Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

This is a rabbit hole that I spent considerate amount of time and money and I’d like to warn some of those who are interested into going in.

> Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right? ;-)

With this article sentence I wholeheartedly stand. It’s important to know and optimize tools you’re using most of waking time. Keyboard promises improvement both health and performance wise. Same with layout. Yet both unorthodox keyboards and layouts are considerate investments. Even more so if they are customizable. And it might be possible that they’ll never pay off.

I had situations that match common theme: I’m heavily focused on a problem. I’m coding away and that at some point I stumble and fall. I can’t remember combination for some shortcut I’ve been using in ages. Instead of working furiously on the problem I’m solving “where is the key” problem now. The other situation is the stressful one. I found out that under situations that stress me I forgot complex customizations. Keyboard layouts? They don’t work.

This get amplified if you have multiple keyboards to work with. I’ve used Dvorak for more then a year - didn’t stick. Split keyboards with standard layout - same. Non orthodox keyboards - even after more than year of using it didn’t work. For keyboard.io I went so far that I got multiple ones to try to avoid “switch fatigue” and ended giving them out.

Right now I’m using standard full size low key keyboard with numpad and additional F-keys for bindings. It works, has low latency (latency IS an issue with many keyboards), my hands don’t get tired because there is almost non pressure required (and I type a lot while getting older every day) and that’s the best keyboard I have. Right now I’m considering actually getting rid of tenkeyless keyboard for my gaming pc because lack of keys and all those combos to get to F-s just annoys me when I want to script something. It simply puts a problem in front of me that I didn’t intend to solve.

Craftsman has to care for their tools. I agree. But choosing battles is important too.

I tried to love mechanical keyboards, I really did. I think I romanticized it too much. Maybe it was a form of procrastination ("I'm sure I'll finally stop slacking off when I have the right keyboard!"). In the end however, hundreds of dollars later, no matter what I tried I always came back to Logitech MX Keys. It's low profile, wireless and pleasant to type on. The only mechanical keyboard I think came close to a daily driver, that I still have, is Keychron K1. That's probably because of it's low profile keys. Other than that I sold all others and kinda gave up.

That of course doesn't mean I shit on the whole keyboard industry. I can appreciate a wonderful, thoughtful design that's tailored to someone's specific need. However, turns out that in that particular area I'm a basic bitch :P

Logitech MX Keys user here as well. It's an excellent keyboard... And I dabbled in lots of mechanical keyboards as well. The ability to switch between 3 computers is also brilliant. The keyboard looks mature and professional, which somewhat matters to me too.

> Craftsman has to care for their tools. I agree.

Except for the part that programmers spend far more time reading than writing.

An ajustable monitor and a good chair payoff way more than an expensive keyboard.

I still don't get the keyboard hype.

It depends a lot on where you work I've found. I recently had the chance to experience a team where they were given the full implementation logic by a product team, and your job was to turn it from business logic to code almost 1:1. I spent nearly all my time writing and testing, which was an interesting change.

Someone here does not Vim

You're right statistically, but think back to what your most "productive" moments of your developer career involved.

It was probably typing furiously. Maybe not a constant dictation stream 150+WPM, but it was surges of input in response to a creative flow in your mind.

Call me cheap or stinky, but I tend to invest on stuff I use on a regular basis.

Buying stuff for a one off ocasion when it might become handy, isn't my philosophy.

Do you read code while sitting on your hands? Or do you perhaps print out code before reading it?

When I read code, it's not a passive activity. I'm navigating and searching. Sometimes I bring up external documentation. In short, I'm interacting with my computer. For me, reading code requires typing.

> When I read code, it's not a passive activity.

Reading is passive, whether you like it or not.

> I'm navigating and searching. Sometimes I bring up external documentation.

If you spend as much time navigating as reading or analysing you have an organization problem.

> In short, I'm interacting with my computer. For me, reading code requires typing.

I can concede that when debugging one must press keys to make the ide progress through code however I find spending $100 to comfortably press a key every few seconds wasteful.

Managers, on the other hand, might benefit of good keyboards if they spend most of their time writing emails back to back.

I wonder if there's ever been a study to determine how much the advent of a second standard computer monitor in (developers / accountants / lawyers) toolkits reduced the amount of paper waste generated by corporations each year.

I never understood the trend of keyboards without numpad, F-keys or even arrows. Sure, it's nice if you carry your keyboard in your backpack, but on a desk I think it's more useful to have those keys.

Non technical people don’t need most of those keys, kind of how non car mechanics generally don’t need pneumatic tools.

I’d never buy a keyboard without them but the trend is logical.

> Non technical people don’t need most of those keys

I disagree. A numpad can be nice to have if you have to input lots of numbers, or use a calculator app. I often use the END-key when editing text to jump to the end of a line, similarly for POS1. So IMO this has not so much to do with being technical or not.

