Krhis’s Journal

Did you know that the Qwerty keyboard layout was designed to slow down your typing speed? It’s intended purpose was to prevent paper jams in typewriters, but in today’s age and technology it can be anti-productive. Starting tonight I will be going “cold turkey” and make a complete switch from Qwerty to Colemak. At one point in time I did experiment with the Dvorak keyboard layout, but I would always switch between the two layouts while programming. One of my biggest pet-peeves have always been the locations of the Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V shortcuts.

Colemak is still a relatively new keyboard layout, the final draft was released on January 1, 2006 but after some research I discovered that Colemak was designed to be a practical alternative, not to just Qwerty, but also intended to surpass Dvorak’s flaws.

About six months ago I read about papmech’s experience with the Colemak keyboard layout and it has been on my mind since. But why so long? I was waiting to make things harder purchase the redeveloped Das Keyboard II, or in German, ‘The Keyboard’. It features blank keys, supreme durability, mechanical gold plated key switches, a layout that is divided over several pressure zones, and most importantly no “Windows” key.

Current typing speed: ~7wpm