From QWERTY to Colemak

A couple of months ago, I decided to switch my keyboard layout from QWERTY to Colemak. Ever since switching, I have wondered many times whether I should switch back. In this post, I wanted to document my current situation and feelings so I have something to look back on in the future.

Reasons

I have never had any formal typing training and learned over time to (sort of) touch type. I didn’t type with eight fingers stable on the home row, most fingers moved around and my little fingers were not involved at all. Several times I tried to train a more stable position but the moment I lost focus, my fingers moved back to their former (all over the place) positions.

To try and force myself to stabilise, I decided it would be an interesting journey to switch to a different keyboard layout and see if relearning how to type would allow me to improve my touch typing.

After doing (way to little) research I decided I should switch to either Colemak or Dvorak. The reason to switch to one of those and not some more obscure layout was because I like the fact that I can simply change the layout in Mac OS and not have to worry about having a dedicated keyboard with me all the time.

I ended up choosing Colemak because I like it keeping some hot keys (Q, W, Z, X, C, V) in the same place as QWERTY, which I hoped would at least make one less hurdle to jump over.

Progress

The first week was really challenging because muscle memory works against you. For every key you want to type you have to think which finger to move. The good part of this process was that it was easy to keep eight finger on the home row and create a more stable position for my hands.

I used Keybr and Monkeytype to hammer in the repetitions. After some time Keybr became really tedious so then I primarily practiced on Monkeytype.

Pretty soon I was able to go through my day-to-day coding in an ok-ish pace. And week over week I felt that my typing was improving steadily. I did wonder every once in a while whether I should move back to QWERTY because certain muscle memories where so deeply baked in.

Observations

Mobile virtual keyboard

What I find really interesting is that typing on my mobile phone with a virtual QWERTY keyboard has not at all been affected by making this move. My brain seems to have a completely different way of processing typing on my phone versus my computer.

When not touch typing

When you are in the situation that typing with two hands on the keyboard is not an option, for example when you are on a phone call. The typing experience is completely different. I think I used to type with just one finger, which for those situations was fast enough.

Now with Colemak it has become difficult to type when my fingers aren’t on the home row. Making the situation extra challenging is using a keyboard that has QWERTY legends on the keys. The easiest way seems to be to use both hands and switch to touch typing, but putting down your phone or switching to earbuds just to type something is quite a hastle. This will probably become easier over time, but is annoying.

Muscle memory

Another observation is that some commands that I haven’t used since switching to Colemak. Once you start using them more, it takes some effort to get over the old muscle memory. For example, I used to work on a project with yarn, if I would now switch back to using it, my brain needs some practice. I think this also has to do with how little you think about certain actions you type often.

Dutch

When programming everything I write is in English, but when interacting with the online world a lot of my emails are in my native language. Some of the Colemak layout choices are really not great for certain words. For example the word kijken has 4 letters you need to type with the right index finger. I expect that typing Dutch will get easier over time. But upfront I didn’t expect that it would be so different from typing English.

Keyboard shortcuts

A bunch of standard shortcut keys stay in the same position in Colemak, but as a programmer you use a lot of shortcut keys to interact with your tools. Some of those interactions have also been deeply ingrained in muscle memory. I try not to change any of my shortcuts, but just learn that the shortcut is in a different place. But if I haven’t used a certain program since switching, then it takes some time to get it right. The most annoying situation happens when the former key’s location now does something destructive.

Should I stay or should I go?

In the first months I considered switching back quite a few times, but I really like how stable my typing from home row has become. When practicing in Monkeytype I also feel that (in English) the movements just feel more minimal. What is tricky to compare is that I don’t really know where I compare to previous QWERTY days. I used to make I bunch of typos, I still make a bunch of typos. But now I might be more focussed on it, because I have been working on it so actively.

My typing speed in short tests are about as fast as I was in QWERTY, but doing longer tests I am faster with Colemak.

So for now, I will stick with Colemak and check back in a couple of months how it progresses. If I where to switch back to QWERTY, I could probably teach myself to properly touch type from the home row and not fall back into old habits. Maybe at some point it is also good to practice both and see if I can actively switch between them. I have seen people online doing this, but I have a feeling that this opens another can of worms.