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Comment by banana_giraffe | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'm always curious about, especially with some of the layouts of keyboards with multiple "layers" to accomplish things:

Do people using these keyboards as their daily driver have trouble adapting to normal keyboards they need to use from time to time.

I suppose I could try one and find out if it's an issue for me, but I'd be worried I get deep into this rabbit hole only to find I'm useless if I have to work on something on some other machine.

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It takes me about a minute to recalibrate for a different keyboard, although I'm occasionally making typos for another 30-ish minutes (nothing tragic - most often happens when I reach for a somewhat rare key, like ~, `, =, +, etc).

So for me at least it's pretty quick. Having radically different keyboard layouts is actually helpful because it's really clear (to your muscle memory) that you're doing something very different.

I use the ErgoDox that I built from plans I found online, a MS Natural Ergonomic 4000, my laptop keyboard, and rectangular Dell keyboards for random computers at work.

If you've got the time/money and it looks interesting I'd encourage you to try it. If it works out you'll be happy, and if doesn't you'll at least know that it doesn't work for you. But hey, it's your choice, for sure :)

Fair enough. I realized shortly after I posted this that I can use my laptop now without much trouble, despite it's idiotic placement of the right shift key that originally made me debate returning it.

I'd probably adapt in a similar fashion. I guess I'm off to keyboard shopping now.

I thought I would have trouble switching between my Kyria and laptop but that didn't end up being the case. I'll miss hit a few of the weirder key placements before my brain switches over but it happens pretty quickly.

An unexpected side effect is I actually type a lot better on my laptop's keyboard now because the Kyria encouraged me to use all of my fingers (my ring fingers were almost never used before). I don't type noticeably faster, just much more comfortably.

The use all the fingers thing is real! I think I'm still faster with my normal laptop keyboard than I am with my splits after years with them, but I like the splits more.

I use a split keyboard with custom layers and find it fine to use a normal keyboard such as when on the laptop directly. They seem to activate different modes in my brain somehow.

I have much bigger problems switching between dvorak and qwerty on either keyboard, to the point where I'm considering properly relearning qwerty despite being fluent in dvorak over a decade.

I regularly transition from Thinkpad/laptop and 60-75% standard boards to a 60% split Ultimate Hacking Keyboard, 40% ortholinear planck, and split planck (Let's Split). The only thing that ever messed me up was using split spacebars, where one thumb maps to something besides space. I end up being confused when my less dominant thumb doesn't activate the keypress on a regular spacebar. :\ Hard to overcome the muscle memory, so I've sworn off of split spacebars unless I change all my boards to split space. Which is impossible for laptops.

Aside from that, transitioning takes no more than half a minute for it to feel natural again.

I've been on a very layer/hold-tap heavy vertically staggered Iris for a long time, and a Let's Split before. Touching my macbook's internal keyboard just rewires me to its layout. The way bigger thing is when I use someone else's computer and they haven't mapped Caps-Lock to control or set up emacs option shortcuts, or space-cadet shift/parentheses. Those are all changes I've made to my internal keyboard so my muscle memory is there. The external keyboard is so different that it really doesn't affect it.

I had to abandon using a totally different layout on my mech keyboard, as I do have to use other keyboards for short stints. I spent a few weeks trying out Workman and Norman layouts, which was interesting but to annoying to switch forwards and back to Qwerty.

Now my only issue is that I accidentally hit caps-lock a lot on other keyboards as that is mapped as backspace normally, but otherwise still fast and accurate.

I use an ergodox at home and the macbook keyboard at work. I don't really have any issues these days. What does stuff me up for a while is when I remap a key on the ergodox it takes a while to stop hitting the wrong key but I guess the macbook keyboard is so different that its basically a totally different thing to my brain like how typing on a phone is.

My ErgoDox layout has a few keys in radically different places, such as -, =, and `.

I do find that I get those wrong a bit when I switch back to the laptop.

Oddly, never a problem with tab and return, the main thumb keys (besides space, which doesn't change), although I really miss "delete back one word" which is my fourth large thumb key. Alt-backspace is just not the same.

I treat it as a different "instrument". I explicitly chose to use the Norman layout on my ergodox to further distinguish it from my laptop keyboard (which before covid-19 I had to use a lot).

See https://www.metasnake.com/blog/what-i-use.html

As long as you flash a sane layout to the controller it's not very hard unless it's a very small keyboard. 40% keyboards like the Planck are a bit harder because you lose the number row, but anything bigger isn't a big issue.

Switching back to a normal staggered layout doesn't take long for me, but I wouldn't like doing it every day.

It takes a minute for me when I switch back to normal keyboards. It is definitely not seamless for me.

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