2 ms·

The reason I'll never use an ergonomic/split keyboard is that I never formally learned to type. I can type at a reasonable speed, but I have no "home row" or an

The reason I'll never use an ergonomic/split keyboard is that I never formally learned to type. I can type at a reasonable speed, but I have no "home row" or anything; much less do I keep one hand confined to each side of the keyboard. I learned by hunting-and-pecking until I could do it with multiple fingers and mostly without looking. This means I can type at 50% speed with one hand, but it also means I would feel extremely uncomfortable if one hand couldn't easily reach across the median, because there's no one particular way that I reach for any given key I'm curious how common this is?

pickledish 5y ago
I was like this too, actually! Decided to learn to touch type (home row, pinky fingers and all that) last month, and I’m almost back up to my normal speed now. I’d say it’s worth it, significantly more comfortable with the potential to be much faster than I was, but it does kinda highlight how the usual QWERTY layout is, uh, really poorly optimized for touch typing
dkersten 5y ago
I was like you, was pretty fast and never actually learned to type. About 8 years ago I decided that I use computers so much that I should probably learn. I bought a blank keycap DAS keyboard and forced my self to learn to use it. I also switched to Colemak at that time, since I figured that's the best time to learn. The first two weeks were painful, then it started to get easier. After about a month, I was up to my previous speed. Nowadays, I have no idea how fast I type, but its super comfortable and I don't ever look at my hands. Typing is super comfortable, plenty fast and I find I get less RSI/strain. I do also use a Kinsesis Advantage keyboard nowadays (I feel it wouldn't be useful without touch-typing though). From a comfort/strain point of view, I think I made the right decision and regret not doing it sooner. From a typing speed point of view, I think I'm a bit faster, but probably not enough to really care that much, but I haven't checked in a long time.

pickledish 5y ago

I was like this too, actually! Decided to learn to touch type (home row, pinky fingers and all that) last month, and I’m almost back up to my normal speed now. I’d say it’s worth it, significantly more comfortable with the potential to be much faster than I was, but it does kinda highlight how the usual QWERTY layout is, uh, really poorly optimized for touch typing

dkersten 5y ago

I was like you, was pretty fast and never actually learned to type. About 8 years ago I decided that I use computers so much that I should probably learn. I bought a blank keycap DAS keyboard and forced my self to learn to use it. I also switched to Colemak at that time, since I figured that's the best time to learn. The first two weeks were painful, then it started to get easier. After about a month, I was up to my previous speed. Nowadays, I have no idea how fast I type, but its super comfortable and I don't ever look at my hands. Typing is super comfortable, plenty fast and I find I get less RSI/strain. I do also use a Kinsesis Advantage keyboard nowadays (I feel it wouldn't be useful without touch-typing though). From a comfort/strain point of view, I think I made the right decision and regret not doing it sooner. From a typing speed point of view, I think I'm a bit faster, but probably not enough to really care that much, but I haven't checked in a long time.