You don't really need those keys for that, there are almost always various chords that do that. macOS, in particular, has "Emacs-light" keybindings in most edit fields: Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of a line, Ctrl-E goes to the end, Alt-Backspace erases a word, etc. Of course, if you use Vim-style keys, you use normal mode for all that stuff.

In general though, custom mechanical keyboards have firmware that can be programmed with "layers": hold down a certain key (or toggle) and layers get activated which changes the meanings of keys. This is the way those very minimal keyboards (which doesn't even necessarily have a number row) can work for daily use. If you want the keys badly, just program your firmware appropriately.

I use a 70-key Redox, not sure if you would classify that as a tiny keyboard. I have all the navigation keys available in my primary layout. Since I'm a vim user, I mark words exactly as I would on a normal-size keyboard: using vW.

I do not have F-keys in my default layout, and I don't miss them as I rarely used them on a normal-size keyboard anyway. But if I do need them, they're just one layer shift away: Fn+1 gives me F1.

Do note that layers can be activated permanently, not just through chording. In my layout, tapping Fn twice turns the right half of the keyboard into a numpad layout so I can do quick data-entry. And in that layer I also have a Tab key under my right hand so I can do both horizontal and vertical data entry. On a normal keyboard, the missing Tab key always forced me to keep both hands on the keyboard when using the Numpad.

I never understood why people needed keys like home and end until I had to switch from MacOS to Windows for work. Turns out, MacOS has some (IMO) more sensible key bindings for those operations involving either the Cmd or Opt key + the array keys.

They have "layers" so you can do some shortcuts and the extra keys become active - so e.g. activate a layer and now U, I, O, and P are home, end, insert , delete etc. Change layer back to normal and off you go.

There are shortcuts for all of those keys that I use even if I’m on a full-sized keyboard that has them.

MacOS has two sets actually, one with command and arrows and one with control using Emacs shortcuts.

> It would be like classical guitarists arguing over which brand of footstool improves performance the most.

The keyboard is actually a very intimate aspect of your interaction with your computer. For many folks this is important. Minutia about the "effect on performance" is not really a concern (IMHO if people are being honest). The real thing is how the keyboard FEELS, the sensory feedback-- sounds, tactile and appearance. It's also a way to customize something to your liking even if you're "doing a job" on the computer, much like wearing a tie of one's choice gave corporate workers an outlet for some individual expression back in the day.

I doubt anyone "argues" about keyboards unless they're being forced to use one they don't like. And most folks can do just fine on a wide variety of keyboards-- although the really alien-ones like the Atreus and those hipster ortho's necessitate a learning curve and motor skills development.

There's a component of human psychology where it just feels good to optimize a thing. It seems to be particularly prevalent in men, especially those of the technical persuasion.

The funny thing about it is that it feels good to optimize a thing regardless of how important that things actual performance is. So you see all kinds of hobbies where people spend inordinate effort eking maximum performance out of shit that just doesn't matter:

* Audiophiles, as you note

* CPU overclocking

* Punkin chunkin

* Hypermiling

* Tether cars

(These hobbies always have names. I think it distinguishes the pursuit of optimization for its own sake from simply trying to improve a thing for functional reasons.)

The point isn't the performance, it's just the enjoyment of making a number go up. In many ways, the less useful the number is, the more enjoyable it is top optimize. Because when the performance doesn't actually matter, it means the stakes are lower, failure isn't harmful, and it feels more like play and less like work.

It's easy to criticize people for putting huge effort into improving things where the benefit is not at all commensurate with the effort. But the thing to realize is that the optimization isn't the justification for the effort. It's the joy of doing it in the first place.

I have a Kinesis Advantage 2. It's not at all about performance, in fact I still type slower with it. The entire point is that I have pretty broad shoulders and so typing on a normal keyboard, my hands are at a very awkward "up-and-out" angle. With the Advantage 2, my hands are straight with the wrist, pointed inwards and slightly down, and need to move very little. It's pretty relaxing.

(Though whoever decided that alt-tab should require a crazy hand-spread gesture with the outside fingers spread wide, needs to have their head checked. And the function keys are an affront against all that is good in the world.)

So I feel there's two sides to the hobby, the aesthetic side and the function/feel side.

There are plenty of people who customize their KBs for aesthetics first and plenty who focus on function/feel. And I think the number of people who focus on exclusively one side is almost non-existent.

Sure, there's a lot of people who talk about the thock or clack of this key or that, but for some it's all about the feel to their hands or the comfort of typing on a particular type of KB.

I've suffered from RSI in my pinky and ring fingers for over a decade now. If I spend too long (greater than 2-3 hrs) typing on a standard 104-style keyboard or laptop KB, the pain flares up. If I don't desist within a day or two, I start loosing grip and arm strength, to the point where I was unable to hold onto coffee cups or soup cans.

For a long time, I used the Microsoft Natural 4000 [0], a split membrane KB. I probably bought about 10 of them over a 5yr period, and I think I still have 3 in the closet.

But moving to a split mechanical was like going from sleeping on the floor to sleeping on a cloud. I could adjust the tenting and angle perfectly for my body, so it feels natural to me. I was able to try out a half-dozen key switches 'til I landed on one that was quiet but still gave a lot of tactile feedback on switch activation.

So yeah, there's definitely a bunch of aesthetic mumbo-jumbo that most people don't care about, but there's a lot in there that's not just thock & clack.

Every area of interest has its "cults", I'm sure whatever you're into has its as well.

For me, I like MK's, and I have a particular like. I type for a living so I want to optimize the joy. Maybe I'm overly sensitive about it, maybe I'm slightly up on the autism spectrum, I honestly don't know. My family has noted my oversensitivity to many things; tags on t-shirts, when socks (worn) or rugs have wrinkles or even if the rug-pad has a wrinkle; I'm accused of being the princess and the pea.

Your analogy is wildly off though; I suspect to push your point. The classical guitarist without a stool at all could still play, without a keyboard I could not.

There are 2 broad categories about working with things. One is you customize it to your "artisinal, bespoke" way and are happy about that. The other is you adjust yourself to it and get on with it. Either is valid.

"The reasonable man adjusts to his environment, the unreasonable man adjusts his environment to him. Thus, all progress is made by unreasonable men."

The keyboard is the main input device for a computer. It's like a classical guitarist arguing over the best guitar.

That said, after years of trying different boards, with different switches, I only see three ranks of keyboards: mediocre (most cheap rubber dome), good (most mechanical switches), and better (the most subjective, Model F buckling spring for me). The improvement from mediocre to good is larger than the improvement from good to better.

As long as keyboard is not tiring or hurting your hands and wrists, it's probably good enough for you.

>Is it just me or do mechanical keyboard aficionados sound strangely like audiophiles?

In some ways perhaps. In most ways not really. There are hundreds of mechanical key switches and many of them feel significantly different from one another. There are indeed bad switches and there are indeed good switches but 99.99% of them fall into the "good category". There's no objectively "best" switch. There are so many types that are good and will last practically forever that its just a matter of personal preference for the way they sound and feel. Some people like quiet switches. Some like clicky. Some like tactility. Some like smoothness. Some people need ergonomic features like split layouts and tilting. Some people prefer standard layouts.

