What amazes me is the amount of money dumped into standard rectangular keyboards, with zero ergonomics.
If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
181–190 of 373 posts
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#182One day I'll likely be faced with making my own keyboard layout or losing the wonderful Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Delete layout I've been used to for years now on a long discontinued keyboard model (I seriously have a box of spares under the bed that I bought when they stopped being made). I've found myself adaptable to the action of many keyboards, but there's some layout features I'm very particular about.
Logitech still makes some keyboards with that distinctive large delete key, but I'm in the US, so I don't know if they have an ISO layout version of it. Example: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-keyboard-k35...
Oh yeah, the Wave. Forgot about that one because I really don't care much for curved layouts. Too many years typing on straight rows for this old man.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
$300 for the simplest keyboard...
complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. You use it for how many hours of the day if you're a programmer/engineer? Maybe it's worth spoiling yourself.
Except the bed is contributing to spine health, what is a plain non-ergonomic keyboard contributing to? Carpal Tunnel?
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is a complete no brainer to invest in optimising the IO channel between your brain and the machine Why? You'll never even double the "throughput" of that "channel", let alone improve it by an order of magnitude. And I say this as someone who wasted lots of time and money attempting exactly that before I realized that typing is not what I spend most of my time doing while programming.
It's not just about improving the bandwidth (although that is nice), the one thing I wouldn't trade that the Ergodox gives me is a very low error rate in typing. This is hard to achieve with a traditional keyboard, especially when you starting throwing special characters into the mix that require two-handed contortions. I've heard the refrain "you don't spend most of your time typing when programming" so many times i…
Agreed. That statement is one of those catty oft repeated things we are supposed to take as gospel for some reason.
Personally: I spend ALL DAY typing. Configurations, code, documentation, tutorials, arguments for doing things one way or another, user stories for work, chatting with my coworkers, running cli commands.
I see a huge difference in my productivity between myself and my peers partly due to my faster text input and editing skills.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it is a complete no brainer to invest in optimising the IO channel between your brain and the machine Why? You'll never even double the "throughput" of that "channel", let alone improve it by an order of magnitude. And I say this as someone who wasted lots of time and money attempting exactly that before I realized that typing is not what I spend most of my time doing while programming.
It's not just about improving the bandwidth (although that is nice), the one thing I wouldn't trade that the Ergodox gives me is a very low error rate in typing. This is hard to achieve with a traditional keyboard, especially when you starting throwing special characters into the mix that require two-handed contortions. I've heard the refrain "you don't spend most of your time typing when programming" so many times i…
It's not the bandwidth per se, so much it's the continuous attention cost spent on keeping that bandwidth going.
Better tactile feedback and more reliable input means I don't have to constantly multitask half a task worth of attention onto making sure the input I think I'm doing went off as intended, which makes it easier to concentrate on the main task, which reduces the build up of fatigue, which reduces the rate at which the cost of mental effort increases throughout the day.
Which is not to mention things like the chance of getting hand cramps from the additional tension there caused by interacting with a less reliable keyboard, and by the tendency to use excess input force in attempt to get strokes through more consistently.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#18610 months in with my Ultimate Hacker Keyboard, and I can confidently say that it brings me more joy than any other electronic device I have, with maybe the exception of my MBP. Before I had mild RSI here and there, but with the UHK I have zero pain, ever. But it did take a lot of learning. I spent about 3 months feeling like an idiot ( hitting keys that weren't there, forgetting which macro I'd mapped, typing an arro…
I have an UHK now and love it so much that I bring it back and forth to work everyday. Before the UHK I had a MS Sculpt and was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to get used to the UHK so I used Karabiner to set up a mod later and pretrained myself for a couple of weeks before pulling the trigger. Once I got the UHK the learning curve wasn't bad at all. For people who maybe tried a split keyboard and couldn't deal with it I would recommend the UHK since it's mostly the same as a regular keyboard.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be honest, I bought an Ergodox EZ a year or so ago and have consistently struggled to get comfortable using it. I have set up quite a few useful macros for programs I use daily like tmux as well as making it more vim-friendly (after many interations) and yet I still find it a serious chore to get past the fact that the keys feel un-naturally placed. Eventually I just give up and switch back to my laptop keyboard…
I also struggled with the otholinear layout and ended up switching to a http://www.mistelkeyboard.com/md650l-barocco/
I was looking for something close to this design, particularly with low profile switches. Thanks.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - you can afford the lower productivity (e.g: you are not a freelancer that needs a regular output) Why lower productivity? The person who created it thinks it will lower RSI therefor increase productivity.
Is RSI even that normal? I have never heard anyone talk about it in real life, only in these threads does it seem like everyone has it.
I had pretty severe carpal tunnel syndrome for about a year when I did data entry full time. What helped was improving my posture, not tensing up and slamming the keyboard at full force all day, and resting/shaking out my wrists every 15-30 minutes during extended typing.
I have a mechanical keyboard today but doubt it would have helped more than any other (much cheaper) keyboard that requires less keypress force. The problem is that squishy $5 cubicle keyboards tend to be really, really bad in that regard.
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#189I find building keyboards very relaxing (here is my work so far: https://ereign.is/objects/ ). The split orthos are very usable and comfortable after a few hours of acclimatization (I mostly use a commercial Topre board for now, I should finish designing QMK layouts that better serve my needs).
Those look badass! Reminds me of some of the ergo keyboards that I looked at in the past... only a lot more stylish.
The first one [0] reminds me of an old Learjet or Falcon 10 cockpit with the lights lit up (see [1]). I really love the look of the wires you chose, as well, with the knurled connector housing and heavy-duty threading for the cords. The Nyquist Rev. 2.1 [2] looks like its fresh off the Nostromo.
Do you do your own CNC/laser engraving or are the keys OTS?
[0]: https://ereign.is/objects/1.jpg
[1]: http://d16bsf97ryvc45.cloudfront.net/Media/2012/07/F10-sn176...
Re: If You Can't Buy the Keyboard You Want, Build It Instead
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. You use it for how many hours of the day if you're a programmer/engineer? Maybe it's worth spoiling yourself.
> complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. except it isn't a great keyboard when compared with standard keyboards, and its value proposition is absurd when taken into account that standard keyboards cost around 10€ and ergonomic keyboards by reference brands such as Microsoft go for about 50€.
I've used the €50 keyboard; it's certainly better than the €5 keyboard (at retail) that ships with most desktops, but it's still not anywhere near as good as a Kinesis or Maltron, the cost of either is less than 1‰ (so a rounding error of a rounding error) of the cost of employing me for a year, and they'll last longer than the five-year depreciation period for office equipment.