What started as a joke a few years ago has actually turned into really good signal. I've found that the engineers who care enough to invest in keyboards like this spend a lot of time investing in their tooling and are extremely productive.
Causation or correlation?
This is often more about enjoying the process of optimising than wanting to be productive overall. Some may spend a lot of time reading Hacker News to "keep up with new tools" and clipping their productivity bonsai tree at the deteriment of actually getting work done. They may be the type to spend weeks optimising a command that is run once a year. They may obsess over pointless details that don't matter.
I've been doing this kinesis mod https://github.com/dcpedit/pillzmod, and have a working solenoid wired up https://github.com/dcpedit/taptap. (I recommend checking out https://dcpedit.com/keyboards/ if you have time).
I'm pretty busy, but I've tried to find 2/3 hours a month to progress on it, and keyboards feel like the type of "investment in my craft" that is worth that kind of time for me.
I think (1) is true. Whereas, (2) may be less so.
Or at least, "smart but unproductive" is also a class. :) (And I'm sure there are those who have had bad experiences working with such people).
I suppose using a keyboard like this is an expensive signal. As in.. it's fairly easy to buy a typical mechanical keyboard, but more difficult to get one of these small split keyboards. -- But I think this is just "interested in technical excellence", which is somewhat different than "highly productive".
;) As for these keyboards? The most pragmatic & superior tooling part isn't the "36-key keyboard" so much as "each thumb has 2-3 keys" each. That's what allows these keyboards to expressively bring the full functionality of the keyboard to within reach of the hands on home row.
See my own keyboard layouts for inspiration:
https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/11/26/the_current_cybe...
I think it's good if layout enthusiasts want to use as few as keys as each finds practical. -- I think a good keyboard will support layouts that bring the full functionality of the keyboards to within the hands on home row for two-handed typing (as well as support mouse + keyboard functionality).
But .. I think that the keyboard is physically better off with fewer keys is just fashion amongst enthusiasts.
Smart but unproductive is a class. We've all had experiences with those types of engineers. I think startups generally weed them out though. It's hard to survive at a startup without being productive. I probably should have put that as a disclaimer up front.
You can get premade keyboards in this layout for about $150. The Kinesis 360 mentioned earlier in the article is $400-500.
Decide for yourself how pricey "learning these things exist" and "making a custom DIY one is in terms of both resources and time.
In terms of monetary cost, the DIY ones can be quite cheap. -- But it's still going to be more expensive & effort intensive compared to just getting a typical mechanical keyboard.