I have some very expensive keyboards (rare vintage stuff and modern custom builds) but in regards to custom boards, once you get over $300-400, you're basically paying for fashion/brand names/artificial scarcity/aesthetic craftsmanship and not utility. Honestly a $60 GMMK with a person's favorite switch (probably around $30-60 more depending on what you want and how big of a layout you use) and a $30-50 set of keycaps will get you 90% of the value that people get out of more expensive brands.

Audiophiles' hobby includes a bunch of stuff that literally has no impact on anything. For some things there's no added value even when taking only aesthetics/superficial stuff into account. There is audiophile hardware that makes a real impact, but there are also people that swear that their absurdly expensive accessory X provides a significant difference when hooking it up to a signal analyzer proves otherwise. With keyboards you are generally either paying for a fashion accessory or an actual discernable difference in the way something feels and which one you are paying for is usually obvious going in.

Both hobbies suffer from diminishing returns that hit hard and fast. You don't have to be a wealthy person to get a great experience from audio or mechanical keyboards.

It's not just you. There's a community on reddit called "mechanicalheadpens" centered around the overlapping interests in mechanical keyboards, audiophile headphones, and fountain pens. Hence "mechanicalheadpens".

I thought the same until I tried a couple, and then tried going back to a membrane keyboard at the office. In addition to better wrist comfort, I also find that I have fewer typos on the mechanical keyboard - my intuitive guess is that it's due to greater travel and resistance required to actuate a key. Everyone has their own preferences but, for something I use 8 hours a day as part of my profession, $100 for a decent keyboard seems entirely reasonable. Plenty of contractors have fancy trucks/tool boxes/tools that cost way more.

Also, it's not comparable to a stool for a guitarist - that would be my desk chair, which cost more than the keyboard.

As with everything, it’s possible to get just far too down the rabbit hole and chase increasingly marginal, and possibly imaginary, improvements.

(You should see my dad’s 8 tackle boxes full of fishing lures.)

But…if you’re a developer or writer or anybody else who is using a computer 8 hours a day, the keyboard does matter. It is your instrument, and not the foot stool—it’s the primary way you’re entering real information into the computer. So it’s not crazy to be a little picky.

I would say its more akin to sneakerheads.

1. Its about the interface between your feet/hands and travelling across their respective landscapes.

2. Different shoes/keyboards lets to travel with differing levels of comfort.

Sure you dont need a pair of nikes to run, and you don't necessarily need a separate pair of shoes for the winter, or for that matter roller-shoes, but they certainly make travelling across the landscape significantly more comfortable (or just different) for various uses. More than just that, people who love to buy shoes love to buy shoes of varying types even if they don't necessarily need it.

Keep in mind, programmers are only one class of people who travel across the digital landscape.

Hrm. I dunno. I recently picked up a couple of old laptops to goof around on (a 2003 Thinkpad T41 and a 2005 iBook G4) and both of them (laptops!) have keyboards that are so much better than my modern keyboards that I was sort of taken aback. I think we’ve slowly been fed worse and worse keyboards for so long that we don’t realize what we’ve actually lost. I’d say the difference is more tangible than a $250 gold-coated cable.

To me, going from membrane to mechanical was not a huge change, especially since in the end I don't really like MX Browns that much. Also because I figured I really like low profile keys.

The huge game changer from me was to use a split keyboard with layers and macros (and switches better than mx browns). The split by itself makes you 1000% more comfortable, and the layers and macros help even more. You should try :)

I prefer mechanical keyboards because, when I started using computers, pretty much all the keyboards on Real Computers (as opposed to C64s or Timex Sinclairs or whatever) were mechanical. I learned how to properly type in a Keyboarding class in high school that was done on IBM Selectrics.

That's what I associate with a "good keyboard."

I can certainly use something else, and often do, but one of the things I look for in a laptop is a good keyboard. It's my primary interface with a computer, and therefore it's worth paying attention to.

That said, the people who adopt a mechanical keyboard all mention the comfort of the clicky-keys. I agree with this. The feedback means I have an indication that I'm typing what I type that doesn't require the mental round-trip of seeing it on the screen first. The membrane keyboards are a lot better now, but every now and then you get one that's particularly mushy. I find myself striking the keys harder, which tires out the tiny joints in your fingers.

If you spend too much time in one thing, maybe you should consider spending a bit of money in it. As a full time developer and hard user of computers in my free time, a good desk, keyboard and chair is essential. I will probably spend a quarter of my life in these, so yeah, it's worth it. Same logic applies for my bed and my smartphone

More like guitarists discussing guitars, IMHO. Lots of people from beginner to master do just fine with six strings tuned to EADGBE but some people get into left-handed tunings or three necks with different tunings on each or a Chapman Stick or some other weird custom instrument.

It’s a deep rabbit hole you can go down, with a lot of equipment to buy and experiment with along the way. A lot of it has little actual effect, but every now and then you find something that really works for you and makes the daily grind at the craft much more pleasant. And also it’s fun to play on that cool looking guitar with a custom paint job or to type on that cool custom keyboard: this is my instrument.

(Me, my main keyboard change is mapping caps lock to cmd-alt-shift and fn-x to cmd-shift-x, both in the service of reducing the amount of complex knots I have to tie my fingers in to hit my many Illustrator hotkeys.)

To me they don't sound like audiophiles. The keyboard in this article is $365. Audiophiles can put $10 000 in a cable. A cheap keyboard is like $20, my current keyboard is around $100. If you map it to something like car prices, cheap keyboards are like old used cars, something like mine a new car, and the keyboard in this article something like an Audi. We're still not on the Ferrari order of magnitude, or even the audiophile.

Mechanical keyboard user (but non-fetishist) here.

For me, it's about comfort and perhaps a tinge of nostalgia. It feels good to type on and I like the audio and physical feedbacks.

That said, my whole process was: I just tried a couple of mechanical keyboards others had, and decided on one (Keychron K8). It works well enough for me, and I don't go sifting around online for the latest/greatest mechanical keyboard.

They do. To me it's not about productivity it's about making my computer more pleasant to use. I've never felt less productive at work on a $20 Dell keyboard.

A good keyboard does have tangible effects on your job performance by reducing strain on your wrists. But once you get a mechanical keyboard, I agree the benefits might be a bit overstated or perhaps only folks attuned to it can really tell.

When I started programming I used the cheapest external keyboards. I thought the Mac external keyboards were supposed to be good (because Apple). Then I got my first mechanical split keyboard and it made programming so much easier on my wrists.

I've pretty much exclusively used mechanical keyboards my entire life. A brief stint where I wasn't using them lead to me having RSI, and I've since switched back and importantly switched to an ergonomic keyboard design. I don't think the comparison to audiophiles is apt (although I'm one of those too, of sorts), because a keyboard is the primary and most critical input device for both work and play when you have your life devoted to computing. I spend 10-12 hours on a computer nearly every single day, the ROI for splashing out $700 for a custom ergonomic mechanical keyboard is immensely better than spending that money doing anything else.

In pure EV/economic sense, spending big on a mechanical keyboard is a fantastic decision if you work/live on a computer.

I used to use mechanicals with fancy layouts, but ended up getting annoyed having to switch between the fancy layout and QWERTY when working from my laptop.

I was then just using QWERTY mechanicals for a while, until at one point I realized I actually was typing faster on my Mac's keyboard. So I got an external magic keyboard, and I've been pretty happy with that.

I think maybe eventually I'd like to try a low-profile mechanical keyboard, but in general I think I don't see the appeal of regular "high travel" mechanical keyboards. They can feel "fun" but make me type slower.

