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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely don’t get what the big deal about function keys are. I never used them heavily, even on external keyboards. I actually transitioned to external keyboards that don’t have them, to save space.

The only key that’s useful on that top row is escape, IMHO. They should make that a key. Everything else is low utility.

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Maybe your particular development environment(s) don't use function keys, but I find function keys indispensable when debugging. Most debuggers I use have the function keys mapped for step-over, step-out, and step-into.

The editors and IDEs I use also generally use the function keys for code-search, goto-defintion, and symbol-rename.

For me (and I suspect many others), the lack of tactile function keys is a productivity hit.

My two development environments have been Emacs and IntelliJ. The latter does depend on function keys for the actions you’re describing, but I’ve found it utterly impossible to memorize them. There’s no mnemonic available for F keys; so remember which is step over and which is step in just does not stick. I ended up rebinding those long before the touchbar arrived.

This is also why I miss my f keys.

"Low" is the right idea for me.

When I buy (or build) a kb, I have the expectation to be able to tell it how to operate; that's why I needed it, after all. I find it tedious to remap lots of keybindings (was super+... global? shit.) when I can simply assign 24-48 non-conflicting commands to function keys.

Some map to scripts, others to specific actions in the tools I use, some are used to turn on cameras, switch users, chance resolutions, pull all logs, push commands to restart devices in VMs or bring up or take down containers, start or stop services, reset PCI or storage devices, or semi-automate git. It's really whatever I want to press a button and make happen. It was much worse when I first got clever with udev and dbus years and years ago.

I've always hated clicking and menu-hunting. If I know what I want to do, I don't want to wade through someone else's idea of UX to get to it.

Abjure the cruft. Embrace Function.

> I have the expectation to be able to tell it how to operate

This isn’t a reasonable expectation! Use the product as it’s designed! Work with it not against it!

> I find it tedious to remap lots of keybindings

Well don’t do this then. Why make things so complicated and custom?

I mean, you can add your own things to the Touch Bar for such tasks, but you’re already pushing the limits of any laptop keyboard. At that point you’re better off using something with programmable firmware, not the built in.

"Everything else is low utility." - says who? I can't imagine working without function keys.

Says me. This is a personal observation about how I use my keyboards.

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