anyone have thoughts on if i should try moving from QWERTY to Dvorak or Colemak?
dunno, seems really disruptive... but i do type a lot
and i assume QWERTY ability wouldn't just disappear, for when it's needed outside of home PC?
@Stoori thanks for the data point
interesting that you got faster!
@alyx Speed gain is just reasonal to expect, when a keyboard is designed to minimise movement and delay between key presses.
@Stoori having to rebind everything for every single game and such must be annoying :)
@alyx Well that's actually a bit random point of this whole issue. You can never know in advance if a particular software uses device binded keys or soft binded keys, and different OSes behave differently on this issue too. Better to expect almost anything.
@Stoori i expect most games for windows assume QWERTY and will have to be rebound. something i'll have to explore.
@alyx I switched to Colemak about 3 years ago. I was previously a very fast QWERTY typist, about 100 WPM. After fully switching to Colemak, my speed gradually climbed back up, and has plateaued around 80 WPM. However, typing is much more comfortable, and I don't have hand pain unless I mouse a lot.
My QWERTY speed crashed for a while, and has gradually recovered somewhat, but only to about 40 WPM, which is good enough for the few times I use it.
@alyx I don't really play games other than roguelikes. I generally switch back to QWERTY for them, though, mainly so that I can use vi keys.
@gcupc cool. i still have to read more about Colemak and its unique aspects
interesting how your QWERTY suffered.
@alyx YMMV. Some people never lose their QWERTY, some people lose it and never get it back.
@alyx I've learned to type with my 10 fingers by switching to BÉPO so I don't know if your ability to type with your 10 fingers would disappear. But whenever I need to type in AZERTY with 2 fingers it's ok.
I made the switch to Colemak eight years ago after trying Dvorak for two months, and never quite getting used to where it places certain keys.
I landed between 80 to 100 WPM on QWERTY before I started, and it took about a month to reach an average of 60 WPM.
Today, I have that 80-100 WPM average on Colemak, and 50-70 on QWERTY.
Colemak feels much more comfortable, and long stretches of typing don't leave my hands feeling stiff and achy.
@DEMONarchy thanks for sharing
reading more about colemak, i really like how it preserves ctrl-z x c v for windows users
@alyx I switched to a dvorak-inspired DAS keyboard 12 years ago and haven't regretted.
My typing speed was slow for about three weeks during when I was practicing, but after that my speed got better than before switching.
The main benefit has been less strain and pain on hands.
Now when I must type QWERTY (very rarely indeed), I'm quite slow and must concentrate, but in any case it's not impossible and all the keyboards have QWERTY letters anyway so you can always check what you are typing.
So I'd say go for it. (But choose Dvorak and not DAS, because DAS is optimised for Finnish.)