Theres a huge upgrade in my opinion just going to a basic mechanical - but of course very rapidly diminishing returns after that. Wait a bit and look around and you can get something pretty decent for less than 50$

They can, for sure. I am someone who values a good mechanical keyboard, but I just need one and it will last me decades.

Investing once into something that feels good to use every day is worth it totally.

As a musician (and electrical engineer aka someone who trusts measurements and blind tests over golden ears) I like mechanical keyboards because there is "more expression" to the typing. With black linear switches that can be typed totally silent (e.g. if I record, mix or my girlfriend is asleep) or hammered on if I feel like it.

It is sturdy, doesn't float around on my desk, the keycaps feel good etc.

A lot of people are saying it’s not about performance and it’s more about feel. I need to jump in that the performance gain is a big deal for me. You can program a lot of these boards so any key does whatever you want. So I’ve customized mine to be very efficient for vim keybindings, for example, and it has improved my coding efficiency significantly. So I definitely get the downsides of spending hundreds on the “next best switch” or whatever, but for me there are concrete improvements to my efficiency.

I feel like "it's split and column-staggered" is different than "this switch has this actuation curve" or "it's lubricated with this grease".

I find typing with Dvorak so much more comfortable than typing with QWERTY; and it's a nicer experience typing on a symmetrical keyboard than on the standard row-staggered layout.

Though, yes.. it's an individual thing. I'd say arguing about keyboards is a bit like arguing over which text editor is best.

Hobbies that translate to your profession (like keyboards to programmers or headphones/amps to audio professionals) can very much become placebo.

Unless you are financially crippling yourself over the "hobby", it's OK. I have a few keyboards lying around (I've returned a couple as well in the past), I like to change it up every once in a while. It often gives me that little extra push to work on something I might find boring.

There is a difference from audiophiles.

Unlike audio, people can objectively see and feel the difference when you use different keycaps, switches, etc.

At the extreme edge of anything you find the strange people, I like those people they are the ones who push things forwards for the rest of us.

For years I swore by the Ergo 4000, it was and is an excellent ergonomic keyboard however it's also huge and not brilliant for gaming so I had a look around at what smaller mechanical keyboards exist and landed on a cheap 88ish mechanical (plan was buy a cheap one, if I liked the format upgrade to a better one with the same layout but the cheap one was so pleasant I stuck with it).

At the end of the day there is a massive degree of user preference in this stuff, some people don't care about the keyboard at all, others find a bad keyboard crippling, in my case I switched to the ergo years ago because I had shoulder/wrist pain which is largely solved however I've found the small form factor mechanical to be just as comfortable with a wrist rest and it has the big win that the mouse isn't way off to the right).

its much more like classical guitarists arguing about classical guitars. a layperson could not tell the difference. but the guitarists have all sorts of opinions, and notably, not regarding one single quality: it might be sound, it might be feel, it might be the history of a guitar. similarly, the keyboard is your interface to the computer: i love my mechanical because it is a joy to bang on. it bounces around and is so tactile and satisfying to play with, i could code on it all day. there is no objective metric by which to measure this. like the guitars, any keyboard will do the job within the same order of magnitude (typing speed, response time, whatever), but the attachment between these special devices and their owners is legitimate

> It would be like classical guitarists arguing over which brand of footstool improves performance the most.

Keyboard aficionado here. Why all the fuss over keyboards?, because it's fun. In particular, it's wonderful to have a product where craftsmanship is at the forefront.

I don't know how much of an aficionado I am. I had a Dell keyboard that I purchased back in 1996 that lasted me for about 16 years. Loved it. Thing was a heavy brick and felt great. Then I wandered around through the various membrane keyboards for years, just using whatever came my way. When I needed a new one, I purchased a cheap Red Dragon keyboard. No numpad, but I never used it anyway, and it felt great. Bought a second one, and even though it was the exact same model, they changed the keycaps. So I did what any rational person who always forgets to return things does and bought a KVM switch. I will use this thing until it dies and then explore my options.

I see it more as similar to the hotrod/car enthusiast scene. A certain crowd loves to spend time customizing their cars. Mechanical keyboards seem similar to me. It's just a fun activity.

A friend of mine got into it, designing custom PCBs, designing layered laser cut acrylic or 3d printed cases. They've made 5-6 keyboards. Some small, some split, some angular, the latest one is curved. They sent me one of their designs and it was fun to build one, though expensive. Total cost with all tools etc for me at least was ~$700. But hey, I'm an overpaid engineer and I a the keyboard 8-12hrs a day. I've been using it since I built it (18 months or so)

>> It would be like classical guitarists arguing over which brand of footstool improves performance the most.

Reminds of when I worked in a bike shop and I was a mountain biking. Mostly single track and some DH. I never understood the roadies who were constantly in search of taking grams, GRAMS off of their bikes. I remember two guys talking about pedals and they were literally talking about how much better their bikes were weighing 5 grams less than they do now. As a mountain biker, I'd have 5 grams of mud on my shoes inside of 10 mins on the trail so I never understood the obsession with weight with roadies.

I had a few months when I went down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole, constantly trying different switches and keyboards out. Honestly, my favorite mechanical keyboard was something I bought on Amazon for $40. I can understand if you want to customize your aesthetic, but I don't really are about that.

It's the same with audio. I dabbled in hi-fi headphones and amplifiers, but it's so damn inconvenient and you wind up hyper-specializing into a non-portable setup. You're better off getting the versatile setup that's 80-90% there and costs less than half the premium cost.

Personally, I ended up in this niche world because of discomforts, RSI and other similar motor issues.

Mechanical keyboards are also programmable, so I can move around keys to avoid painful or unhealthy movements and combinations. With harder switches I can also feel my finger and hands getting tired faster than with smoother switches.

Oh yeah, and the arrow keys are usually super inconvenient to use if you touch-type all day. Having a special modifier to use vim motion keys everywhere is really handy.

I don't speak for all aficionados of course. Plenty of people do it for fun or merely to research new way to build keyboards.

In my experience, <any>philes end up sounding the same. Once you start enjoying something for its own sake, going overboard becomes the whole point.

It's a slight premium for a low-end mechanical keyboard, about $40, that won't wear out nearly as fast as a rubber dome keyboard. The cheap keyboards that you get with a new computer are usually very low quality and not really intended for hours of daily use every day.

Just get a quiet switch that won't annoy everyone around you if you're in an office environment.

Everything is important but weighed properly. A good keyboard adds pleasure and avoids fatigue to editing. But most of the time the real value is in prior thinking and planning (to minimize editing to an extent)

yeah my mechanical keyboard doesn't improve my performance at all. But I think it feels better to type on and I like the clicky sound. If you use something all day might-as-well enjoy that thing

They are an overpriced solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I've had membrane keyboards that were better than any of the mechanical ones I've bought.

> The effect on your job performance is so minimal that...

People aren't looking at their hobby as a job improver.

There's a few big upsides to going down this rabbit hole imo-

1. Realizing how much dead space there is on a normal keyboard (capslock, the space bar doesn't need to be so big, many keys you might want to use frequently are in awkward spots, like the numbers).

2. Being able to fully customize the layout to your liking. I don't think anyone agrees 100% on what the ideal layout is, but once you get more comfortable with layers and testing various layouts it gets pretty easy to adjust.

3. Finding out how quickly you can adapt to multiple layouts by just sticking with it. You won't be perfect the first time, and you might struggle to briefly when you switch back to a normal board, but people vastly underestimate how good humans are at adaptation.

