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Comment by vijucat | Hacker News Reader

I have a Diverge 3 and I love the split aspect of it (easier on the wrists / nerves), and love the programmability (I have the keys that I use most near the home row), and I appreciate the wrist rest, but I miss the function keys' row. It has 71 keys.

I think 40% keyboards work well for gamers, but are impractical for developers, who need to access all the symbol keys ( (, {, [, etc;), and often need access to the function keys, too. Layering, having to press Fn and another key to achieve what could be a single keypress on a 101-key keyboard, just adds work. The input mechanism must be seamless so that one may focus on the actual work. The keyboard should just disappear. The much-touted keyboard.io has the same limitation.

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As a full time 40% keyboard user, I take issue with the sentiment that the form factor is impractical for development. Holding a layer modifier to access symbols on the home row is less work than moving to the far reaches of a 101 key board, and often having to hit shift as well anyway!

I wrote an article on the subject recently if you're up for having your assumptions challenged: https://callumoakley.net/posts/48-keys-are-plenty

Interesting, thanks for the article! So it looks like there are two types of people: those who don't mind moving away from the home row a bit but have just one keypress (me) vs. those who value being on the home row and don't mind the additional keypress to access layers with symbols, arrows, , etc;

I can't reach `]` without moving my hands from the home row. Nor can I reliably find it using my weakest finger without looking down. Then after I've used it, I must re-home my hands before continuing. Don't even get me started on = and +...

But on my Planck, I press both of my thumbs down in their resting positions and the home row suddenly becomes

[{( )}]

(with the round parens under my index fingers).

Can't get much more seamless than.

On keyboards where you can re-map keys, you can place symbol keys nearby?

> I press both of my thumbs down in their resting positions and the home row suddenly becomes

Three keys to type in one symbol sounds bad to me, but it sounds like it works just fine for you!

Also have Diverge 3, using it with Colemak-dh layout. Took me like 6 months to fully adapt, but man it's so much better now. Now it's way easier to reach most dev-related symbols on second Fn layer which is mapped on right thumb key block.

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