Let’s talk about layouts. The fact that QWERTY is designed to slow people down prevents most people from getting a more comfortable typing experience. Share your experiences with different layouts and make suggestions
I’ve never been a fast-typer (40 wpm on qwerty at best). I am currently trying to learn Graphite and feeling good about it so far. I got to 20 wpm in about 6 days (4 days learning key positions, 2 days practice) and I think I also have much better accuracy now
I haven’t used qwerty layout in almost 20 years. I first switched to Dvorak because at the time it was really the main alternative to qwerty. Over the years new layouts have came out and I switched to Colemak about 9 years ago.
The biggest reason why I have stuck with those 2 is simply because they are included in the OSs that I use (I don’t use windows so I don’t know if they eventually added it). So if for any reason I’m not using one of my custom keyboards I can switch the keyboard layout in the settings to colemak and I’m on my way.
Some of the fastest typists use qwerty. Alt fingering (cheating) with slow key combinations makes up for a lot, and you’ll find reddit threads where speed typists go on about the likely unintended advantages qwerty appears to have. Also you’d see most fast typists have their right hand slanted to where their ring finger would be over O. So homerow efficiency isn’t really relevant either… Fingers are already not on homerow.
But speed aside, many who switch to other layouts also never get as fast as they were without a lot of practice, especially if they were fast. And the same effort (months of practice) put into their speed on qwerty would likely have made them even faster at qwerty…
With that said, it’s about comfort, what you’re into, how you enjoy spending your time, etc… and exploring options.
Personally I like swapping ’ and p on qwerty, just so I can justify my pinky on homerow. Also, never quite understood why this wouldn’t have been the default, but maybe someone knows.
This is definitely the reason why I switched. It was all about the comfort. I was never a really fast typist (80 wpm), probably because I write code all day and my typing is constantly starting and stopping. I might have been an outlier, but I got back to my qwerty speed in less than a month, but it’s probably because when I switched, it was a hard switch even though I started out 20wpm when using a new layout.
Had been typing with QWERTY for years before moving to Switzerland, after a short time adjusting to QWERTZ i noticed a dramatic increase in speed using the Swiss German keyboard.
That’s strange. Isn’t qwertz nearly the same as qwerty? I want to say maybe the German language is more compatible with qwerty but that does not make sense as German and English are very similar and qwerty was created to slow down English writing on typewriters
I sometimes use minimak 4k, which swaps the keys T-D and E-K. It’s pretty fun.