6 Weeks in (2024-06-05)

Main Criticism

I reached 8X WPM on English 10k 2 min test a while back and have been practicing Quotes instead, and I honestly do not like Dusk as it (p.s. I didn't end up alting 'll).

There are two main glaring issues that I have noticed while practicing quotes:

Hand Imbalance

When typing quotes at about 100 WPM with the presence of ',., I can't help but notice that my right hand is doing significantly more work than my left hand.

On e10k, this is not an issue, but I am not really fine with it on quotes.

haei + Vowel Space

Too many common words in quotes are redirects and it annoys me at high speed.

  • the<spc>
  • he<spc>
  • she<spc>
  • hi<spc>

Despite maining Dusk and practicing on MonkeyType everyday for at least 1 hour in the past month, my right thumb still can't handle redirect nearly as fast as my left thumb. In partcular, redirects are 2 letter outroll followed by the last letter inroll.

Minor Criticism

These are things that I have hoped that I'd get used to, but didn't really happen.

pr/rp

I really do not vibe with rp or pr and they are somewhat common. Maybe my hand is just too small.

High Alt

Dusk as is now is still too high alternation for my taste, mostly attributed to the fact that most words end with a letter on the left hand side and space is on the right thumb.

What now?

I am swapping <spc>r.

It fixes all the issues that I listed above and I am not bothered by the redirects that used to bother me such as earlier anymore. They are still funny to type though, but I can type them at 1XX WPM now.

I already returned to 75 WPM (e10k, 2 min) on day 2 of switching back to vowel R.

Takeaway

  • It is likely not worth it to switch your space thumb just to learn a layout.
  • Dusk really isn't that great and I can only conditionally recommend it. That is,
    • if you are already using vowel thumb space with h on the index, then you likely won't agree with my complaints here; Dusk is probably good for you.
    • however, if you are using non-vowel thumb space like I did and if you are bothered by thumb redirects, then Dusk (and honestly lots of other thumb layouts too) is not for you (no matter which thumb you space Dusk, you will always end up with thumb redirect.)