After a few conversations with work colleagues over the summer of 2022 I decided to try out a different keyboard layout. The layout I chose was Colemak. The decision to try something different had a few goals:

1. Learn good typing habits
2. Increase typing comfort
3. Get quicker in time.

My main takeaways were: The layout of choice is not as critical as it seems. Practicing correctly is a huge deal. The results are visible sooner than I expected Overall, QWERTY is a very poor choice nowadays and we have very few reasons to continue with it.

Why change keyboard layout - what's wrong with QWERTY

If you are reading this chances are you know most of the arguments by now. The QWERTY layout was developed for use in typewriters and was made to work well within that environment. Being made for typewriters drove some decisions that made little sense in the digital world. For example; the key placements in QWERTY supposedly had the main goal of avoiding key jamming when typing.

Yes, the goal was to slow the typing so the machine wouldn't suffer.

Why Colemak

At this point one might ask: Ok, QWERTY is no good. But why Colemak? You can spend weeks diving into the keyboard layouts rabbit hole. It is deep. The reality is that most modern layout keyboards will be better than QWERTY by a long margin, so here it is not as important which one you choose as it is to choose a modern layout.

I chose Colemak because it is a modern layout, developed taking into account hand movement and ergonomics. Another factor I considered was the positions of special characters used when programming. In the Colemak layout they are quite conveniently positioned.

What can you expect when changing layouts

In short: it is going to be painful. Painfully slow. Specially in the first week or so. The trick is to stick with it and get going with your practice routine.

Don't get discouraged when you cannot even find where a certain character is located. Use google to look at an image of the layout whenever needed.

How to make it happen - what worked for me

Here are some tips of things to do which I believe have had a positive impact on my experience when switching to Colemak:

1. Create a baseline on a website like monkey type so you know your current typing speed before changing.
2. Change cold turkey. Find a period where your raw typing speed is less important.
3. If you absolutely need to use QWERTY make a point to look at the keyboard as you do so.
4. Practice bigrams and trigrams to get your muscle memory going. For this I have used LINK
5. Put on a routine where you practice on one or more of these websites for a few minutes everyday.I've rarely practiced for more than 30 minutes any given day after the first two weeks.

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