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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

> I can’t think of a single time when I’ve ever wanted to use it

That's because you know how to type. Watch your parents or someone that doesn't type often use a keyboard, you'll notice they only ever use one finger at a time; you can't use one finger at a time with SHIFT. Caps lock doesn't make sense for someone that can type well but makes perfect sense for people that can't. oh and also people with one hand.

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For those people, we have sticky keys. On some OSs you can activate it by mashing a modifier key a bunch of times. Sticky keys solve the problem in a much better way than caps lock: you can make the key lock or you can apply it just to the next stroke, and you can use it for control / alt / command as well.

Not to sound catty, but try to tell an elderly person what StickyKeys is

I've done my share of tech support, I don't think grandma has a hard time understanding sticky keys.

nice.

I get your argument about a person with one hand, but anyone who types with one finger can easily (and usually does) use their other index finger to hold shift.

Not everyone who types with one hand has two hands.

That's pretty much the target group for the capslock key then?

Still not necc. if the shift has stickykeys behavior, which is configurable on almost any modern OS.

Learn how to use a frogpad, I use that when I was doing a lot of 3d modeling. One hand had access to the entire keyboard, the other hand never left the mouse.

For what it's worth, as someone who used to type with one finger, (And still does on occasion.) you have an entire other hand to press shift with barring a missing hand.

> oh and also people with one hand.

That's why there are two shift keys.

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