We all start here
Just like probably most people in the world, my first experience of typing was using a QWERTY keyboard. It doesn’t matter if the tale of QWERTY and row staggering happening due to typewriter jams is true or not, and, even if it is, obviously we have no reason to keep using it. And yet, we do, to the point where, for many people, they can’t even imagine a keyboard being anything else.
I’m pretty good at typing on QWERTY keyboards. On a MacBook - my preferred keyboard for a couple of years already -, I can get to the lower end of 130 words-per-minute on an average, common word, lowercase typing speed test. According to Keybr, this puts me in the top 0.1% of all users based on speed. Why would I want to switch? Well, primarily, my typing habits - they are absolutely terrible.
Everyone has probably heard the “ergonomic typing” lesson at least once in their life - each column of keys has a dedicated finger, with the exception of the inside two columns, both serviced by the index finger. And yet a lot of people do what’s called “pecking”, where they use their two index fingers to hit the keys. Despite my quick typing speeds, I am actually pretty similar to that - for most of the alphanumeric keys, I use no more than 3 fingers total. Not 3 fingers per hand - 3 fingers across both hands.
Fixing myseslf
Obviously, this creates a lot of strain and movement in the hands and arms, which is made especially bad as I am a software engineer, spending a lot more time typing than the average person would. To add to that, I am also very mouse-dependent, never bothering to invest time into learning shortcuts to optimize my daily work. I didn’t want to be like that anymore, but how do I force myself to change? Well, I decided to throw myself into the deep end by switching my IDE to Neovim.
My general workspace setup after this transition is a story I may tell another time, but, for the context of this article, I will say - it helped a lot. You can do anything except type the actual words using the mouse in a regular IDE. In Vim, you simply can’t, and the few things that you can do with a mouse feel super clunky. You have to learn how to do the Vim motions, and with it, you also stay closer to your keyboard. This specific change in my setup was really the catalyst of recognizing my issues - to learn the motions, I had to think about what I’m doing on the keyboard, which, in turn, makes me think about how I’m doing it, and how I could do it better.
But why COLEMAK?
Around this same time, a colleague of mine showed me his keyboard - a Corne 3x6 split, low profile keyboard. I knew split keyboards existed, but I had never seen one in real life, let alone had the chance to use one. Even though my attempts were disastrously bad, I realised they’re so bad cause I don’t know how to type - I don’t even know where the keys are if I try to type “correctly”. It being an ortholinear keyboard didn’t help either. I just have muscle memory in those 3 fingers to hit the letters I need. And so, I decided to get one of these for myself too.
For unrelated reasons, I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could order the keyboard, so, in the mean time, I started researching the topic of split keyboards and ergonomics in general, and I found one common theme across some people - switching to another keyboard layout for split keyboards specifically. The idea being that this keyboard would be so wildly different, that your brain would learn it as a new skill, instead of replacing your existing keyboard skills, so you could essentially keep both layouts in your head, and switch between them as needed. COLEMAK just came along as it is mathematically the “best” layout, since it keeps the most frequently used keys in the easiest to reach positions - the home row.
This didn’t make sense to my colleague who I first told about this idea, but it sounded totally legit to me, and that’s what mattered the most, so I decided to go for it. This controversial topic was also the main inspiration for wanting to add a blog section to my website - so I could share how it’s going. And so, here we are. There are no metrics or particular goals that I have set for myself, besides just giving it an honest shot. Don’t drop it due to frustration. Drop it only if it’s not working for me. So, let’s see how it goes.