There's also a bonus level of just having nice keys/switches. While this is the part that can get pricey, as someone who's typing all the time it really does feel like a worthy expense.

The major downsides being that it can get expensive fast (at least if you're picky), you might need some level of soldering skill, and there are times where you DON'T want to be the person with the fancy keyboard that no one else can use (I always have a normal one plugged in at work just in case).

Still i'm super glad I got into it. I'm a huge fan of 40% boards just because of the portability and the space they save. I'm typing all this, on a mercutio and my work daily driver is a low profile crkbd (I do analytics and some low end/intermediate coding).

The only issue i've ever run into is that I'm a fan of roguelikes, and while most games don't need too many keys, those in particular seem to have this habit of the designer trying to use EVERY key on a full sized keyboard, so i'm working on a layer for that.

Somehow mechanical keyboard discussions often seem to forget what I consider to be the granddaddies of them all, the ibm, now unicomp model m keyboards.*

I guess it's because unicomp does almost no marketing or at least doesn't bother to get their stuff in retail stores where there tend to be racks of so-called gaming keyboards and other mechanical keyboards?

I can always know whether I pressed the key or not using a buckling spring keyboard, the same cannot be said for linear keys in my admittedly limited experience with razer yellow switches.

*Yes there is no doubt someone somewhere who has a space cadet kb or actual physical teletype still hooked up to a modern PC somewhere, but I'm talking about something that is actually available for sale on a mass scale by consumers. The model f revival exists for collectors and is functional, but is just bespoke enough to me that it's more of a collector's item than a mass product.

My experience with customizing my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard has taught me something: I can't actually diverge too much from a "normal" keyboard layout, because in addition to a USB keyboard at a desk, I also use the built-in keyboards on my personal laptop (Framework) and my work laptop (MBP). It's just not worth it for me to build muscle memory that works for only one of the three keyboards I use on a regular basis. So I can't, for example, get used to the tab/window switching shortcuts of the UHK's default Mod layer[1], because as soon as I switch to another keyboard I have to go back to Alt+Tab etc. In theory I could probably figure out some way to implement something like a Mod layer for every keyboard I use regularly, but I don't feel like that's worth the effort. On the other hand, mapping Caps Lock to Escape is something I can do easily on every keyboard I own, and has been a worthwhile adjustment. It's needed on the UHK because by default Escape is on the Mod layer, and I want it as a regular key, but once I did it there I liked it enough to do it everywhere.

All that said, I do like the UHK a lot. I bought it mainly for the ergonomics of a split, adjustable angle keyboard, and it's great for that. And the silent brown key switches I chose are great for typing during calls.

[1]: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/manuals/uhk60/navigation...

This is a rabbit hole that I spent considerate amount of time and money and I’d like to warn some of those who are interested into going in.

> Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right? ;-)

With this article sentence I wholeheartedly stand. It’s important to know and optimize tools you’re using most of waking time. Keyboard promises improvement both health and performance wise. Same with layout. Yet both unorthodox keyboards and layouts are considerate investments. Even more so if they are customizable. And it might be possible that they’ll never pay off.

I had situations that match common theme: I’m heavily focused on a problem. I’m coding away and that at some point I stumble and fall. I can’t remember combination for some shortcut I’ve been using in ages. Instead of working furiously on the problem I’m solving “where is the key” problem now. The other situation is the stressful one. I found out that under situations that stress me I forgot complex customizations. Keyboard layouts? They don’t work.

This get amplified if you have multiple keyboards to work with. I’ve used Dvorak for more then a year - didn’t stick. Split keyboards with standard layout - same. Non orthodox keyboards - even after more than year of using it didn’t work. For keyboard.io I went so far that I got multiple ones to try to avoid “switch fatigue” and ended giving them out.

Right now I’m using standard full size low key keyboard with numpad and additional F-keys for bindings. It works, has low latency (latency IS an issue with many keyboards), my hands don’t get tired because there is almost non pressure required (and I type a lot while getting older every day) and that’s the best keyboard I have. Right now I’m considering actually getting rid of tenkeyless keyboard for my gaming pc because lack of keys and all those combos to get to F-s just annoys me when I want to script something. It simply puts a problem in front of me that I didn’t intend to solve.

Craftsman has to care for their tools. I agree. But choosing battles is important too.

The problem I see with "improved layout"/"ergonomic"/"split" keyboards is that not only do you have to retrain your muscle memory to use one, but once you do that, it will be harder for you to use a "regular" keyboard. I have a boring old Dell keyboard at home, so at work (where we have a hot desk policy since Covid -> home office -> office space reduction), I can use any keyboard except for one specific desk where for some reason they have a keyboard with a modified layout where the arrow keys are offset and the block above the arrow keys is rotated 90°

> Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right?

Writing-heavy professions, and even managerial professions where people are writing emails all day probably do more typing than many programmers. I think programmers are into weird keyboards simply because they are nerdy.

I did have a phase where I was using US layout over German, because I do agree that US layout is just more suitable for programming.

But training my muscle memory that way turned out to be more of a pain than a gain.

As a freelancer, I'm frequently in a situation where I'm forced to use a laptop that a client has provided, with a German layout. Oftentimes I will not have an external keyboard on hand, like I'm in a meeting room and didn't want to bring one, or I'm on a plane or train.

In order to make that work, you'd need to be a pretty disciplined typist who doesn't rely on the labels on the keys at all so as not to be confused by them when they're in a different layout.

Back in those days, there were also many edge cases, like the login screen etc., where you couldn't customize your layout away from some default that the client has configured.

Also: Most of the pain comes from curly braces. So when you're doing Python & Nim you're mostly okay using a European layout. I also think it's probably not a coincidence that the people behind those languages are Europeans, Guido van Rossum and Andreas Rumpf.

I'll never understand the obsession with 'less keys' amongst the mechanical keyboard 'scene'.

I usually use a Filco Tenkeyless (Cherry Browns), and removing the usually-redundant numeric keypad brings the mouse a bit closer to my right hand, so a bit more comfortable and a little bit of space saved. But I can't see the benefit of going smaller ever outweighting the cost of re-learning to type. Adapting to laptop keyboards when used to full-size can be tricky enough...

I went down this rabbit hole and I now:

- use 30 keys

- control the mouse from my keyboard

- never have to move my palms in the slightest all day

- get far more control and (Emacs) keybindings

It was a very painful process though deciding on my custom key layout. I would make myself re-learn new layouts on an daily or hourly basis for 6 months until I was satisfied.

I have a Moonlander but my long term plan is to move to Tightyl: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/glfyki...

Also went down this rabbit hole. Did a review of the split keyboard UHK v2 which I highly recommend.

https://youtu.be/OPmoB8-11JY

Edit: Apologies for the video quality.

PS: The UHK might be of interest to some who aren't sure if a split is their thing. It isn't ortholinear, so the keys are staggered in the usual way. It also allows the keyboard to be re-connected in a single slab if you choose not to use the split. I'd def recommend the split to help with preventing carpal tunnel or RSI.

Really cool (and expensive) rabbit hole.

My first mechanical keyboard was a Razer Blackwidow with Cherry MX Blue switches. Next, I bought a blank-key Das with Cherry MX Brown. Since then I've used an Input Club K-Type, a Tesoro Durandal, and some Logitech keyboard with MX Reds. I actually really liked the MX Reds, way more than I thought I would. So when I ordered the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard it was with Box Reds. I also still have an Input Club Nightfox waiting to be assembled in my closet - it's been there for years. I should probably just sell it at this point.

