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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

One thing I have never been able to understand about split keyboard designs is why they don't put the characters on the split ("Y/T G/H V/B/N") on _both_ sides of the keyboard. I mean, are key caps a high cost? There's a correct way to type, but it doesn't need to be so strict. Sometimes (often) the natural use of a keyboard (like holding down a control character for a sequence of keys) makes it so that we type on the wrong side because one hand is badly out of position.

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This keyboard, and the Erdogox EZ I bought a month ago are reprogrammable! There's a slick web UI that can generate firmware for you so you can reflash a keyboard's firmware.

You can also download the source code of your keyboard;s layout, program it and flash it yourself. It's called QMK

Here's mine: https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/ergodox-ez/layouts/64YXl/la...

Last but not least, on this keyboard and most mechanical keyboards you have the ability to change keycaps to whatever you want.

I'm a touch typist, so i switched to blank keycaps https://pimpmykeyboard.com/dcs-blank-keysets/

But the keys in the middle are differently sized; there are two of them for the three rows of keys. You can reprogram, but you can't just add a regular "Y" key on the left and a "T" key on the right that are where they are supposed to be.

The hardware is open; you can build or modify the keys as you please. There a number of variants with different key layouts: https://deskthority.net/wiki/ErgoDox

There's basically two directions that people are going... Splits with lots of keys so you can have keys dedicated to whatever you want or going more and more minimalist.

The minimalism idea is that since these are all programmable, we can design them to require much less finger/hand movement by taking more advantage of layers, various strategies of key activation, key layouts, etc.

There's an active Discord for the whole genre of the smaller, 40% keyboards.

Yeah when I tried split keyboards I found the exact same problem. I don't touch type perfectly using the "official" method. I press B with both hands.

We can't be the only ones surely? It's such an obvious problem and they all get it wrong.

This is one of the two major issues I had with my last split keyboard. I also found that I orient myself by the edge of the keyboard, so an extra row of keys on the left side really throws me off.

This keyboard seems to solve both of those problems so I may take the plunge and buy one.

When I first bought a split keyboard, I found that I was stretching far too much to reach the "Y" key with my left hand. I'm grateful for the strict layout so that I type more ergonomically.

Also keycap set makers generally just include one of every key.

You can do that. I have 123456 on the left of my ErgoDox and 567890 on the right.

The keyboard is programmable using a visual editor or C code: https://github.com/dharmab/ergodox

The keyboard layouts are entirely customizable, so you could configure the keys to the right of T and left of Y to be the other one.

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