Countervailing story: the Ergodox (EZ specifically but that's less important) gave me permanent RSI in my thumbs, because it was too big for my hands, and to this day I pretty much can't use a keyboard layout that relies on lots of thumb involvement. Even just hitting the spacebar throughout the day or using my thumbs to type on a smartphone is enough to flare it up, almost a decade after I stopped using that keyboard.

YMMV, ergonomics are highly personal with respect to your body size and proportions. We didn't have the proliferation of keyboard layouts then that we do now. Perhaps if the Iris or Corne had existed then, I would still be using my thumbs for modifier keys in a 40% layout. I never got the hang of tapdance or hold modifiers.

The Atreus layout is the only one I can still use somewhat, because the thumbs are held closer to the hand rather than splayed out.

> - nearly made me cry.

> - solved my back pain.

Reminds me of the first time I got to sit in an Actually Good chair that came with a new job. My back was killing me for the first couple weeks as the decades-old knots undid themselves.

I got to relive it when I went back to crappy office chairs at my next gig.

I actually found going from non-split to split surprising easy, simply because none of my old muscle memory worked anymore, and I had never touch typed up until then, so I wasn't able to go back to the old way out of frustration. A few hours of doing touch typing drills on some free online thing, and I could type at 30wpm, and then it only took about a week of doing my usual coding, IRC chatting etc to get back up to my usual 100wpm.

Also surprising was that after I got there, I could also touch type pretty easily on a normal keyboard. But my old ad hoc 5 finger typing had somehow disappeared entirely.

Exercising and specifically lifting weights will do so much more for your back pain than any ergonomic setup ever will

> When you didn't learn to type properly

Not learning to type properly is probably the best thing you can do for your wrists when typing.

Keeping fingers on home row is very bad posture for your wrists on a normal keyboard.

Not to bag on the guy but he seems a bit obsessed over Carmack in general.

Mmmm, not a membrane keyboard. This is a membrane keyboard: https://www.the-liberator.net/site-files/retro-games/hardwar...

I have one! It's fun for retro PCs that don't have speakers or a mic, as it provides everything you need right there without having to setup the Altec Lansings.

Also LOL:

> it has the advantage of packing the best sound system I have ever come across on a keyboard

Logitech is by far the best "get shit done" PC accessory manufacturer. They work, last forever, and have options for nearly every niche there is

yep. I've tried everything from a bunch of mechanical keyboards to topre keyboards and I finally just came back to the mx keys mini, the magic keyboard mini, and the logitech mechanical mini. they just feel the best over the long term and are close enough to my laptop keyboard that it doesn't feel like I'm making a big change.

OMG thank you - as a musician, that's the first thing I think of when I see "favorite keyboard."

The only good laptop keyboards have been older MacBooks and older Thinkpads.

The only way to top that would be someone eschewing portability for a mechanical keyboard of some kind. I would totally buy that

What, did Korg release an M1 Max? How did I miss it?

DX7 had a dreadful keybed. Midi CC only up to 100 (instead of 127), wtf?!

Fatar learned a lot of lessons from Yamaha in that regard.

Looking forward to adding an Expressive E Osmose to my rig soon ..

I was using a standard/non-silent HHKB but found it a little too noisy for a quiet office. Plus I like using arrow keys and found I'd get a sore pinky with the HHKB layout.

I'm back to a cherry style board with silent tactile switches now but have half a mind to try and find a 75%ish layout with exploded arrow keys and with silent Topre switches.

Some enthusiasts have made custom PCBs for Topre and Niz switches, even columnar ergo. I've not seen the ErgoDox layout specifically, and I dunno how to source individual switches though.

There is also the XVX Whisper switch, with has a Topre-like mechanism for Hall Effect keyboards: with a magnet under the dome. You could buy pack of switches but reviews say it is mushier than Topre.

Same. I used to be on keyboard forums, looking for the holy grail. Eventually I tried Topre switches a bit more than 10 years ago and haven't ever looked back.

I'm using a HHKB Pro JP (although I've got japanese family I don't speak japanese): because the japanese version has got a narrower space bar and more modifiers. So I configured to have, for example, an "Hyper" key. Also for the space bar is narrower, the modifiers are easier to reach with the thumbs.

I decided to camp on this because my thinking went like this: the country of Japan and the language of japanese is unlikely to disappear, so it's very probable that I'll be able to buy Topre keyboards with that exact layout for a very long time.

Same thing: I cannot get into the MX switches (I own a few nice Cherry keyboard, like the elusive split Cherry MX-5000).

It's Topre and nothing else.

