Ask HN: How long did it take to learn an alternative keyboard layout?
I learned Colemak, for fun, really. There were several very distinct phases.<p>In the very beginning, just hitting the right keys most of the time was very challenging. I&#x27;d have to actively think about where to put my fingers for a few days or up to a week. I did a lot of training exercises then.<p>After that, I was able to type pretty good at 20-30wpm, growing quickly. I played lots of type racing games.<p>Until I hit about 70wpm again (I started at QWERTY with around 100-120wpm, depending on text types), it was super frustrating, because I couldn&#x27;t type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. I would feel my thoughts slip away as I was still typing the last thought out, thinking &quot;Wait, nooo, I&#x27;m almost there!&quot;<p>I think it took about a month or two until I hit 70wpm again.<p>After that I felt like it was usable and I could probably be productive in it.<p>Oh yea, I should mention that I was on a sabbatical during that time and did the Colemak switch full-time, cold turkey - I haven&#x27;t typed in QWERTY since except when some stupid 3rd party computer doesn&#x27;t have Colemak (it comes with every modern operating system) and I have to use that for a second. But because I was on a sabbatical, I didn&#x27;t need to be productive for months. It would&#x27;ve taken me 1-2 months to be productive enough to write code or respond to emails&#x2F;chat quickly. Colemak is very coder-friendly in that it doesn&#x27;t change any of the special characters except &quot;;&quot; and the zxc keys are all the same.<p>After reaching the 70wpm point, it was mostly smooth sailing, but I wasn&#x27;t 100% yet. I&#x27;m a vim user, so a lot of my muscle memory was wrong. I simply continued using vim as usual and ended up learning the hjkl keys on Colemak. They&#x27;re actually all under the left index finger, but spread around in a weird way. I&#x27;d have to look at the keyboard to tell you what they are, but my fingers know them.<p>So, eventually, vim and everything is just fine. Also eventually, I got back up to my old speeds of about 100-120wpm, again depending on text. I&#x27;ve read that Colemak is actually not as fast as QWERTY because it optimizes for low finger movement, not speed. While I think it&#x27;d be cool to type 150wpm, I don&#x27;t really miss it except when doing type racing games. I seem to think somewhere between 70-100wpm at most. My fingers move a lot less when typing than using QWERTY, and people have commented over the years on that.<p>Another thing that took almost 2 years to go away was &quot;awkward angles.&quot; You know how some people who learned touch typing can&#x27;t use the keyboard except when their hands are exactly aligned with the keyboard? I had that. So sometimes I would try to reach over to my laptop and hit the pause button, or mute, or something like that, and just have no clue where to press, because I only had that knowledge in relation to my index fingers being on the home row. I&#x27;ll admit that this is pretty unimportant, but I just used to know that by heart, no matter the angle. I&#x27;ve since learned the Colemak positions for most of these, probably just from doing it and getting it wrong for years on end ;)<p>By the way, as part of this, I also reconfigured my default movement keys for video games. Why are people using WASD? Much too close together. I use EADF, so I can play video games with my fingers on the home row in normal position. Much more comfortable than WASD.<p>Programming keys&#x2F;symbols were never an issue on Colemak because most of the symbols stay the same. Only ; changes position, and ; is useless and languages that use is except as comments should go back to the 7th century where they belong. C can stay.<p>I&#x27;ve met several Colemak typists who are able to fluently switch back and forth between Colemak and QWERTY, and one even also Dvorak. I had a hardware-switched Colemak keyboard at work and this new guy shows up. He types for a second, looks at the screen (git add == dug ass in Colemak), and begins typing in perfect Colemak. Wow!<p>I seem to have completely lost my muscle memory for QWERTY. Maybe it would come back if I tried using QWERTY, or switching between the layouts regularly. But I don&#x27;t have to ever use QWERTY, so I haven&#x27;t even tried.<p>Colemak has the advantage that, as the third most popular layout, there are off-the-shelf keyboards with hardware switches for it. I never got into building&#x2F;modding my own keyboards, so I just got some random Taiwanese mechanical keyboard that offered a Colemak switch on the back. There are several, all I&#x27;ve tried were very good quality and fun to type on. Dvorak is even more widely available, of course.<p>Was it worth it? Hard to say. You kind of have to switch layout on every computer you use, e.g. at work, or bring your own keyboard. But I bring my own keyboard anyway, so that&#x27;s not much of a difference. And Colemak comes with Linux and OS X, and probably on Windows too. So it&#x27;s really just a few clicks away.<p>I&#x27;m not a faster typist. I didn&#x27;t have RSI or any other wrist pain. Maybe I would&#x27;ve gotten it and now I haven&#x27;t. Maybe I&#x27;ll get it later than on QWERTY. It&#x27;s a bit of a hassle when you get a new job or have to use your co-worker&#x27;s computer. Everybody finds it very fascinating and wants to talk about it for exactly 30 seconds, then never hear of it again. It is hilarious to have people type &quot;git add&quot; on your Colemak keyboard.<p>I was just bored on my sabbatical. I don&#x27;t think it makes a huge difference. If you have RSI issues, like I see people post here on HN all the time, go for it. I&#x27;ve also never bothered to get an ergonomic keyboard, but for some people it makes a huge difference in their typing ergonomics or strain. If you have issues, you can definitely give Colemak a try. But don&#x27;t expect any huge productivity boosts.