A numpad is one thing as it's visually obvious, but the End key? Lots of people don't even know about ctrl+w to close window or ctrl+t to create new tab in browser. The End key is advanced black magic.

Thanks, I didn't know about ctrl+w

For anyone else like me who might not know all the shortcuts, ctrl+l takes your mouse to the url bar! This changed everything for me when I learnt this, ctrl+w is great too!

I have had to use excel Ona windows system a fair bit in recent past and the end key sees a lot of use inside excel. It took me a fair bit of time to get used to my laptop’s fn+arrow key combo to get end to work on excel for me. On the mac ctrl+a and ctrl+e so the job of home and better for me as that also works on the terminal.

My daily driver keyboard is the older Apple wireless keyboard. There one that uses the AA battery. Mainly because this has the exact same layout as my MacBook Pro. This keyboard plus the trackpad works great for me. I don’t understand why Apple did not revert to the inverted arrow keys on the external keyboard. Now there is no way to get the same exact layout on a MacBook Pro and with an external keyboard from Apple.

I work with some software that requires the use of the break key. Quite painful on a laptop keyboard without it.

> Non technical people don’t need most of those keys

But... if you're non-technical, then considering you may encounter a situation where you need to use the keys (e.g. "press ctrl+alt+delete"), choosing a keyboard where it's more complicated to press those keys seems a weird choice.

I think the people who opt for small keyboards are more likely to be keyboard-enthusiastic, and go for e.g. vim or emacs as their main text editors.

The problem with numpad is, that it is usually on between your keyboard and mouse so it is more comfortable for me to just remove it entirely. But I think I would like to have it on left side of my keyboard.

Oh right, as a left-handed person I always forget this totally valid point :D

When using a mouse to the right of the keyboard, a narrower keyboard results in a more natural hand position.

It also helps when you need desk space for things other than computer use, but I admit that benefit is marginal.

You can have the numpad on the left, but I rarely saw keyboards like that. I saw some odd "left-handed" rubber dome keyboards, but that's it. You can also have a distinct numpad and put it anywhere.

This is why I use TKLs. I use a separate Leopold mechanical numpad placed on the left, so that the home row keys are more or less centered in my keyboard tray and under my monitor.

Also much nicer for playing Civ and other games that don't use WASD for camera control.

There are keyboards where you have (programmable) layers. Moving your hand is very inefficient compared to just pressing a layer key with then one hand and then using keys in the home row (or WASD style) as cursor keys. Similar for numpad or F-keys. The main point is not necessarily to have a smaller keyboard to carry around, but rather to minimize hand movement.

Why would it be inefficient? This claim needs backup, because I experience the opposite.

It depends on your use case, and how you have your keys and layers mapped.

Back when I used a 60% and was working in a physical office, I had mapped arrows to Fn + [i, j, k, l]. This allowed me to barely move my right hand, at the cost of holding some other key with my left pinky. Overall, my wrists barely had to move.

As someone who uses a 60% keyboard that is without numpad, F-keys or arrows I can say that it actually isn't really more useful for me. I'm actually looking to switch to a 40%. But I can wholly understand your surprise - I was surprised too and my first mechanical keyboard was a G80-3000 - a warship of a keyboard, only comparable to the Model M in size.

I think this video[0] is a great introduction why people who don't take their laptops around enjoy using tiny keyboards.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGXZ1ReU54

Embedded keypads are fairly nice and at the top of the slippery slope.

I never used to use the numpad layout, now I do but on shifted keys and can also use it on my Macbooks and other small keyboards.

(Note, a lot of the keyboard community stuff seems to assume you're going to use one specific hardware keyboard. I do have a bunch of odd keyboards, but I mostly use software to remap the keys rather than firmware, so I can be consistent across keyboards).

Maybe if I was plugging into more weird computers I'd need to bake it in to the keyvoard device, but at the moment software has been good enough for everything I need).

I'm happy we have options now. Personally I prefer 75% as I missed the function row from different boards, but others have differing tastes. Even if I hate numpads, and especially refuse to buy an off-centered laptop with one, others do prefer it. I find it very common in the country I'm in as the QWERTY equivalent here is also bad and puts letters over the number row with no Arabic numerals on any layer (despite being the default number style) so it's quicker to pop over to a number pad than it is to switch to an English layouts for Arabic numerals (though arguable the standard layout should change).

Arabic numerals you mean. Curious: what alternative numerals do they have in your country?

Oops! Yes, Arabic numerals.

The number row is full of characters, and the number row when shift is help become the Thai numbers. The numbers are basically only used in formal settings, the default layout has no access to Arabic.

Hmm, I never used the numpad, so losing it is no sacrifice.