I’m one of those people. I loved Ergodox, switched to Moonlander but didn’t like it, tried out Voyager and stuck with it.

Voyager is not even a very ergonomic keyboard, but it’s good enough for me, I configured it so that it’s very convenient for me to use, I added some accessories to for better tilt, I’m good - my wrists don’t hurt anymore, and that was my goal

You find it strange that people have preferences? The ultimate ergonomic keyboard is the one that feels good *for you*.

I don't like the Ergodox-style keyboards myself because they're missing a row, and no amount of meta layering is going to convince me otherwise.

I know, right? I feel every keyboard warrior goes through stages where each stage imposes a "no return" point - mechanical, split, concaved. I've tried so many boards, yet these three factors invariable remain important. There are many things I dislike about my Advantage 360 - it's absolutely not suitable for travel, even taking it from the desk to the couch is a hassle; there are too many keys (the halves definitely never needed to be this big); firmware patching is wonky (I have the ZMK variant); etc.

Yet, that is the only class of boards that allow me typing without getting wrist and neck pain for 14-16 hours. Over the years I owned like a dozen boards from KinesisErgo - I started with Advantage models, then Advantage II, then I bought Freestyle for my kid, then pre-ordered 360, etc. In-between I tried Glove80, Mistel, Ergodox, Vortex Pok3r, and some others.

I am also sad that I have discovered the importance of the choosing the right switches way too late. I highly recommend getting to know your boards and the types of switches you can install on them, and then get a switch tester. Finding just the right type is absolutely worth it.

I'm big into the custom mechanical keyboard hobby (not that that makes my opinion special or anything, ha) and I definitely agree. It's funny, cus a lot of people in the hobby see the Model M as their "holy grail" keyboard. But the more modern keyboards are just so much more comfortable to type on for extended periods of time (whether they are 'ergo' keyboards or not). It's all personal preference, but I think a lot of the love for the Model M is just nostalgia.

My fave keyboard is the IBM Model M SSK. I started out with the full sized Model M, but the keypad got to be a bit too much and as I was making several geographical moves as a young person, I wanted something that saved space on my desk.

In a way, I agree with you that buckling spring keyboards are a novelty now but back then they were a revelation, and once you start using a keyboard with high tactile feedback and positive keyclick you won't want to go back.

I still have my Model M SSK, but these days I use a LoFree Flow84, which is a smoother, quieter experience. And it has absolutely the best space bar I've ever used on any keyboard.

How many other 40+ year old keyboard models do people still regularly use today? The Model-M reputation earned more than a click.

I think, to a degree, ergonomics are a complete package and sound can be part of it.

I tend to err on the side of loud-click switches (Alps/Matias, buckling spring, Gateron Melodic or Kailh Box switches lately) in part because I beat a series of late-1990s dome keyboards to death because I needed some sound to feel like a key was registering.

A family member has a light linear board basically because he wanted a Pride-exploded-on-his-desktop lightshow and it's very awkward for me to use.

It might also be that you just don’t want or need an ortholinear layout, plenty of people don’t. If you like the split design and programmability of the Moonlander but not the layout and associated relearning curve, I can recommend the UHK as a good choice.

I have an Ergodox EZ for work, and I love it for that, but for my gaming I just use a typical keyboard, I couldn't get used to it for gaming.

Yea I used the kinesis 360 for a short time but couldn't stand how cheap it felt. Such a big difference from nicer custom keyboards, and it's essentially the same price which is a shame.

Kinesis Freestyle Gaming for me. The "traditional" Freestye has a wrist pad that's made out of a material so horrible I returned the keyboard immediately. Yuck. This was years ago, maybe newer models are better? But I'm very happy with the Freestyle Gaming in general.

I bought 2 M13s (one black, one beige, the one with the builtin track point) in Seattle thrift stores in the early 2000's, one was $5 and one was $10.

At one point, other copies were both $300 plus on ebay.

Sadly the black one has an intermittent issue with some of the keys where hits are doubled, but the beige one is still a daily driver.

>discontinued

in case you don't know, there's back and made by incase. The first manufacturing run completely sold out I think, it's backordered until sep 2026. The matias is... not a good replacement, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388976

The Northgate was a great keyboard, and a company called Creative Vision Technologies briefly owned and sold keyboards under the "Avant" brand. I had one of those, it finally succumbed to some sort of electrical issues so I let it go. You can still by old Northgates and Avants on eBay, but ~$300 a pop.

No keyboard since has ever matched that level of responsiveness and tactile feel. The downside is just that it was so loud. Now that everything is open floorplans I wouldn't use one even if I still had one.