In regards to layouts, I too prefer US layout for coding. But I live in a European country with special characters and have gotten used to using that layout. The UHK, however, will come with a US layout and I'll map the special characters to alternative keys. I hadn't delved much into special key mappings on my boards yet, so that'll be interesting. I got it with the trackball module in hopes of never needing to use a mouse again.

I just started going down this rabbit hole myself after seeing a video of the Dactyl Manuform split keyboard. I'm thinking about getting one now. Is there someone on HN who works fulltime on a split keyboard? How does that work out for you? I suspect the Dactyl is very comfy but i'm not sure if that still is the case if you use it full time. The Iris looks great too. So if you have experience with that I would love to hear it too.

Having accustomed to using a Thinkpad Trackpoint, I am always struggling with separate keyboard and mouses. I mean, I rarely use the mouse, but cannot completely ditch it.

The ergonomics of a split keyboard is very appealing. For the last months, I’ve simply used two thinkpad trackpoint usb keyboards as a cheap but working substitute :-D

When I moved to Europe, companies starting giving me EU (In my case either danish or icelandic) laptops, and I can barely function without plugging in my US keyboard. I've found it so much easier just to learn key sequences to input the few special characters and stick to what I'm otherwise used to for the last 30 years I've been typing.

I know some of it is just that - what you're used to - but I have several native colleagues that have switched to US layouts for coding as well.

As for small keyboards, that's the old man in me I guess. At some point in my youth either with Turbo Pascal or word perfect, I got used to Ctrl-Insert to copy, Shift-delete to cut, Shift-Insert to paste. Not only that Home/End/Page up/Page down are some of my most commonly used keys writing code. Number pads are nice but I would take a serious hit without my nav keys.

I've been a fan of mechanical keyboards for 20 years now. I bought a IBM Model M off ebay when I was in my teens. The space itself isn't that fun to participate in, lots of people eagerly waiting to gatekeep their little space. And the really cool stuff is going for $600 before you even add in any switches, boards or keycaps.

All that said, I found Keychron (https://www.keychron.com/) keyboards last year and their quality and price absolutely blew me away. I bought two of the Keychron Q2 QMKs, fully assembled.

Sounds like an ad but I was just so happy to finally find a keyboard of this quality that didn't make me wait 6 months, didn't cost $1200, and wasn't buried in some community exclusive drop that only 18 people would have access to, etc.

Mechanical keyboards don’t have to be a rabbit hole. Just get something in a normal layout with brown switches (or silenced if you need that) and call it a day. I got a Keychron because they have Mac function keys, it was less than $100 and feels way better than the short key travel Magic Keyboard. I have no desire to upgrade.

I see a lot of people here complain about the misconception that nonstandard layouts on small form factor keyboards require emacs-esque key chording to get rather common keys like ~ or |. This is completely incorrect.

I personally use a fullsize cherry keyboard in boring office grey, standard iso layout and the linear switches it came with. It has a navigation block, a numblock and the full function key row. However, due to the layout I'm using I never touched the numblock or the navigation cluster even once. There are four layers I use: The first layer are the normal lowercase letters and digits. The second layer is activated when I press shift, and inputs the same symbols but uppercase. The third layer inputs symbols. It is activated by pressing capslock or #. From there every common symbol I might ever want for programming language weirdness is readily accessible. The fourth layer I use is activated by pressing either '<>|' or right alt (alt gr). It activates the navigation cluster under my left hand and the numblock under my right hand. This way, it is entirely possible to only live in the 60% portion of the keyboard my hands are already on while enjoying all upsides the navigation and numblock areas provide. There is no chording, just like you wouldn't call it chording when you press shift to enter a capital 'A'.

Just sharing my personal experience there.

During isolation I bought my first mechanical keyboard (a cheap Qisan Magicforce 68, that I wholeheartly recommend). I quickly learned to use it and still love it at home.

A few months ago I bought a kinesis advantage for my office. I'm fully used to it (although it took me a while to stop hitting wrong keys).

When I bought both keyboards, I already knew how to touch type and went back to typeracer, keybr and monkeytype. My speed did not increase that much and I still get my fastest speeds on my macbook pro integrated keyboard.

The main reason why I use an external keyboard is to solve my back problems, by using a stand or an external screen.

In particular, I get my slowest typing speeds on my kinesis advantage. It is NOT built for speed, it is built for comfort. It allowed me to improve my posture considerably so it's still worth it.

PS: in my experience, using a laptop stand / external monitor helps with the lower back problems (weirdly). I solved my upper back problems by doing more exercise, and it's as easy as having some elastic bands near my desk and trying to stretch them horizontally behind my neck a few minutes a day (when I'm reading a long email or pdf or thinking or need a break).

PS2: a must-have on macOS is karabiner. I use it to have nicer keybindings for french accents (modifier keys like `) but also to configure function keys on my kinesis advantage and put navigation shortcuts on my mouse (logitech G502).

It is the normal way to go. First mechanical, then columnar staggered (split) with at least 60% of the "normal" keys. Then towards 40% split boards :-)

> Emacs users often get the credits for inventing this hack. And that hack is about realizing how stupid they caps lock key really is. Well, maybe not stupid, but unless you write SQL all day long, you’re not using it enough for it to deserve such a good position right there on the home row on your keyboard. Replace it with ctrl!

Why didn’t I ever think of this? The location of ctrl has always been awkward to me.

Been down this one: spent a large amount of money, annoyed my family with clicky keys, ended up with sore wrists, left it.

Now using an Apple magic keyboard. It’s quiet, doesn’t make me hurt, actually has all the keys I need and doesn’t piss anyone off.

I would guess that the single biggest ergonomical win comes from a split keyboard, where the hands are no longer angled outward. Any other feature (staggering, thumb keys, bowled wells etc) would give further, but much smaller, improvements.

At least this is me experience after 4-5yrs of Kinesis Advantage.

I am in the light-yet-tactile camp. I hate cherry switches. Mx browns feels like rough linears, Mx blue are probably my least favourite clicky switches.

I find Matias keyboards fantastic, yet their tactile switches have awful quality issues, probably due to the lube. I cleaned all mine and applied my own lube which made them work as they should.

Their clicky switches are amazing feeling, and have no issues that I know of. And the keyboards lack all those worthless extras like backlighting and gamer fonts. It is almost like they decided they wanted to sell keyboards to grown-ups.

So now I have found my keyboards. Whenever Matias goes bankrupt I will probably scrape eBay for BTC dome with slider keyboards (better rubber domes cost 30x as much).

If you like linear switches there are LOADS of exciting things going on.

For work I’ve become so very accustom to using a HHKB - in the office I use a HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S. the Topre switches are essentially perfect for me, and the layout is so comfortable for me

But personally at home I’m really enjoying the ability to customise the layout, switches and keycaps. I have two keyboards which I swap between at home, a tokyo60, a hot swap board which emulates the HHKB layout, within which I have quiet linear switches “Prevail Epsilons”. And a Drop CTRL, a “ten keyless” design which is also hotswappable, in which I use “Glorious Pandas”; a tactile type switch like Cherry MX Browns, which I feel are better.

At this stage of the game I’m pretty much finished, like with hifi audio, it’s very easy for this to get out of hand quickly.

