bonus, learning a new layout actually made me a better qwerty typist on standard keyboards, even if I'm a little slower now when I switch back, I've noticed I do a lot less reaching and moving off the home row.
Author is using Colemak [1], and essentially using it as a way to force relearning how to actually type with "proper" form. It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately the author is only a week in and typing only 20 WPM.
Has anyone had experience learning an alternate keyboard layout? How long did it take? How did it affect your typing speed?
Also curious, does it help with coding? Personally, I find it's very rare that my typing is a bottleneck with coding, but I'm still curious if skills on an alternate layout actually translate meaningfully to coding.
I was starting to get wrist pain in my right hand at the end of the day. I believed it was from never learning to type properly, I only used two fingers on my right hand even though I could type relatively fast.
I tried many times to re-train myself to type properly, but with proper technique I was only typing at half of my normal speed and would give up quickly.
In the end I switched to colemak to force myself to re-learn how to type with proper hand technique. It took a year but now I can type faster than I used to be able to with QWERTY and without any pain. It was definitely worth it for me, but there are enough annoyances with everything being QWERTY by default that I wouldn't recommend anyone make the switch without a reason to do so.
Many years ago, a friend of mine switched his keyboard layout to Colemak. I thought I'd one-up him, so I searched for the most optimal layout and ended up with Carpalx's QGMLWY.
The neat thing about Carpalx's layouts is that most of them preserve the most common keyboard shortcut keys, which saves a lot of headache.
Took me maybe two weeks to get the hang of it for regular typing. It felt impossible at first, and then one day it just clicked! I used TypeFaster (old touch-typing tutor software... site seems to be gone?), which helped a lot. You can load any text you like into it, so it can be helpful for studying too!
Main issue with alternate layouts was that muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts was hard to break! (Many programs' shortcuts didn't work with the layout, they used the physical key instead.) I used it for a few months, then I used Colemak for maybe a year (so I'd be the only other person who could use his computer, heh), and then several switched computers a few more times and just ended up back with QWERTY.
I briefly played with the idea of "compressing" the English language by removing redundant letters. That way you'd only have to type the "short" form of a word, and it would be expanded for you. There's a whole ecosystem of text-expansion software, so the "product" would just be a word list to load into them... and I guess some way of learning it! (I think chorded word-at-a-time typing is much faster than any keyboard layout / compressed language scheme, though it might be more difficult to learn.)
Edit: Re Carpalx QGMLYWY: I just remembered, I found a portable AutoHotKey program[0] that allowed you to use Colemak on any machine by intercepting the keystrokes. It even had a handy little keyboard layout diagram that would display in the corner of the screen. So I took that one and modified it from Colemak to QGMLWY. Alas, I think it's been lost to time!
My layout of choice is colemak. I used to have quite a bit of pain in my wrist and between my left ring and middle finger when using QWERTY. I gave up and switched cold-turkey to colemak ~7 years ago and haven't looked back since. Also, it is available almost on every system I use - PKL for windows, `setxkbmap us -variant colemak` on GNU/Linux. It is an excellent layout and if you have a slow month or two (like I did in my final year of college), try an alt layout. It is definitely worth it - speed is the last thing a programmer needs to worry about while typing if one can go > 50wpm.
I switched to colemak years ago, and it's really not that bad. It's a little bit mind bending to learn a new layout, but after about a week or two of practice, your mind sort of "clicks" into it, and it's like you've been typing that way your whole life.
During that transition period you do not have to use Colemak exclusively. You're practicing a new motor skill, and the returns on such practice diminish rapidly after an hour or so per day.
Once you've learned Colemak, you will have to use QWERTY for just a short time each day to make sure you keep those neural pathways from decaying. I did not do this, and I regret it. I do alright on a QWERTY keyboard though; it just slows me down a bit. On a mobile device, it really doesn't make any difference, since the letters are in front of my eyes.
I taught myself Colemak last summer, as a pandemic project. If anyone is interested in learning, I recommend the "Tarmak" transitional layouts [1].
It's 5 intermediate layouts to transition from QWERTY to Colemak. Each only changes a few keys. So, rather than 1 big change (where you basically can't touch-type for a month) you have 5 little changes that you can learn over a weekend each.
For those thinking of switching to Colemak, you might consider using the Tarmak method: [0]
It's a series of 5 intermediate keyboard layouts that each change just a few keys from QWERTY. So, instead of one big transition that takes weeks to learn, you have 5 smaller transitions, each of which you can learn in a weekend.
I switched to Colemak, and I am also forced to use qwerty on a lot of keyboards. Colemak is very similar to qwerty, so its not that big a switch. Mostly the r/s location is the biggest issue.
Besides that, it's worth mentioning that there is an executable that you can use for Windows machines to easily switch to Colemak without installing it on the box. I carry it around on a thumbdrive, place it on a network share, and keep it in my Dropbox. I can always get to it. So 80-90% of the time I can use Colemak, and I am reasonably fast at qwerty when I can't.