I switched from the moonlander to the glove80, and the low switches are nothing compared to the much more intuitive ergonomics.

I'm in Emacs 99% of my day, and I don't think I've ever used the function keys inside Emacs.

All my volume/brightness/etc functions are handled on a separate layer. I've got function keys on another layer as well, but I don't ever use them.

If you use function keys a lot, then you could do something like putting the function keys on one layer all on the right hand like it's a num pad and then adding a key on the left hand to switch to that layer. You could add combo-taps on your main layer to trigger the function key (e.g. press `q` and `1` at the same time to hit `f1`, `w` and `2` at the same time to send `f2`, etc.), etc. etc.

QMK gives you a lot of options to do what you want. There's also 3 keys towards the center of the keyboard on each side that I rarely hit (in fact, they're used for some layer switching some times!) that you could easy bind to function keys directly.

Note that a key can do like 4 different things depending if you tap, hold, double tap, or tap and hold if you want to get really fancy.

As a Mac user, I seldom need function keys, so I don't miss them at all on my Voyager. On Windows, X11, or Wayland, that's different of course. macOS basically pretends the function keys don't exist, and my editor of choice, Helix, doesn't use them in its default keymap either. I have them stashed away on a layer but I don't think I've ever used it.

With those things said, I don't actually use the number row on the Voyager either. I have numbers on home row in an easily-activated layer (with a resting position thumb key held down), and I _love_ it. It feels wonderful rolling across home row to type sequences of numbers. I'd probably put the function row on the same layer, shifted one row up or down, if I needed it regularly.

Layers work well for me. I know they don't for everyone, though.

My default layout has function keys as basically an "fn" key plus the appropriate number. I thought I was going to miss the dedicated keys way more than I do in practice.

If I were starting from scratch, and really had a function-key-centric workflow, I'd probably make the number keys (and - and + for F11 and F12 respectively) be tap-and-hold for that function key input.

I bounce between boards and my favorite solution so far is a layer that gives my right hand a “numpad” for the F keys. You need to make sure you can hit other modifiers trivially from that position, but I like it so much I’ve added this to boards that do have F keys and it’s now my primary way of activating them.

I use a Moonlander and regret it entirely for this reason. It would be perfect if it just had that extra row of F keys. I know there are a million ways to compensate for it but they all involve tradeoffs that I don't want to make.

I stopped working a day job that requires typing, so I can deal with the inconvenience, but my god I wish I didn't listen to the people who pooh-poohed away the lack of F keys. Not having the keys present and labeled adds all this cognitive overload when having to remember which magic combo changes layers and which keys are the F keys, while switching between windows/macOS/linux. Have to hit F2 to boot into BIOS? Good luck hitting the magic incantation in time before you miss your window of opportunity, when the keyboard doesn't show which layer you're in because it just powered up.

I like the tactile feel of it, the build quality, the ortholinear layout, and the customizability, but at this point I'd trade off the customizability for that extra row and labeled modifier keys.

I largely agree. Split, ortho/columnar, and tenting is 90% of the strain benefits. The biggest benefit from layout change (for programmers at least) is moving symbols and numbers to a layer where they share positions with alpha keys so you don’t have to extend to type them. Any benefit I could imagine from switching alpha layouts (more even utilization between left and right hand for typing prose) is mitigated by the switching cost when trying to use a normal computer.

Interesting. My experience is almost the same. But I wouldn't call the experience is poor at all. The biggest advantage is that typing feels smoother with Colemak.

The fact that just learning to touch type in any layout is what contributes to the speed is probably right. But then again, my experience is that speed is primarily a function of practice and much less of technique. I remember reading some AMAs by someone who types at 200+WPM and they mentioned that they use QWERTY and they don't touch type.

I switched to colemak, but I paired this switch with split keyboards. So qwerty is still easy to use on regular keyboards, but I'm sure I'd get super tripped up if I used qwerty on a split kb.

You have read my comment inattentively, I consider QWERTY-inspired ones exactly as weak as QWERTY.

Speed is not important in typing goals at all. What maters is ability to delegate a typing routine out of your consciousness. No peeking, no misusing pinkies, no caring about WPM, no mismatching keys from different layouts. You should always prefer to put all of your 10 fingers on the keyboard even if all you need is to type one letter, even being interrupted from sleep, because you should understand that touchtyping is faster than hunt-and-peck even in one-button case.

You either can input your password using touchtyping or not. If you have achieved touchtyping on any layout, no switching helps you to decrease cognitive hardness. Touchtyping should be done in youth, so if you are not cosplaying some idiots you should devote your brain cells to the proper layout at once.