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> Who the hell decided that programmers don't need a functional ESC key or permanent function keys? I'm still amazed that there are programmers that complain a
by audunw 9y ago
> Who the hell decided that programmers don't need a functional ESC key or permanent function keys?
I'm still amazed that there are programmers that complain about this. As a programmer, I've avoided ESC and the function keys for years before the touchbar came out.
Apple has even had a built-in option in Mac OS to remap ESC to Caps Lock, for quite a while now. And considering how conservative Apple is when it comes to adding options, I think that says that I'm not alone.
The ESC/function key row is not suitable for ergonomic typing. It's simply to far away from home row. If that area is suitable for anything at all, it's for rare context-sensitive operations, so I think Apples idea was absolutely rational. Wether it's worth the cost is different discussion (for me, probably not).
The culture around keyboards is super weird if you ask me. You have whole subcultures around a near irrelevant thing like key-travel and mechanical switches (though I must admit there is a visceral satisfaction to clicking a really clicky keyswitch), yet people still stick to qwerty and typewriter-based physical layout. ErgoDox seems to be growing in popularity, so it might be changing.
- zelos 9y agoDebugging? Xcode defaults to F6/F7/F8 for step over/in/out. Many IDEs do something similar. The alternative is to map some key combination, but it's much easier to be able to hit one key instead of Ctrl-something.
- burningcore 9y ago>I'm still amazed that there are programmers that complain about this. You shouldn't be. Not sure about Mac. But all the big IDEs - MS Visual Studio, all the JetBrains products, Eclipse, Netbeans, etc use function keys in their default key bindings. True, functionkey row is not suitable for ergonomic typing, BUT it is not used for ergonomic typing. It's used for... well special functions!
- tomduncalf 9y agoI think that’s actually the key difference here - OS X apps very rarely make use of the function keys, instead preferring Cmd-letter combos (which to my mind possibly make a bit more sense as you can remember e.g. R means Refresh). That means that doing away with the function keys is probably a much smaller deal for Mac users than Windows users, as on the Mac they were pretty much just used as media keys anyway.
- bitexploder 9y agoKey travel and key response is far more than a near irrelevant thing for folks with RSI. Some people can literally cure RSI with the right keyboard that encourages the right typing habits. Maybe it is a small enough percentage of the population that it doesn't matter, but this is hacker news and we care a about a lot of strange and esoteric things here that only a small percentage of the population care about anyway. If Dell can make a 15" laptop with a full number pad Apple can find a way to have a less shitty keyboard with an escape key and maybe don't force the touch bar on everyone. It doesn't have to be a popular consumer option. You can hide it in an esoteric out of the way place for us esoteric out of the way users, but... it is ridiculous to ignore the hard core tech fan base and keyboard issues.