The reason I switched (like the OP, if you read it again) was to reduce RSI pain/fatique. It's worked wonders for me in that respect. I'm not that much faster, so speed's not a major incentive to switch, IMO.
I did this a year and a half ago, but with an even more niche layout called Norman. https://normanlayout.info/
Its goal is to change as little as possible from QWERTY while getting as big a benefit as possible. In particular I like how it preserves the locations of many common keyboard shortcuts that are on lesser-used keys. It also retains the same finger for most QWERTY keys, whereas Colemak changes more in ways that don't feel really necessary to me.
It took me roughly 3 weeks to get back to feeling consistently productive, though it was only the first week that was truly frustrating.
I don't think I'm a faster typer, but I am a lot more comfortable.
I also took the opportunity to switch to an ortholinear keyboard, which has been great.
I, too, switched to colemak in my final year of graduate school, because I had bad form in Qwerty and a worrying amount of pain in my wrist. I've been very glad that I switched.
I'm not sure how relevant this is to anyone, but this post is as good excuse as any to talk about my transition to Colemak.
In January I moved from Qwerty to Colemak, and also from a staggered to a columnar keyboard layout (on a Kinesis keyboard[1]). My Qwerty speed was only 75 wpm and my accuracy was terrible. Also I couldn't touch type - I never learnt to type properly with Qwerty; I just started typing when I was young and developed lots of bad habits. By the time someone tried to teach me how to type properly my habits were too ingrained to change. (Or maybe I was too stubborn -- I also have a strange way of holding a pen.)
Anyway, I decided to change to Colemak, and to learn to touch type properly. I also liked the idea of a columnar layout so I changed to a Kinesis. What's interesting is that because of the physically different keyboards, I actually cannot type in Qwerty on my Kinesis, and I also cannot type in Colemak on my laptop keyboard. This means I have maintained my Qwerty skills.
My current maximum speed is roughly 70 wpm in Colemak, so I am almost at my Qwerty speed after 6 months, although now I can touch type so it's more useful. When I type with Qwerty now, it feels like my hands are flying all over the place. I also feel like I have a lot of room to get faster than I currently am with Colemak.
So even though I have maintained my Qwerty skills, the only reason I need them is because I can't get a laptop with a columnar keyboard. I may end up just biting the bullet and switching to Colemak on that laptop keyboard anyway, though missing the thumb cluster is killer.
One other interesting thing I learnt is that using Colemak on a smartphone completely sucks. Having commonly used keys on the home row on a small touchscreen means that it's much more error prone, as you're hitting the same area on the screen consecutively.
I used the Colemak layout for a little over a year and eventually switched back to QWERTY. I had the same problem that many other people had with alternate keyboards - it's great if only you use only your own computer(s). Whenever you have someone else use your keyboard or you use theirs, you have to remember to switch physically (for them) or mentally (for you). You can argue for maintaining both layout proficiency, but what's the point of an alternate layout if you have to continue to practice the old one. I also never really had a health problem typing in QWERTY and Colemak didn't solve that (non-existing) problem.
Also, so many things are built with QWERTY in mind. Games default to WASD and some don't even have the option to switch. Shortcuts are created with QWERTY and are sometimes awkward to change (vim) to match the design goals of the shortcuts.
All in all, it was a fun experiment. But seeing as I don't have any RSI/other hand reasons to switch, it's not worth the extra effort to use.
You don't have to stop using qwerty. You basically stay fluent in both layouts, enjoying the advantages of Colemak on your personal machines and still typing quickly on other machines. For me, it's definitely been worth the effort in terms of managing RSI.
The only complaint I have had is bindings in vim. I found there was no point in trying to have a custom vimrc since I would be using vim in all sorts of situations where I couldn't have a vimrc. My hjkl was awkward to get used to, but now I don't even realize I'm pressing random buttons for up down left right.
I learned Colemak a year ago so I could touch-type properly, because the regular layouts are so sub-optimal that the balance between fingers feel so weird, and being on the home row is actually not optimal. I definitely am happy with the change. I use Colemak mostly for coding, and writing short texts. I would switch to my native layout whenever I need to type fast and long texts (AZERTY, french layout). I definitely think Colemak is the sweet spot for someone wanting to get a better layout, without much hastle: it's already on MacOS and Linux, it keeps a lot of keys the same as QWERTY (for shortcuts), and it has a ton of built-in dead keys for European accents ! I didn't even need to remap the vim bindings using it. I may not actually type faster (actually I max at 80 WPM now, before it was 100 WPM), but the ergonomics just feels so much better.
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.
How long did it take you to learn this layout? Is there a sequential method to learning it, similar to using tarmak for learning colemak? A difficulty I sometimes face is using a regular qwerty layout—do you experience difficulty using a normal keyboard?
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