I’ve decided to jump back into learning a new layout, specifically semimak JQ, from Dvorak. I’ve heard that as long as I practice both I should be able to maintain Dvorak while I learn semimak.
I was wondering if people here had any experience learning new layouts could share some insight for that?
Any other tips would be very appreciated. I’m sitting at somewhere around 26wpm on semimak atm, and 130-140 on Dvorak
I use many layouts and am totally comfortable switching between them. I primarily use Colemak-dh and QWERTY and each of my boards have a slightly different layers keymap.
You’d be surprised how flexible the brain is. I was able to do this after 25+ years of only QWERTY.
That’s excellent news for me! :)
Do you mind me asking what your typing speed is on your two main layouts?
I learned Dvorak for a while but wasn’t always at my home keyboard so spent a lot of time with qwerty still. My typing speed was comparable on the two after a month or two… around 80wpm transcribing unfamiliar English language content or 100wpm if I know the text well enough to avoid getting crossed up periodically. The main drawback to switching around was that sometimes I’d sit down at a new keyboard and bang my way halfway through a sentence in the wrong layout and have to start over after resetting my brain.
Fwiw, I ended up dropping Dvorak after a year or three, though. It wasn’t any better than qwerty for code with lots of special characters and I realized that I type enough different kinds of content that I wasn’t interested in chasing ever more exotic layouts that optimize for a particular distribution of keys.
Makes sense that you would accidentally default the wrong one. Happens with speaking multiple languages too :P
I actually like Dvorak for programming but at this point I’m on a small board so all the special characters are in weird spota compared to default Dvorak. I also love doing typing tests where a good layout is more noticeable. Plus like I said in another reply, it’s mostly just for fun
Honestly, I don’t do typing tests (I have RSI so I think it’s a waste of precious finger energy). I can confidently say that I can type faster than I think in both layouts. I am a software developer so I really only need to type as fast as I can code.