So far, I've been typing on Colemak for about 2 weeks now. I used do be about 70-80wpm with qwerty. Now I'm about 40wpm with Colemak. I took some of the lessons but ended up just going semi cold turkey. I really like the layout, it just makes so much more sense.
One thing is my accuracy could use some improving. I'm at about 90%. I hope to improve it in the future. I showed a few of my friends and they are going to give it a try.
http://colemak.com/
Who should learn Colemak?
People that suffer from Repetitive strain injury (RSI), or Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS).
Anyone that experienced pain or discomfort while typing.
Writers, programmers or anyone who wishes to type as fast as they think, and slower typing might result in a loss of their train of thought.
Journalists, bloggers or anyone that needs to type in time-critical situations.
Students that take notes with laptops during lectures.
Anyone's that interested in lifehacks or doing things more efficiently.
People that often use instant messaging and chat software.
Anyone who spends over 10 hours per week at the keyboard.
What's wrong with the QWERTY layout?
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a high same finger ratio that slows down typing and increases strain.
It allows for very long sequences of letters with the same hand (e.g. "sweaterdresses")
It was designed to prevent the keys from sticking, without any consideration to ergonomic or efficiency aspects.
It was designed so the word "typewriter" could be typed on the top row to ease demonstrations.
It suffers from an extremely high ratio of home-row-jumping sequences (e.g. "minimum")
The QWERTY keyboard was designed in the 1880s so the typewriter wouldn't jam. I find it interesting that despite all of its shortfalls, we still use it today.
And to anyone who wants to read more about the shortcomings of QWERTY, there is a really interesting article here:
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/ergo/parkinson.html
It advocates another popular alternative keyboard layout, Dvorak, but the message is the same. QWERTY is clearly inferior.
One thing is my accuracy could use some improving. I'm at about 90%. I hope to improve it in the future. I showed a few of my friends and they are going to give it a try.
http://colemak.com/
Who should learn Colemak?
People that suffer from Repetitive strain injury (RSI), or Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS).
Anyone that experienced pain or discomfort while typing.
Writers, programmers or anyone who wishes to type as fast as they think, and slower typing might result in a loss of their train of thought.
Journalists, bloggers or anyone that needs to type in time-critical situations.
Students that take notes with laptops during lectures.
Anyone's that interested in lifehacks or doing things more efficiently.
People that often use instant messaging and chat software.
Anyone who spends over 10 hours per week at the keyboard.
What's wrong with the QWERTY layout?
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a high same finger ratio that slows down typing and increases strain.
It allows for very long sequences of letters with the same hand (e.g. "sweaterdresses")
It was designed to prevent the keys from sticking, without any consideration to ergonomic or efficiency aspects.
It was designed so the word "typewriter" could be typed on the top row to ease demonstrations.
It suffers from an extremely high ratio of home-row-jumping sequences (e.g. "minimum")
The QWERTY keyboard was designed in the 1880s so the typewriter wouldn't jam. I find it interesting that despite all of its shortfalls, we still use it today.
And to anyone who wants to read more about the shortcomings of QWERTY, there is a really interesting article here:
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/ergo/parkinson.html
It advocates another popular alternative keyboard layout, Dvorak, but the message is the same. QWERTY is clearly inferior.
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