I am using a Kinesis Adv 2 and have just switched to Colemak DH myself. It's really hard to rewire your brain ti type on it, but after a week now I'm starting to get faster.

One thing that I still haven't quite figured out is Vim... How do people use Vim with an alternative layout? do you keep the same keybindings and just deal with it(hjkl are not nicely in line for example) or do you remap each action to the physical location it would be on a qwerty keyboard (i.e. navigating with mnei for example)?

In 2019, I finally treated myself to a Unicomp keyboard...I'd had a Model M that came with a PS2 model 8085 that was on its way to the dumpster and so was free as in beer. I used the Model M for years until the limitations of the PS2 connector fed me up...

anyway, Unicomp isn't what it used to be. When it arrived, it seemed oddly lightweight, but I thought maybe my memory was wrong after nearly twenty years. Then it failed after mostly sitting in a box (I was planning to use it with an RPi as a sort of project to go lightweight).

Yes a keyboard that failed. Nothing would recognize it. Failed electronics.

I'd say fortunately it was under warranty, but Unicomp requires the owner to pay for shipping their keyboards back under warranty, a Unicomp keyboard is more than 12" long and so ships at a higher USPS rate, and thus the shipping was $24.

It did come back working and I put it up on eBay and wrote the rest off as sunk costs.

Writing up the eBay listing took me back to the Unicomp website to check my accuracy and I noticed that the weight shown on the Unicomp's website was more than two pounds greater than the actual weight of the keyboard I bought plus the box it was shipped in.

Maybe I just got a lemon. The weight discrepancy makes me doubt it. Failed electronics makes me doubt it. PVC for the cable rather than rubber makes me doubt it. YMMV.

>The model f revival exists for collectors and is functional, but is just bespoke enough to me that it's more of a collector's item than a mass product.

Definitely not a mass product. The project IMO is a disaster even for a group buy type thing. I ordered long after it was an existing product and tons of people received theirs already and come to find out at that point it was still going to be a year+ wait for most people and they under no circumstances will attempt to even ballpark how long its going to take. There's a lot of work involved for the guy running the project but it would be nice to know if I'm looking at waiting 3 months, 6 months, a year, or more. Delays are understandable but that's not all that's going on here.

I always said that, when Unicomp made a tenkeyless, it would be a day-1 purchase. I'm typing on the "Mini M" right now. I had an actual, real, IBM Model M on my first job, and loved it. And you're right, the F switches are a little different. Less clicky. I find them less satisfying than my nostalgia. I had an actual tenkeyless IBM model M briefly, but found it unusable for programming without a third modifier key for ⌥.

I have a Model M that's a few years older than I am. It's great, and it still works, but is not as good for long-term typing as the keyboards I've used as daily drivers.

Clicky switches are a big plus for me, since they provide the audio and tactile feedback, and are just plain fun to use. The best clicky switches (imo) are the Kailh Box types with a little spring dedicated to the sound + feel of the click, but you're never going to find those preinstalled in a keyboard because they're still considered niche.

Their keyboards are painfully loud -- distractingly so -- that I found it affected my ability to focus.

I've had a Unicomp keyboard for over 10 years now and still going strong. I'm a fan of the buckling spring keyboard and really enjoy typing on it compared to other keyboards I have tried.

There is a significant difference in quality and feel between the models M and F: M is very stiff.

I tried to love mechanical keyboards, I really did. I think I romanticized it too much. Maybe it was a form of procrastination ("I'm sure I'll finally stop slacking off when I have the right keyboard!"). In the end however, hundreds of dollars later, no matter what I tried I always came back to Logitech MX Keys. It's low profile, wireless and pleasant to type on. The only mechanical keyboard I think came close to a daily driver, that I still have, is Keychron K1. That's probably because of it's low profile keys. Other than that I sold all others and kinda gave up.

That of course doesn't mean I shit on the whole keyboard industry. I can appreciate a wonderful, thoughtful design that's tailored to someone's specific need. However, turns out that in that particular area I'm a basic bitch :P

> Craftsman has to care for their tools. I agree.

Except for the part that programmers spend far more time reading than writing.

An ajustable monitor and a good chair payoff way more than an expensive keyboard.

I still don't get the keyboard hype.

I never understood the trend of keyboards without numpad, F-keys or even arrows. Sure, it's nice if you carry your keyboard in your backpack, but on a desk I think it's more useful to have those keys.

> Right now I’m considering actually getting rid of tenkeyless keyboard for my gaming pc because lack of keys and all those combos to get to F-s just annoys me when I want to script something.

Tenkeyless are supposed to have function keys - they only lack the numpad cluster. Sounds like you went down to a 65% or so?

> Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right? ;-)

Jack White (of White Stripes) makes and plays a guitar with a bottle, a board, a string, and a pickup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_F7aiOvdwE

I've recently made the switch to Colemak on an ortholinear split keyboard. It's different enough that I can switch back to qwerty on a standard keyboard without my brain getting too confused, but Colemak is similar enough that I was able to learn it relatively quickly. An added bonus, learning a new layout actually made me a better qwerty typist on standard keyboards, even if I'm a little slower now when I switch back, I've noticed I do a lot less reaching and moving off the home row.

To go against the other comments here, I couldn't get used to it (building new muscle memory - let alone switching). Years ago I bought an ErgoDox. One of the main things I underestimated is that it has an ortholinear layout: the keys are straight above each other instead of being staggered like on a traditional keyboard.

I went from typing 110WPM to 30WPM. After a week of practice I was at 50WPM. Two weeks in and I was at 60WPM. Most importantly, typing was now an activity that required thought, instead of simply flowing. At this point I was sufficiently frustrated and felt slowed down enough I stopped and went back to a traditional keyboard.

I'm sure that with enough time I would reach my original speed and effort. But I have spent more than a decade building this muscle memory, and I didn't feel it was worth it to spend another decade building muscle memory on non-commodity hardware.

Nowadays I'm on 130WPM, so any barrier to switch is even higher. I do understand that my experience is very atypical since I am (supposedly) in the top 0.1% percentile of typing speeds.

I have a Moonlander and I have put off buying it for at least a year due to a same concern. It turned out to be not a concern. My hands seem to adapt to a normal keyboard whenever I use it so I can switch between the two freely without much trouble.

Hmm I think that issue is overstated, I use a split keyboard in my coworking space, I go between it and my laptop keyboard at home regularly. Once I feel where I’m typing my brain seems to figure out pretty quickly and adjust.

You'd think so, but somehow the brain adapts. I can type ~120 wpm on a moonlander/microsoft ergonomic 4000/my laptop keyboard on monkeytype (not that its a very useful test). Switching takes almost 0 effort. My problem is that my wrists and shoulders get sore really quickly when working on my laptop keyboard so I try to avoid doing that as much as possible.

Exactly right. I'm have a Macbook Air M1 and an "Apple Wireless Keyboard" which is released in 2003, discontinued in 2015. Bought it 2nd hand, in great condition for quite cheap.

The size and the layout are exactly the same apart for touch ID. It is great, zero adaptation between switching desktop configuration or mobile.

Maybe its not the "elite" experience of the mechanical keyboards, it's still pretty good and it's definitely a privilege not having to adapt between keyboards.

It's kind of surprising that people optimising for minute differences between clickiness of different key mechanisms wouldn't bother to optimize for this.

