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28th February, 2025

Colemak After a Year

My review of the niche layout after a year of use

In December 2023, I started doing much of my work away from a desk on my laptop, a Lenovo T440p. Even though the T440p has a relatively nice keyboard compared to many modern laptops, I still experienced aching and strain in my wrists (and especially in my right index finger) after prolonged programming sessions. As a programmer in my early 20s, I knew my keyboard usage wasn't likely to slow down over the next 50+ years, so I needed to make a change.

I looked into ergonomic keyboards, but they were too expensive. Ergonomic mice seemed too strange, I was already averse to the little nub on my laptop's keyboard. I needed something cost-free to try, which led me to keyboard layouts.

During my research, I found three relatively popular layouts suggested to alleviate typing strain:

Dvorak, while its relative popularity was a big benefit, turned me off almost immediately due to the drastically different placement of punctuation keys, the semicolon was especially jarring. Workman had a much more appealing key layout but still wasn't quite what I was looking for. Ultimately, I settled on Colemak.

Colemak seemed quite appealing from the perspective of a QWERTY user:

  • The Z, X, C, and V keys remained in the same positions which was perfect for default shortcuts.
  • The W, A, S, and D keys were in the same relative orientation, which has proved helpful.
  • Most other keys remained in the same or similar positions, and I could clearly see the process I would need to follow to transition from QWERTY to Colemak.

I primarily used KTouch (only available on Linux) to learn Colemak. As is my usual style, I committed to a full cold switch, switching from QWERTY on my laptop, desktop, and even my phone.

This was a challenge. I quickly grew to hate using my computer for anything beyond KTouch practice and watching videos. As a result, I relied more on my phone, which had the Colemak layout visually printed on the screen. Surprisingly, this became an invaluable learning aid, as it helped me build a mental map of the key positions which was very useful when I got back to my physical keyboards.

For about a month, I barely programmed, spending my time painting Warhammer miniatures and playing Tears of the Kingdom. Eventually, I could type slowly but steadily, and I attempted to return to programming, only to hit a roadblock: Vim.

Early in my programming journey, I was drawn to Vim because of its almost magical ability to manipulate text. After using it, and later its cooler brother Neovim, for about four years, I eventually realised the error of my ways and switched to Emacs. However, I was using Evil Mode, which replicates Vim keybindings in Emacs. Unfortunately, Vim motions do not work well with Colemak. That may sound reductive, but after months of effort, I came to the conclusion that even with my best attempt at a custom Neovim configuration, it still felt unnatural and noticeably worse than QWERTY.

I began questioning whether Colemak was to blame, maybe it was poorly designed, or perhaps it just wasn’t suited for programmers. Then, just at the right time, System Crafters released a video about switching from Evil Mode to Emacs' default shortcuts, something I had never really considered before. The horror stories about Emacs bindings being unergonomic and destroying pinkie fingers had always put me off, but I decided to give it a try.

Switching to default Emacs bindings (with Caps Lock remapped to Control) solved everything. My hands naturally fell into place:

Left Hand:

  • Pinky on Caps Lock (now Control)
  • Thumb on Alt
  • Other fingers on A, R, and S

Right Hand:

  • Thumb on Spacebar
  • Other fingers on N, E, I, and O

This positioning allows for small hand movements to access Emacs' most-used shortcuts. My favourites being C-a and C-e, which move to the start and end of a line, respectively. These are my most common movements when programming, and it’s amazing to have them directly under my fingers instead of jumping to 0 and $, then pressing another key to re-enter insert mode before typing again. With Emacs bindings, my fingers rest on four vowels and remain within a minimal movement range of the nine most common letters in English. A tiny shift of my left hand returns me to a natural touch-typing position.

While I thought I was touch typing perfectly fine on QWERTY, learning Colemak made me realise I had developed bad habits. For a short period I attended typing lessons in school, and while they were beneficial, the typing program we used emphasised speed over proper finger positioning, leading me to rely on just 2-3 fingers per hand, moving them chaotically. This likely contributed to my discomfort.

Since switching to Colemak, I’ve experienced significantly fewer strain issues. Whether that's due to the layout itself or finally learning proper touch typing is uncertain, but the improvement is undeniable.

One major benefit of Colemak is how typing feels. In QWERTY, I typed words letter by letter due to the inefficient layout. With Colemak, I type in arpeggios, this is especially noticeable on Monkeytype which I used to test my speed while I was learning.

Instead of typing "started" as S-T-A-R-T-E-D, in Colemak, it becomes ST-ART-E-D, utilising comfortable rolls, sequences of adjacent keys on the home row pressed in a rolling motion. This improves both speed and comfort, making typing much more enjoyable. In fact, I now enjoy it so much that it inspired me to write this review!

Despite its advantages, like all things, Colemak has its drawbacks. Firstly, when using someone else’s keyboard, my speed and accuracy drop significantly. Luckily I'm not in that situation very often but it is definitely noticeable to others when I am. Secondly, every keyboard I own has QWERTY-printed keycaps. Although I don’t look at the keys while typing, it’s certainly a minor visual annoyance. I do plan to buy blank keycaps for my Feker Alice 80, but they aren’t cheap, so I’m holding off for now.

So, after a year, what do I think of Colemak? I definitely made the right choice, not just in leaving QWERTY, but in choosing Colemak specifically. I was able to regain my typing speed quickly, and with default Emacs bindings, I can now perform text-buffer surgery even faster than before. The fact that I’ve had no typing-related hand strain since switching speaks for itself, though whether that’s due to the layout or proper touch typing is unclear. However, the rolling motions are undeniably a Colemak-exclusive advantage, and I’m very grateful for them.

Thanks for reading my review! This wasn’t meant to tell you whether you should switch to Colemak, that’s a personal decision, and like most things, the best way to find out is to try it yourself. Apologies if I rambled a bit (or a lot), this is my first article on the new iteration of my website, so hopefully, my writing will improve as I go. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to email me at venomade@venomade.com. Otherwise, have a great rest of your day!