8 ms·

Still baffled by the amount of people rocking a 60% keyboard. The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. I mean its tiny and c

Still baffled by the amount of people rocking a 60% keyboard. The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. I mean its tiny and cool at all, but unless you're actively moving from place to place with it you're sacrificing a lot of typing convenience for nothing (other than aesthetics I guess). You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key for a LOT That varies quite a bit between individuals. Doing native mobile dev work under macOS, I can count the number of times I need an F-key in an entire month on a single hand. They don't get used anywhere near enough to need their own row. That said the presence of an F-row doesn't bother me — it's not as if they're hurting anything by being there — but there are no keyboards with both an F-row and my preferred layout (the HHKB/Tsangan variant of 60%) so few of my keyboards have F-rows.
- tkk23 4y ago
  How do you debug? Do you entirely use the mouse to step through code?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    I'm not frequently stepping through code, so yes. Pause/Continue/Continue to Current Line have more maclike mnemonic key shortcuts and if I start using the others more, they can be remapped to more maclike shortcuts pretty easily.
- Descon 4y ago
  Shift + f6 in jetbrains products to rename is one of my most used shortcuts.
  - simooooo 4y ago
    I’ve always had friction renaming files in rider. Never would have thought of that shortcut
- sylens 4y ago
  For me, it's less about the function keys and more about separating Escape from the ~/` key. I tried a 65% board once and having to use a modifier key to access those symbols drove me nuts.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    This is one of the reasons why I like the HHKB/Tsangan variant of ANSI 60/65% in particular: it has a dedicated ~/` key[0]. [0]: https://hhkb.io/layout/ https://hhkb.io/layout/
alxlu 4y ago
I think most people just use a layer for the F keys. It also means their fingers don’t need to travel as far to hit them.
rgoulter 4y ago
> You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes. I'd put it the other way: if you have a keyboard where all your thumb can do is press the spacebar, you're much more limited compared to if each thumb can hit 2-3 keys. With keyboards with 2-3 thumb keys each, suddenly it's possible to use layers to bring many keys to within easy reach of the hand. -- On a standard keyboard, you'd either have to reach or move your hand to hit the ` key; whereas with layers, no hand movement/stretching is required. Layering trades-off hand movement / stretching, at the cost of being more complicated to use. (Not having to stretch your fingers is an increase in comfort). The only real downside to small-keyboards-with-thumbkeys I've experienced is for one-hand-on-keyboard usage; e.g. FPS games pretty much need to have a number row. Though, I could do CAD okay without a number row (e.g. by using a numpad layer).
- majormajor 4y ago
  I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. One, I already have muscle memory for existing keyboard bindings to F keys and the existing locations. Two, I have multiple devices, and I can't drop new spacebar replacements onto the mobile ones. Why optimize for just the desk? I like to move around to change things up sometimes. (I do take advantage of things when I'm at the desk by having a mechanical keyboard... but it's a kinesis with more keys than a laptop, not fewer.)
  - airstrike 4y ago
    > I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. Here's a third reason, based on personal experience (n=1): chording actually creates more strain on your hand/wrists than single keystrokes
    - laserlight 4y ago
      QMK’s One Shot Keys/Layers is a solution [0]. [0] https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys
bitwize 4y ago
Making your own split ergonomic woodgrain keyboard is a hacker rite of passage, like forging your own lightsaber. And you do use vim, right, or at least VSCode in vim mode? What do you need f keys for?
anikom15 4y ago
It could be a generational thing. I think people like me who started on DOS are more likely to want full keyboards, while the younger people are used to laptops and never became accustomed to using function keys. Also, when GUIs happened the function keys turned into a second class citizen as functionality was brought to the toolbar. Most kids never use F keys now because they never had to. For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I think the platform one grew up on makes a difference too. People from a Mac background generally won't be as inclined towards F-keys, since Mac OS instead prefers mnemonic shortcuts (e.g. ⌘R instead of F5 for Refresh). This is the case for me. I grew up with Macs with full keyboards through the 90s and early 00s, but the Fkeys rarely got used and so they don't get much traffic from me now either.
- aliqot 4y ago