I have a similar experience, but not with the split keyboards.

been using a 60% mechanical here at home for work and play for a while now (about a year at this point). best keyboard I have ever used, bar-none. The only problem is that my muscle memory is so damn used to it now that I find it a little difficult to be productive on larger keyboards.

Any time I want to move the cursor with the arrow keys, i find my right hand straying down to where the 'fn' key should be, etc.

not really a huge problem -- I'm working on replacing existing keyboards that I use everywhere with the same 60% model because I love it so much, but just soemthing I've noticed.

I use an ergodox most of the time. My WPM on ergodox is like 130, my wpm on regular is like 110 (not because its harder, but because I'm less used to it)

If you keep switching as part of your protocol, it's fine

> but once you do that, it will be harder for you to use a "regular" keyboard

Regular keyboards are different enough that switching between them already negates muscle memory for me

I can only say this is no issue for me. I'm currently using colemak dh on a dactyl manuform like keyboard and switch to using a macbook keyboard constantly because I use 2 devices. and even with the different layouts it doesn't make a difference for me. I think these bigger changes are easier to get used to than just smaller ones where for example the shift key is just a little longer that stuff always throws me off

I just have Emacs-style capslock->ctrl and just with that I tYPE LIKE THIS on any computer that's not mine for the first 5 minutes. I almost regret it.

I with ergonomic keyboards doubled the keys on the border between hands between both halves. I frequently reach for those keys with the “wrong” index finger and would get annoyed if the keyboard said no.

This is why I went with building my own sinc. Its a bog standard keyboard, but chopped in two.

It probably wouldn't help you, but others in Europe should consider the British/Irish layout: it retains the tall Enter key and the extra key between Shift and Z.

You gain £ and ¬ with the extra key (and € with AltGr), although a few symbols are moved round: # and ~ end up easier to type, ¬ is kicked into the corner, and @ and " are switched compared to the US layout.

> Also: Most of the pain comes from curly braces. So when you're doing Python & Nim you're mostly okay using a European layout. I also think it's probably not a coincidence that the people behind those languages are Europeans, Guido van Rossum and Andreas Rumpf.

There is a Dutch keyboard layout that is similar to the German one, but the US-International layout is almost universally used in the Netherlands, and has been for as long as I recall (mid 80s). I've only seen a keyboard with the Dutch layout once (and I've seen a lot of old second-hand hardware over the years!)

So in the case of Python at least, I think it probably wasn't a consideration.

Most German programmers I know use US-International btw, but I don't know how common that is.

I guess I'm one of the odd people who have their work machines (and linux laptops( on US Intl and main machine at home on de-qwertz - so I change once per day (on a work day, and when I am using mine at home that evening).

It mostly works, I'm absolutely trained to expect qwerty, but my keyboard at home (G710+) tells my muscle memory to start typing with a German layout now. I've not had to use any clients' laptops for many years but I could see the problem, I have it when someone hands me a ThinkPad with German layout for example, but I'm willing to tolerate to type garbage once a month in exchange for being able to work with the layout I actually prefer.

I also switched to a US layout from German layout. It took me a while to get used to typing Umlauts (on a Mac, you type option-u followed by a/o/u to get ä/ü/ö), but after a few months it became very natural.

My home computer is in the living room shared with my family, it still has a German layout, so I switch between US and German pretty often. I can type on both keyboards fluently. Somehow my brain knows that the computers have different keyboard layouts.

The only thing that still confuses me is a cheap backup keyboard that I have (when bluetooth doesn't work), which has a UK layout....

I can't go without EurKey [1] at this point. It's the US qwerty layout, but AltGr can be used to type pretty much all Western European characters, e.g. ö==AltGr+o. It's available on most linux distros out-of-the-box!

I can still type on a German layout, but only in German. I think the language change provides enough of a "context switch" for my brain.

[1] https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/layout.html

I am German and I use the US (Colemak) layout,because the German layout is very annoying for programming. I rarely use my laptops keyboard. I would rather carry a smaller external keyboard around (Atreus or similar) if I would need to use Laptops I do not own.

The thumb is strong, and the pinky finger is weak.

It would be better to use the thumb more, and not rely on the pinky finger as much.

Compared to a standard keyboard, these small keyboards typically have more keys for the thumb to access. (e.g. the planck has 2-3 per thumb). And once esc/tab/enter/backspace are used by the thumb, you don't need to use the pinky for these.

One way to use the pinky finger even less: you'd probably move away from using the pinky for Ctrl/Win/Alt modifiers, and use home-row modifiers instead.

I do think "layering vs more keys" is a trade-off and not everyone will have the same preference. But I think the advantages to using fewer keys outweigh the downsides.

One can re-learn in a matter of weeks. The smaller the keyboard the less the fingers have to travel. I still have a full numpad setup with 44 keys and it’s a lot more comfortable to use than a normal keyboard.

I don't quite understand it either, I got the same Filco tenkeyless MX brown which I got ten years ago and I'm happy with it.

But I do think it's pretty neat there's so much to choose from. How many people are complaining about a truly compact smartphone in the size of the original iPhone SE for example? You can choose between "large", "very large", and "I used to have a TV that's small than this". I think it's pretty neat that all these options exist, silly as I personally may think some of them are.

I love the numeric keypad, couldn't live without it.

I find tenkeyless a bit weird when 75% exists. It saves like 2-3 inches without losing any keys.

The common argument is fewer keys means less finger travel means better ergonomics. Hopefully someone with actual experience (i.e. not me) can chime in.

The Nightfox was one of the first full-on build-it-yourself keyboards I drooled over, but they were already a limited-availability item at that time, and haven't been in production for years. A relic of the past, as it were: https://kono.store/products/nightfox-mechanical-keyboard

At minimum, you should easily be able to get MSRP for a sealed kit. If I wasn't stretched for fun-money and display shelf space, I'd make an initial offer of $150 if it was sealed, or at least new-in-box with all the pieces. If it's the True Fox (split backspace) layout, I'll kick myself extra hard in a few years for not buying it anyways.

Aesthetically, it's still very pretty, and if you have your own keyboard shelf, it may be nice to at least assemble and display it. If you fancy yourself the tinkering type, design files for the board and case are available: https://github.com/kiibohd

I've been using US International for ages to be able to use my countries special chars. Might work for you as well.

I used a normal (Logitech/Microsoft) split keyboard since university, since I was scared when a student a couple of years older than me got RSI and couldn't type for weeks.

These wore out about 2 years ago, and I couldn't find a similar replacement. I bought an ErgoDash [1] instead. It has a few additional keys compared to the Iris. I have one at work and another at home, and to make them more similar to the broken keyboards I 3D printed angled bases. I use them for 99% of my typing.

I should probably have tried a Kinesis Advantage 2 first, but it seemed like too much of a jump.

I'm partway through 3D printing/assembling a Lagrange keyboard [2], which is similar to the Dactyl. I will add the F1-F12 keys to my print, as they're the only thing I miss on my ErgoDash -- if a shortcut in my IDE is Ctrl+Shift+F10, it's nice for it to be that, not Ctrl+Shift+Fn+0.

I made [3] to help others see what's available.

[1] https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash/

[2] https://github.com/dpapavas/lagrange-keyboard

[3] https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/

I switched to the Kinesis Advantage 2 about 9 months ago (https://geekmonkey.org/learning-to-type-dvorak/) and couldn't be happier. It takes quite a while to rewire the brain (at least it did for me) but I feel a lot more confident and a tad bit faster than I was before I switched.

