It does mean that I can't use "ergonomic" or split hand keyboards easily, though.

I have a couple different inexpensive Aula and similar mechanical keyboards I prefer to use.

I recommend finding a good keyboard you enjoy using, but it's a bit annoying if you need to carry it around. Whatever you do, don't be afraid to try some ortholinear versions or split ones!

I sometimes like to use dictation nowadays, but I found out I tend to be much more concise when I type, compared to when I dictate (but thank god for easily available great dictation systems nowadays! [1]).

[0]: https://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil

[1]: although, dictating terminal commands or code is too much of a hassle

I know the touch typing says they're all typed by pinky, but after so many years it still doesn't feel right for me. Why is the weakest finger in charge of so many keys?

I was skeptical about the split keyboard, and living in an area that has no stores where I could try it out, I ended up buying a relatively cheap one from AliExpress. I swapped in my own switches and keycaps, and now it feels amazing to type on.

Being able to lean back on my chair while typing with each side sitting on the arm rest is amazing

Also looking into using my phone as a keyboard as a write this comment too. I don't know why I have not looked into it sooner, but it seems like a no-brainer now that I am writing this out.

http://blog.komar.be/wang-724-teardown/

Since then, it does not really matter which keyboard I use. Now I have a reddragon keyboard (Redragon K552 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, 87-Key Compact). I picked that up a while ago because it does not use much space on the table/desk I have.

For an idea of the scale, I typed about 140WPM on the HHKB and about 150WPM on the budget membranes.

These days I have a ZSA Moonlander. I adore it! I love how easy it is to program it without any software installed and it's been phenomenal to customize it to fit me perfectly.

I just changed all the switches out (in order to be quieter than my stock Cherry MX Brown switches) and replaced them with a set of Gazzew U4 switches. I'm _shocked_ at how far mechanical switches have come along since the days of Cherry dominance. They're super quiet and still have an awesome tactile feel!

[1] https://immich.home.stavros.io/share/GE_noaUx1_cayK9WDVvzutr...

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3373165.3373177

Swap Caps and Ctrl, use Emacs or vi keybindings, and save your wrist from moving to the arrow keys!

https://luma.com/hgwfl3pm

If you play any games with keyboard and mouse, you could bind some letters/numbers from the right half of the keyboard and then place the macropad on the left so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse to hit anything.

For another idea, you could bind pgup/pgdn or scroll wheel up and down for scrolling webpages, IRC backlog, etc.

Yes.

> What for?

Inputting numbers.

The number row is too wide and too offset on a staggered keyboard to really work for me. I'd be interested in trying a full-width ortholinear keyboard, but can't find any.

It's usually very fast to type "cmd-space", and then type 3-4 letters to find the macro I want.

In Visual Studio, on the suggestion of a colleague at my first job, I use Numpad + for copy, Numpad - for cut, and Numpad * for paste. (I've never managed to train my hand eye coordination to use these in any other program. Which is a bit of a shame, because they're actually pretty useful. Whichever side you mouse on, you can find some way of hitting them without much effort.)

The numpad also comes in handy sometimes for typing numbers.

My usual layout, left to right, is Magic Trackpad, tenkeyless keyboard, mouse on mousepad cut down to roughly the size of a Magic Trackpad (with a larger mousepad on hand for gaming and other precision applications).

I prefer Workman. Used to use Dvorak. Did not see much point to Colemak or its Mod DH variant by the time I was open to switching again, Workman set out to solve those issues in its original design. To anyone coming from Qwerty these days (Workman only came out in 2010), I would just recommend skipping over Dvorak and Colemak. You can find even more esoteric layouts, but Workman is in a bit of a goldilocks zone where it's available in some OSes/keyboards by default and isn't impossible to find keycaps for (often the "colevrak" kits cover it).

>Swap Caps and Ctrl

I never liked binding caps to Ctrl or Esc, but I do bind it to Compose in my OS these days. What I'd instead recommend is getting an ergonomic keyboard with a thumb cluster, like the Pinky4 or Iris, and putting your modifiers there. My Ctrl, Alt, and Super keys are all thumb keys now and even the leftmost of them is offset a similar amount to where Alt is on a traditional keyboard, so all very comfortable to press. I also have backspace, space, and enter on thumb keys.

>use Emacs or vi keybindings,

Strongly agreed, this is huge. Vi especially as you can avoid most chords, a bit like Sticky Keys in Windows, except not awful and not something you activated by accident. I spent considerable time with Spacemacs as well as evil-mode in my own config at one point. Back to (neo)vim now, but all great choices, all better than using nano or a CUA binds editor.

The matter I want to preach about tho are split ortolinear keyboards. I believe absolutely every typist should use them. Conventional keyboards are just bad from ergonomics perspective and eventually it’d have a toll on your wrists health. And many of these keyboards stores key mappings directly on the chip so no need to mess with weird mapping software.

Having said that, my split keyboard is one of the best investments I did in my life.

Dvorak + Emacs user here, by the way. In my opinion mouse use is okay, but I think a drawing tablet is better than a mouse.