Now I just have a separate calculator for whatever I’d do with the numpad.

The only time I use the numpad is when I'm playing Dwarf Fortress, and that too will change after the forthcoming GUI update. I've been developing software using vi and the CLI for well over 40 years; I want my desk space back so I can move my notepad and coffee cup closer.

The problem tends to be in finding commercially-made backlit clicky keyboards without a numpad.

Can I recommend ignoring the fact that keypad is.. well keypad and treat it as additional X keys to bind?

I have binds that directly open browser, Emacs, terminal and even IM so that I don't have to use mouse. Some are more macroable, e.g. I had a job where I had to retype things from images (imagine the cost effectiveness), but because I'm lazy type I made a macro under a key that would screenshot -> OCR, key next to it was opening target app.

The size of the spacebar on a standard keyboard takes up the space of 6 keys; but people will push the spacebar in the same place. It's nicer for the thumb to be able to access more keys, and nicer to not need to rely on the pinky finger for so many keys.

I think most keyboards which give the thumb more keys also follow this trend of taking away the numpad, F-keys, arrows; often even the number-row as well. (Maybe just my bias, but I think most keyboards with more thumbkeys are symmetrical, too).

While there's a trade-off "moving hand to a greater number of keys" against "complexity, like layering".. I think the small keyboards make more efficient use of the hands compared to standard keyboards. -- My guess is that people who try designs with more thumb keys then think layering is pretty neat.

Yes. Classical keyboards are inefficient in so many ways.

Consider that thumb is responsible for 50% of hand function [1]. And we use it to press only one button - the space bar. While pinky is the weakest finger andd we use it for the greatest number of keys...

[1] https://musculoskeletalkey.com/restoration-of-thumb-function...

Not sure about other people's experiences, but to me the thumb isn't that useful as a typing digit because it can't arch. Multi-row thumb clusters are useless to me because I can't press the upper rows with my thumb without pressing the lower row as well.

To me, a "thumb cluster" should be just a single row of 1.5u keys. Any secondary rows above those aren't reachable by thumb, so they rarely get used, and therefore might as well be removed.

Maybe others have a different experience, but I still use my thumb mainly to press the space bar and enter keys. All other thumb keys are modifiers and layer switches.

As a dev who traditionally has used a Mac (and prefers mnemonic key shortcuts even on other platforms), the F-Keys get very little traffic. For those a layer is good enough, because most of the time they’re collecting dust.

Numpads can be nice in certain situations, but the vast majority of the time they also get little usage from me. For the times when I do need one, I have a discrete numpad (KBDPad MKII) which I can place freely on my desk (so it’s not robbing me of mouse space) and tuck away in a drawer when it’s not needed. Best of both worlds.

Because it's far more comfortable (and arguably ergonomic) to not have to move your hands 6 miles to reach the F-keys or numpad? Or to have your mouse so far away from your home position in the alphas because of the numpad and nav cluster? It's also very easy to have small keyboards that still retain arrows if you can't cross that bridge, even with 40%'s. And with a little bit of effort to customize your layers you could easily reach a numpad and all your function keys by barely needing to move your hands.

The numpad is just on the wrong side for keyboard+mouse work.

Having a numpad would force me to have the mouse further right by about 10cm. It's already a bit unconformable due to being on a weird angle for my arm, those 10cm make a difference if you sit on the computer all day.

Also, it simply takes up desk space. If I don't need it, why have it?

When I’ve had keyboards with numpads, I never used them. Unless one is entering long strings of numbers, the top row is a much easier. I do need arrow keys for navigation while reading, though.

> Right now I’m considering actually getting rid of tenkeyless keyboard for my gaming pc because lack of keys and all those combos to get to F-s just annoys me when I want to script something.

Tenkeyless are supposed to have function keys - they only lack the numpad cluster. Sounds like you went down to a 65% or so?

Yes, you're absolutely right! Forgot the name. That's 65% keyboard that I have.

> Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right? ;-)

Jack White (of White Stripes) makes and plays a guitar with a bottle, a board, a string, and a pickup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_F7aiOvdwE

That's a variant of a diddley bow guitar (there are other names, too). There's a larger variety that goes by a bunch of names that you lean against a wall to play. Traditionally, you'd source the wire from a worn-out broom. It was the first instrument for a lot of early blues guitarists. (obviously, the old-school versions don't have electric pick-ups, but this is otherwise pretty much a standard build for one)

I've recently made the switch to Colemak on an ortholinear split keyboard. It's different enough that I can switch back to qwerty on a standard keyboard without my brain getting too confused, but Colemak is similar enough that I was able to learn it relatively quickly. An added bonus, learning a new layout actually made me a better qwerty typist on standard keyboards, even if I'm a little slower now when I switch back, I've noticed I do a lot less reaching and moving off the home row.

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