  I started on DOS and early Linux. F-keys absolutely make sense. I never incorporated home, end, page up/down into my flows. Essentially anything to the right of the arrow keys has no use in my life except SysRq and delete. The keyboards I liked best had the large backwards east asian mcnugget style enter key. These days I use an ergodox. Ortholinear is meh, but everything else about it is great.
- least 4y ago
  > For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort. The mouse, the navigation cluster, and the number pad all require you to remove your hands from the home keys position in order to use them. Many of these smaller layout keyboards facilitate accessing these and the function keys under layers. I have several of these layer toggles on alpha keys, including the ones on the home row. The question then is does the chorded key offer more utility than a discrete physical one but requires you to move your arms away from home position? I think in many cases the answer is yes, it does, and it's not simply about aesthetics. It's more efficient keyboarding in most circumstances. Its weakness of course is in situations where accessing keys is time sensitive. The most obvious case where chording is strictly worse than discrete keys is gaming, where you need to be able to press various buttons quickly and often in very quick succession. In most other standard computing tasks where you're primarily typing, that isn't a meaningful consideration.
ge96 4y ago
65/68% gang I need the arrow keys
nine_k 4y ago
With a keyboard firmware like QMK, you just put everything to layers, and don't move your wrists. It's actually faster than reaching to a distant separate F-key and then.back to the home row, properly aligned.
robluxus 4y ago
My main issue with 60% are the lack of arrow keys. I haven't used F-keys for years (I do use the media keys on the F-row every once in a while) but my muscle memory needs dedicated arrow keys.
- forrestthewoods 4y ago
  I don’t need _all_ the arrow keys. Just a few. F5 for refresh. F10/F11 for step debugging. F12 for goto definition.
  - sph 4y ago
    Which arrow keys out of four you don't need?
    - maccard 4y ago
      I use 0/4 as I use vim bindings on all my editors, but the numpad and F keys are worth having a full size keyboard for.
    - forrestthewoods 4y ago
      Ha. I meant function keys.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  Would be nice to have an easy interface experience to set the F keys as radio buttons or dockbar icons, one of the F keys will allow ambidextrous arrow keys, on the left-hand "wasd" and on the right-hand "hjkl". I want to blend emacs/vi muscle memory.
- granra 4y ago
  On my 60% keyboard I have set caps lock as a fn key where holding that down and any of the WASD keys gives me arrow keys. I use my pinky to hold down the caps lock key and the others to navigate the arrow keys and I can do all of it with my left hand. Similarly I have media keys mapped on the same function layer.
zppln 4y ago
I don't understand how people can live without a numpad. I feel so much more comfortable typing numbers on one compared to using the top row.
tomjen3 4y ago
I want a keyboard with the number pad on the left side. My mouse needs to the on the right side for my hand, and the number pad on the left side means I have to move my hand a lot less to use the mouse. Given that no such keyboards exists, a moveable number pad is the second best option.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  They do exust but they're. For some reason they are kbown as "southpaw" keyboards. Here's one that I really wanted, but I couldn't justify the outrageous price. https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-buy https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-...
aequitas 4y ago
> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. This depends on your platform. On macOS, almost all keyboard shortcuts are centred around the cmd/apple key next to the spacebar (where alt would be on a non-mac keyboard) and an alphanumeric key. F-keys are hardly used and if they do, you know you're likely dealing with a an app ported from Linux or Windows or which is cross-platform. It's personal preference of course, but I like my shortcuts this way as I just have to thumb the cmd key and press any other key within reach, instead of having to stretch to f-keys (cmd+q vs alt+f4) or use any of the other fingers to use the ctrl key for copy pasting (cmd+c vs ctrl+c). I use the small Apple keyboard as a daily driver on my desktop instead of the full version because it has the exact same layout as the keyboard on my laptop. Which is great as I don't have to built muscle memory for 2 layouts. Of course you are missing dedicated home/end/page keys. But the fn button along with the arrow keys make up for that (also cmd/opt + arrow keys often works better for navigating anyways as they are aware of paragraphs, line endings etc).
gabrielhidasy 4y ago
I honestly feel it's easier to type fn (caps and \ when hold in my board) + numbers for f-keys than to use dedicated ones. Now 40%, that's too little keys, a number row is important

