Moving to Split Keyboard AND new layout!
Tags: keyboard, colemak, ergonomics, qwerty
Published: 2020-10-29 07:38:10

---
title: Moving to Split Keyboard AND new layout!
published: true
description: I will be learning both a new column-staggered split keyboard AND going to be transitioning to Colemak DHm layout
tags: keyboard, colemak, ergonomics, qwerty
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/91yilhqviwdfaloqyl8q.jpg
---

This is a series now:
[this is the next post](https://dev.to/weirdmayo/split-keyboard-is-awesome-3c5l)

# As a quick backstory

As a quick backstory, I've been touch-typing on a regular keyboard for about 7 years now (since 13), and managed to reach what most people find to be really fast speeds (120wpm). I enjoy the notion of typing on a keyboard. Typing fast and hitting keys accurately. I find it to be extremely satisfying.

### Why not QWERTY?
I *never* had a problem with QWERTY and the row-staggered (regular) keyboard layout. I had RSI once, on my left hand. That was because I was reaching for Ctrl button a lot, and that required bending my left hand backwards. Remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl fixed the issue permanently, and I never experienced any finger fatigue/RSI ever since.

Now with this new keyboard, certain bigrams are harder to type: NU, EC, SW and others would have to be typed with one finger and there is no stagger that would allow you to use a different finger. I am concerned with speed to a significant extent, and typing faster on this than on row stagger while using qwerty is basically impossible.

That is all to say that this project is purely **intrinsically motivated** and more so as an experiment in search of something better, rather than something done out of ergonomic necessity, like a good amount of people who do 
this stuff do. 

# Split keyboard

After some developers in the [mechanical keyboards community](https://discord.gg/mechkeys) spent their time to try to convince me to assemble a split keyboard, I have decided to go all the way and assemble a split, column-staggered keyboard for myself. The keyboard I decided to go with is Lily58 Pro, because it still has the number row, has four thumb keys and supports a rotary encoder.

![Lily58 pair](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/91yilhqviwdfaloqyl8q.jpg)
![Lily58 keycap profile closeup](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/32xbvlkmya6vqa1jeele.jpg)

# Concerns?

Yes indeed I have quite a bit of concerns, about whether switching to this will indefinitely hurt my productivity.

### Getting unused from qwerty

That's one of the things that, in my opinion, can be avoided. First of all, because I am learning Colemak exclusively on my Lily58, my performance on the row stagger keyboard didn't suffer a single bit, although it's only been 5 days of training, so it might change later. Also I am still actively training my QWERTY speed on my regular keyboard, for this specific reason.

### Vim

Now **this** is my actual concern. I am a huge proponent of Vim. I will not give it up at any price. If after 5 months of using this layout my Vim performance is going to be slow and miserable, I will have to abandon this layout and go back to my normal qwerty layout. That being said, I will still keep using the ortholinear keyboard.

### I will keep you posted

I am quite excited to log this process from my baby steps to 130 wpm on this layout, so you can follow me if you want.


##### This article was typed entirely on the Colemak layout on the Lily58 keyboard :)