I'm working full-time as a sysadmin on a first-gen Ergodox. It's nice; I can put writing implements between the keyboard halves. Or food. :)

Apart from that, it's just… different. I'm still using normal keyboards on trips to the data center or when doing customer support, but the general day-to-day is done on the Ergodox. When I use normal keyboards/layouts, I have to look at the keys to type, but then I'm almost as fast as on the Ergodox. (Not that I was that fast to begin with, maybe 50–60wpm?)

I'm also using a Majestouch Minila Air at home, which is a regular (i.e. non-split) 65% BT keyboard with Cherry Browns. It also uses the same 'base layout' as the Ergodox (NEO2), but the modifiers are in different positions. From time to time, I also use a laptop keyboard (Thinkpad X1 Carbon), which is close enough to the Minila that it hardly matters.

You get used to it after a while. For what it's worth, I'm 37.

Iris user here. Hate being without it now, it's extremely comfortable. The stagger makes so much sense but it took weeks to get back up to speed.

I use a tall book between the halves for additional tenting height, and have my setup such that my elbows are elevated to compensate for how high off the desk my wrists need to be - not a fan of wrist-rests.

Interested in a dactyl next, for sure.

I use a Moonlander full time and I like it a lot. The split layout has more or less completely eliminated the shoulder pain, which for me was caused by sleep injuries (I am an unconscious contortionist) and hunching my shoulders to get my wrists into a comfortable position.

There was definitely an adjustment period, but it was completely worth it for me.

I really like the Microsoft natural ones, but they aren’t really split - just arranged in a way that helps wrists.

I have a couple other mechanical ones, but all monolithic US QWERTY. My favourite among these is a Unicomp buckling spring behemoth with 122 keys, but it is the antithesis of these smaller mechanicals.

I use a dactyl manuform 4x5 with the miryoku layout. I took some time getting used to the key placement and mod taps but it's impressive how little one moves their hands when typing, even for numbers and symbols. Hasn't changed how fast I type though.

This split keyboard is pretty unique: https://www.angrymiao.com/am-hatsu/

I'm German and have never set foot in the US - but I've always used US layout keyboards for coding since I first discovered how much programming language syntax is tied to US keyboard layouts (because most modern widespread languages were invented in the US I guess, quotation needed).

The main reason is the easy access to brackets, slashes, quotation marks, etc. compared to non-US keyboards where most of those are only accessible via key combinations, and really awkward ones as well.

I believe in this so much that I automatically assume any German software developer not wanting to use a US layout keyboard for his daily work is not working efficiently or not deep enough into it.

I think for C programming non US keyboards are bad. When starting on such a board, I was thinking who ever thought that typing { is simpler than 'begin' must have been delusional.

US layout is definitely better than most EU layouts. It is still terrible compared to a custom setup however. So many bad contortions the fingers have to do compared to just having a sensible symbol-layer.

I'm in the Netherlands and I've rarely see a developer use anything other than US ANSI layout on a laptop. Consumer level stuff often defaults to US ANSI, but there is a bit of US/english ISO layout going around too.

A Dutch keyboard layout is a thing, but I've never seen one, just heard of some writers/editors using it.

I'm French and I take my US layout keyboard everywhere I think I might type. All software engineering tooling is just meant for it. It's a harsh lesson I've learned through the torture of using Emacs with a French layout.

Brown switches? MX Brown switches? Might as well not even put "rabbit hole" in that sentence...

I kid, I kid, it's all down to preference... That said, you can get yourself a single mechanical keyboard and call it a day, until one day you try a different board/layout with different switches. Maybe at your friends house, or at a shop, or more than likely: at work. You'll be forever wondering "I liked that...".

Keyboards really are a special tool for us. I've spent considerable amount of time and money on them, and I consider myself fairly frugal (well, in non keyboard related matters). All to say, it's very easy to fall into this rabbit hole, especially when you spend so much time working with these things...

You don't need a mechanical keyboard to get full key travel.

I do have mechanical keyboards and feel like I get a benefit from them, but I think you can get most of the way there with a standard non-laptop-style keyboard with keys that go all the way down.

Although interestingly reading this thread it seems like there are a lot of people who like the laptop-style keys, so who knows. Maybe it's all just muscle memory.

On the other hand, I had to hold myself back from spending several hundred dollars on a 'limited edition' set of keycaps that had pastel dots instead of letters, and am typing this on a 36 key, Ortholinear/column split hand-built (but not by me) keyboard, so your mileage may vary.

You've just entered the rabbit hole. Keychron is a toptier OEM. But far from what a custom can be and is

Don't you get sore wrists with the Apple Keyboard? Many years ago I used to have one, and I would get terrible pain because of the tilt (Fx row being higher than Space row).

This is something that quite a lot of keyboards have, and I find it terrible. The most comfortable keyboards I've ever used have been the Logitech Wave and the MS Sculpt wireless. I prefer the latter, since I never use the numpad, and the keys feel better. Overall it has a cheaper feel, though, and wrist rest padding is falling apart after some 3 years of use.

But I also love my Keychron K2 v1 with Gateron browns, which is flat (Fx row at the same height as the Space row). It's quite high, mind, but an after-market wrist rest has fixed that, and it's a really lovely typing experience. It's quieter than most "basic keyboards" (think basic office keyboards from Dell, etc) and the smooth, low-resistance keys are great for finger fatigue.

I've been using an electro-capacitive (Topre-like) keyboard with ultra-light 35g keys called Niz. They're actually lighter than the latest gen macbook keyboards and let me type as fast as I did on the butterfly keyboards, and they are completely silent.

Now all I'm looking for is a split compact version of these Topre-like keyboards. Pretty much 99% of the custom keyboard scene is just various housing and PCBs for cherry style switches. For whatever reason with electro-capactive keyboards there are limited options. If anyone knows of a split topre keyboard please let me know!

Years ago I bought a Filco Majestouch, great little device, built like a brick. Still use it for PC work (mostly gaming).

But for work I've used a Mac keyboard for years as well, the numpad-less compact model. It's great and my go-to / default.

But, I bought into the Moonlander hype as well, currently typing this on one and trying to get used to it. I'm a quick typer but no keyboard warrior; typing this message seems to be fine, but coding is a lot more painful or difficult to get used to; I use the arrow keys, which are in awkward positions on the Moonlander; I use some keyboard combinations to select or navigate across whole words, that's some muscle memory that needs to be retrained and the finger combo seems weird. Feels like I have to stretch my fingers a lot more for anything that isn't just typing shitposts on the internets.

Might just be getting used to things, might be I need to relearn some muscle memory, or might be I should finally learn vim or emacs since that's apparently what all the cool kids do. I could never get into it myself, even knowing some tricks, navigating is still painful in vim to me.

I'm also happy with the Apple keyboard. I have a Cherry MX Brown which was fine, but the noise annoyed everyone in the house and in the meetings.

Interesting.

I switched to Apple chicklet keyboard because I thought is would resolve sore wrists I had with membrane keyboard.

Then I switched to mechanical keyboard because the sore wrists was even worse with Apple flat keyboard. Same path for few of my mates.

I didn't spend that much because I don't care about aesthetic (iKBC 60 MX Brown for work and DIY 60 Kailh white with QMK for home), never went back.

I find the Apple Keyboard good enough as well. I really enjoyed the model that I used alongside my mbp of 2015.