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key for a LOT That varies quite a bit between individuals. Doing native mobile dev work under macOS, I can count the number of times I need an F-key in an entire month on a single hand. They don't get used anywhere near enough to need their own row. That said the presence of an F-row doesn't bother me — it's not as if they're hurting anything by being there — but there are no keyboards with both an F-row and my preferred layout (the HHKB/Tsangan variant of 60%) so few of my keyboards have F-rows.

tkk23 4y ago
How do you debug? Do you entirely use the mouse to step through code?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I'm not frequently stepping through code, so yes. Pause/Continue/Continue to Current Line have more maclike mnemonic key shortcuts and if I start using the others more, they can be remapped to more maclike shortcuts pretty easily.
Descon 4y ago
Shift + f6 in jetbrains products to rename is one of my most used shortcuts.
- simooooo 4y ago
  I’ve always had friction renaming files in rider. Never would have thought of that shortcut
sylens 4y ago
For me, it's less about the function keys and more about separating Escape from the ~/` key. I tried a 65% board once and having to use a modifier key to access those symbols drove me nuts.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  This is one of the reasons why I like the HHKB/Tsangan variant of ANSI 60/65% in particular: it has a dedicated ~/` key[0]. [0]: https://hhkb.io/layout/ https://hhkb.io/layout/

alxlu 4y ago

I think most people just use a layer for the F keys. It also means their fingers don’t need to travel as far to hit them.

rgoulter 4y ago

> You want to go tkl and pull out your number pad when/if you need it more power to you, but anything smaller than that and your working against yourself in my eyes. I'd put it the other way: if you have a keyboard where all your thumb can do is press the spacebar, you're much more limited compared to if each thumb can hit 2-3 keys. With keyboards with 2-3 thumb keys each, suddenly it's possible to use layers to bring many keys to within easy reach of the hand. -- On a standard keyboard, you'd either have to reach or move your hand to hit the ` key; whereas with layers, no hand movement/stretching is required. Layering trades-off hand movement / stretching, at the cost of being more complicated to use. (Not having to stretch your fingers is an increase in comfort). The only real downside to small-keyboards-with-thumbkeys I've experienced is for one-hand-on-keyboard usage; e.g. FPS games pretty much need to have a number row. Though, I could do CAD okay without a number row (e.g. by using a numpad layer).

majormajor 4y ago
I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. One, I already have muscle memory for existing keyboard bindings to F keys and the existing locations. Two, I have multiple devices, and I can't drop new spacebar replacements onto the mobile ones. Why optimize for just the desk? I like to move around to change things up sometimes. (I do take advantage of things when I'm at the desk by having a mechanical keyboard... but it's a kinesis with more keys than a laptop, not fewer.)
- airstrike 4y ago
  > I wouldn't give up number row and Fkeys for more chording for two reasons. Here's a third reason, based on personal experience (n=1): chording actually creates more strain on your hand/wrists than single keystrokes
  - laserlight 4y ago
    QMK’s One Shot Keys/Layers is a solution [0]. [0] https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys https://docs.qmk.fm/#/one_shot_keys

bitwize 4y ago

Making your own split ergonomic woodgrain keyboard is a hacker rite of passage, like forging your own lightsaber. And you do use vim, right, or at least VSCode in vim mode? What do you need f keys for?

anikom15 4y ago

It could be a generational thing. I think people like me who started on DOS are more likely to want full keyboards, while the younger people are used to laptops and never became accustomed to using function keys. Also, when GUIs happened the function keys turned into a second class citizen as functionality was brought to the toolbar. Most kids never use F keys now because they never had to. For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I think the platform one grew up on makes a difference too. People from a Mac background generally won't be as inclined towards F-keys, since Mac OS instead prefers mnemonic shortcuts (e.g. ⌘R instead of F5 for Refresh). This is the case for me. I grew up with Macs with full keyboards through the 90s and early 00s, but the Fkeys rarely got used and so they don't get much traffic from me now either.
aliqot 4y ago
I started on DOS and early Linux. F-keys absolutely make sense. I never incorporated home, end, page up/down into my flows. Essentially anything to the right of the arrow keys has no use in my life except SysRq and delete. The keyboards I liked best had the large backwards east asian mcnugget style enter key. These days I use an ergodox. Ortholinear is meh, but everything else about it is great.
least 4y ago
> For these younger people, the numpad and navigation keys are an impediment to reaching the mouse. For me it’s the opposite: the navigation keys is how I normally navigate (outside of vi controls) and the numpad is for numbers. The mouse is the input device of last resort. The mouse, the navigation cluster, and the number pad all require you to remove your hands from the home keys position in order to use them. Many of these smaller layout keyboards facilitate accessing these and the function keys under layers. I have several of these layer toggles on alpha keys, including the ones on the home row. The question then is does the chorded key offer more utility than a discrete physical one but requires you to move your arms away from home position? I think in many cases the answer is yes, it does, and it's not simply about aesthetics. It's more efficient keyboarding in most circumstances. Its weakness of course is in situations where accessing keys is time sensitive. The most obvious case where chording is strictly worse than discrete keys is gaming, where you need to be able to press various buttons quickly and often in very quick succession. In most other standard computing tasks where you're primarily typing, that isn't a meaningful consideration.

