The standard is valuable. As I acknowledged before, refusing to
use the standard has obvious downsides, but it became excruciating
when I had a period at work that involved helping people install
software on their machines. Being able to type well on someone
else's machine is very useful. It happens more than I would have
assumed.
Qwerty is actually not so bad. I think I believed too much of
the hype about the importance of optimal layout (because it's a fun
thing to nerd out about). J, K, F, and ; seem to be squatting on
prime real estate, but none of the common letters are in really bad
places (except arguably T). With the possible exception of EV, I
don't feel like any common movements are uncomfortable. All in all,
Qwerty's advantage as the standard compensates for its minor
inefficiencies.
This is a chance to learn again from zero, as I have been using
Workman exclusively for long enough to completely lose any Qwerty
habits. Part of my original motivation for choosing an alternate
layout was to leave those habits behind, and now I have done so.
I have a different idea of how to become good at typing, which I
want to try to apply more thoughtfully. Peter's Online Typing
Course is the best I've seen,
still. No mistakes. Speed is your enemy. Dare yourself to go slowly
with 100% accuracy and an even pace. Games which challenge you to
improve your speed are fun, but I think actually counter-productive.
100% accuracy at 70 WPM is more useful (to me, anyway) than 99%
accuracy at 110 WPM. 130 WPM after a few gibberish tries is useful
only in a game.
For more advanced practice,
Amphetype is the best
tool I've found, in particular because it lets you set a lower bound (I
use 99%) on accuracy to complete an exercise, and can automatically
generate lessons to review troublesome words. It's also an extremely
customizable, open-source tool which you can run on your own machine.
