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Comment by jbm | Hacker News Reader

> 42 keys

It is a nice looking keyboard but do people find value in such minimal layouts?

Super minimal finger travel. I have a 34-key layout personally, and while I give up the F-keys, everything else is not very difficult to access and I really love how little my fingers move.

Having tried a few, I think the Kinesis contoured keyboards are a sweet spot. Plenty of keys, but finger movement feels really close. Keep coming back to my old Kinesis Advantages or similar custom builds.

Yea, I've got a Corne and a Kinesis Advantage2 and I mostly use the Advantage2.

If it was available earlier (and a bit cheaper) I'd have almost certainly bought the 360 and I'd probably be happier with it - I think I need a bit more width and a bit more tenting... but the Advantage2 + the Corne has completely convinced me that curved bowls are massively better than flat and I have almost no interest in spending time on flat unless strictly necessary. Ortho and stagger when split are rather clearly the correct choice, but flat just feels wrong and uncomfortable in a way that the Advantage2 never did (though it absolutely felt weird for a while when learning it).

Yes. I full time code on a corne and notice only improvements to ergonomics. Once you memorize the layers it's superior because your layers can place brackets without reaching. All those special characters we use all the time are on -- or close to -- the home row.

But there are no such improvements due to this. On a bigger keyboard you can do all the same layers, but also use those extra keys for something less frequent - it still is easier to remember a physically dedicated key position for some action than via layering

yeah, i type on a corne everyday: https://mark.stosberg.com/markstos-corne-3x5-1-keyboard-layo...

having gotten over the learning curve, i definitely prefer it over conventional keyboards, but would i recommend it to 99.9% of people? no. people who use these kinds of keyboards have either 1. extremely niche problems, or 2. find intrinsic value in novelty, aesthetics, or diy/experimentation

Also an everyday Corne user and I agree with this take but I'd also suggest that programmers do tend to have very niche problems. They have to type lots and lots of symbols that aren't super accessible on a normal keyboard.

If you're also a productivity nerd who likes keyboard shortcuts and whatnot, these types of keyboards give you (perhaps counterintuitively) a lot more freedom to experiment.

I do! Obviously you can create a 42-key layout on a larger keyboard, but reducing the key count forces you onto a layout that minimizes awkward finger travel. I can (and do) use a 42-key all day long without pain whereas MacBook Pro keyboards now will irritate me within a few hours.

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