No More QWERTY And No More Slab Of Keyboard

Created: 2023-11-05
Last Modified: 2025-02-22

This post is proudly brought to you by the Colemak gang, as this is what the cool kids do nowadays. And also by the split keyboard gang. I went down a deep rabbit hole. But it is fun and I am not done yet with this journey.

And here is a disclaimer! I will mention wrist pain and how this helped me. But I want you to understand, that this is no medical advice but my personal experience which I am documenting here. If you have pain or discomfort while typing, then please see a professional.

I learned Colemak DH and started using a split keyboard at the same time. It seemed like a lot of people are doing this switch according to some Reddit communities like r/ergomechkeyboards. This was a big switch for me, but I think it is 100% worth it.

The problem which motivated this change was pain in my wrists and discomfort in hands while typing. I am already doing exercises to stay fit and healthy, but it seems that it’s not enough.

I tried out once a split keyboard before and liked the feeling of it. The keys are linearly positioned. Not strangely positioned like on a conventional keyboard. It felt nice to type on it. Also, the way I am writing on a QWERTY keyboard is gradually annoying me and a colleague hinted Colemak. I will not mention why QWERTY is bad and go into the history of why it is the way it is. Just, that it is very inefficient and nowadays, we can do better. So why not doing better with our input devices such as the keyboard? Also, I wanted to learn something new.

I pulled the trigger, got a corne keyboard and started learning the Colemak layout. I wrote the last two posts using Colemak and the corne.

I ordered the corne as a DIY kit. This means I got to solder it together. It was fun and took half a day. The video material on YouTube covering the soldering of it make it seem quicker. But it was not hard. The last time I soldered was in 2010 or so. I watched a video about it before and then got stated. Everything went somewhat smooth. Now I got a new hobby, configuring QMK for this keyboard until I am satisfied with it.

Next I started Colemak. The keyboard has been flashed with the layout. This has been done on the hardware directly, not on the software. So I was going head first into the cold water. To learn the new layout there are some tools online. But I learned about keybr. And this is how I started. I spent the first days about 30 minutes a day practicing the new layout on keybr. The rest of the day I was struggling with the layout to get things done, but I did my best. I was slower for sure. To prevent myself from looking at the keys which I am pressing I put a towel on my hands in the beginning. Worked nice, I guess. The reason I did it like this is to not mix up QWERTY and Colemak and creating bad habits. I do not know why I was looking at the keyboard because the key caps have the QWERTY layout printed on.

Here is the calendar on how much I practiced.

Sometimes I practiced n-grams on ngram-type. This helped with some letter a lot. Also, it really helps with getting faster in typing. This idea came from Ben Vallack in one of his YouTube videos.

So after touch typing on QWERTY and the German version QWERTZ with horrible symbol placement for about 10 years I was switching. My speed was about 80 to 90 WPM. And the transition did not go as smooth as I would have liked it. It did not go smooth at all for the first 8 hours on keybr. The first two weeks were not so nice. But they gradually got better. Hell Yeah! After two weeks I did not feel any more like I am useless, I was typing! Typing with rock solid 35WPM. Typing like an old grandma, but on Colemak. But this got a lot better after one more week. I am at average 47 WPM! And after some time I reduced the time I spent on keybr to just 20 minutes a day because I got good enough at typing on the new layout. But this is why I also sometimes do a little more n-grams.

My recommendations for learning a new layout using keybr and n-grams are:

• set the word list size to the maximum
• use the guided lessons
• set the target typing speed to a minimum
• after you unlocked all letters increase the typing speed a little
• add punctuation and capital letters after you get a little comfortable with the new layout
• maximize the “Add words to lessons” slider
• Turn off the option “Stop cursor on error” you will accumulate your wrong keystrokes this way. But this way I reduced my panic typing, where on an error I would just hit some keys in the hope to get the right one.
• Turn off the option “Forgive errors” as this makes you fix your mistake.
• Turn off the option “Space skips words” as you want to get all the practice you can get and more typing means more practice.

The last three especially help. If you make an error, you have to fix it. The others are helping with variety.

The other problem for me was using vim keybindings. Actually most keybindings. And this is an interesting part because I was considering to quit learning Colemak and go back to QWERTY. I was even thinking about giving Emacs a go. Some other things have been pure muscle memory. I was unable to type my password. But one thing after another.

Vim is the most important thing. I love vim. I use vim, in VS Code. Do not judge me please. But it works great for me. And I am not afraid of using vim or neovim or vi in the terminal. But back to the things. As far as I could search the web there are two and a half camps to go about Colemak and vim. There are the people who remap all things and continue using their muscle memory as if nothing happened. And there are the people who are using vim with Colemak as is. And there is the camp in between, where you just remap HJKL to MNEI and the other things to get it just working.

Camp one with all remapping sounded to me like a big no. It means, that if a plugin adds a new keybinding, I would have to go through my mapping first to get it. It also means that delete is not anymore on the d key, but on (looks down on the keyboard to see which letter there was on QWEWFPWTY) the v key. Camp two was okay, but missing HJKL on the home row was a bummer. Camp two and a half was what I was trying out first. Until I understood, that camp two is the only real thing. Here comes the thing, I programmed a layer on my keyboard, where NEIO/JKL; are the arrow keys. So not much changed here. I just hold down the layer mod and have the arrow keys. Most movement should happen with the other things like w b e Ctrl+d Ctrl+u. And also I found the internet a nice image showing where each functionality is on Colemak (sorry, not Colemak DH).

Taken from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sermoa/5421396271/

This brings the idea of remapping for example H or h to the history or so.

I also had to relearn the shell commands. Some things like cd ls or vim were pure muscle memory. After two weeks they are still muscle memory, but in another layout.

The other keybindings went very smooth. No problem when hitting CMD + T for new tab or whatever.

So now I am still adjusting a little to this layout. I am still doing stupid typos. But it gets better every day.

• But is it ergo now? I think yes. For me, it is more comfortable to type.
• Should you do it too? I do not know, you need to figure it out yourself.
• Do I need to do both switches? No, you can go with only Colemak on a normal keyboard or with a QWERTY on a split keyboard, your choice. I was taking the hard mode I think. But it was nice and challenging.
• But will it not slow down my work speed? Yes, and this is why I learned it while on vacation at home.
• Is there something else but Colemak? Dvorak, Workman and many more. You can come up with your own layout too.

Helpful resources

• https://colemak.com/
• Colemak Discord
• Colemak Reddit
• YouTube video about learning new layouts like Colemak by Ben Vallack
• https://keybr.com
• https://ranelpadon.github.io/ngram-type/

This is it, thank you for reading!