ge96 4y ago

65/68% gang I need the arrow keys

nine_k 4y ago

With a keyboard firmware like QMK, you just put everything to layers, and don't move your wrists. It's actually faster than reaching to a distant separate F-key and then.back to the home row, properly aligned.

robluxus 4y ago

My main issue with 60% are the lack of arrow keys. I haven't used F-keys for years (I do use the media keys on the F-row every once in a while) but my muscle memory needs dedicated arrow keys.

forrestthewoods 4y ago
I don’t need _all_ the arrow keys. Just a few. F5 for refresh. F10/F11 for step debugging. F12 for goto definition.
- sph 4y ago
  Which arrow keys out of four you don't need?
  - maccard 4y ago
    I use 0/4 as I use vim bindings on all my editors, but the numpad and F keys are worth having a full size keyboard for.
  - forrestthewoods 4y ago
    Ha. I meant function keys.
abudabi123 4y ago
Would be nice to have an easy interface experience to set the F keys as radio buttons or dockbar icons, one of the F keys will allow ambidextrous arrow keys, on the left-hand "wasd" and on the right-hand "hjkl". I want to blend emacs/vi muscle memory.
granra 4y ago
On my 60% keyboard I have set caps lock as a fn key where holding that down and any of the WASD keys gives me arrow keys. I use my pinky to hold down the caps lock key and the others to navigate the arrow keys and I can do all of it with my left hand. Similarly I have media keys mapped on the same function layer.

zppln 4y ago

I don't understand how people can live without a numpad. I feel so much more comfortable typing numbers on one compared to using the top row.

tomjen3 4y ago

I want a keyboard with the number pad on the left side. My mouse needs to the on the right side for my hand, and the number pad on the left side means I have to move my hand a lot less to use the mouse. Given that no such keyboards exists, a moveable number pad is the second best option.

frosted-flakes 4y ago
They do exust but they're. For some reason they are kbown as "southpaw" keyboards. Here's one that I really wanted, but I couldn't justify the outrageous price. https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-buy https://switchplate.co/collections/southpaw-full-size-group-...

aequitas 4y ago

> The F-keys are still widely used people and make sense to be their own key. This depends on your platform. On macOS, almost all keyboard shortcuts are centred around the cmd/apple key next to the spacebar (where alt would be on a non-mac keyboard) and an alphanumeric key. F-keys are hardly used and if they do, you know you're likely dealing with a an app ported from Linux or Windows or which is cross-platform. It's personal preference of course, but I like my shortcuts this way as I just have to thumb the cmd key and press any other key within reach, instead of having to stretch to f-keys (cmd+q vs alt+f4) or use any of the other fingers to use the ctrl key for copy pasting (cmd+c vs ctrl+c). I use the small Apple keyboard as a daily driver on my desktop instead of the full version because it has the exact same layout as the keyboard on my laptop. Which is great as I don't have to built muscle memory for 2 layouts. Of course you are missing dedicated home/end/page keys. But the fn button along with the arrow keys make up for that (also cmd/opt + arrow keys often works better for navigating anyways as they are aware of paragraphs, line endings etc).

gabrielhidasy 4y ago

I honestly feel it's easier to type fn (caps and \ when hold in my board) + numbers for f-keys than to use dedicated ones. Now 40%, that's too little keys, a number row is important