Hacker News Reader

Comment by tcbasche | Hacker News Reader

Just got a split keyboard, so mainly trying to unlearn bad typing habits :)

Wow that's really cool how far they have taken it. I always thought they just need a keyboard with 10 keys, but that might be a bit difficult to learn. Now I am thinking it might be worth building, just for the fun of it.

What did you get? What do you recommend?

I'd have to relearn typing, since i have terrible typing habits. Though, the idea is curious for me.

For a split that isn’t too wild, try an Alice layout from Switchcouture. I’ve been using one for about 6 months and it’s amazing. Else try Kyria from splitkb. Had that for about 4 months and it’s so nice to type on. For one with numbers, you can get a Lily58.

It took me about a month to get up to speed on the Kyria but just a few days on the Alice.

I went all out crazy and got a Moonlander[1]. I love it. It took maybe a week or two of daily usage (an hour or so - writing code and doing the training exercises that they recommend via their online tool) for me to get back to feeling comfortable using it.

I feel like I could type nonstop for hours without my wrists or back getting sore. Having the ability to configure absolutely everything also really boosts productivity. I do a lot of Python development so I've got shortcut keys to run the linting tools, auto-formatting etc. in Pycharm.

However I had serious buyer's remorse once I started using it; I felt like I had to start typing all over again and it's a bit of an investment to get productive again. I guess like trying a new IDE.

[1] https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

Oh boy, i was looking into that earlier. I'm terrified that i won't be able to learn it, since i have abysmal typing habits. Frankly i've never enjoyed using my non-dominant fingers.

Nevertheless i get a lot of tension in my shoulders when programming for hours on end. The moonlander is seriously tempting.

Cool ! never heard of those until you mentioned. why is regular keyboard bad?

This will help understand that a lot...

https://youtu.be/SkNGxM4LRKQ

Not that regular keyboards are bad necessarily, but given I spend many hours in a day typing in a position that isn't exactly great on my posture or wrists I figured it might be time to make an investment for my future self (mainly just for good ergonomics)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com