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> The kbd community has all kinds of small form factor / isometric layouts like this that are totally custom and efficient but just make me think how you just t

> The kbd community has all kinds of small form factor / isometric layouts like this that are totally custom and efficient but just make me think how you just train your hands to be shockingly unproductive on 99.99% of other systems I am curious, what kind of conditions require you to be productive on "other systems"? As a programmer these days, I pretty much am never told to sit in front of a random keyboard and expected to be productive there. I have the Ctrl/Caps mod you mentioned, and it bites me on other computers — but these typically tend to be instances of me helping some friend out with a computer problem. Any time that I am going to working for an entire day or more on a computer, I tend to figure out a way to swap Caps with Ctrl on it. I can imagine the "should be able to be productive on any system" being a problem in the days when computers were scarce, and for instance, one had to use the computers in a university lab or similar. I can even imagine it today when you're talking about servers (e.g. I need to be able to use emacs, vi, and nano on any server that I'm logged into). But for keyboard input these days, it seems like we have the luxury to use our own highly customized input devices for 99.99% of the time.

fake-name 3y ago
I probably regularly use 4-5 different machines regularly (2 at home, my work laptop, work laptop plugged into it's dock at work, embedded system flashing machine). I also help coworkers when handing off a assembled embedded machine, which regularly involves temporarily helping out on their computer for a few minutes now and then. I can't exactly see swapping coworkers keyboards out just to help debug something.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Exactly. My main work computer is a laptop on a dock, but I'm not always at my desk. I'm not going to carry the external keyboard around. The pros never seemed like they'd outweigh the cons. I love smaller mechanical keyboards, but I'm not going to venture off of QWERTY.
thayne 3y ago
I think a more common situation for many people is having to use the laptop keyboard instead of an external keyboard, for example because you are traveling.
- tevon 3y ago
  i ended up customizing an ortholinear keyboard, took a little while to learn, but seems like my brain keeps a separate "mental map" of it, and it doesn't interfere with my typing on a standard laptop.
  - heeton 3y ago
    Same, I regularly switch from ortho colemak (with home row mods, key expansions, symbol layers, etc) to qwerty on my laptop with no issues. The only thing that messes me up is if I start looking at the keyboard or trying to bypass my muscle memory to type. E.g. to input a complex password with uncommon symbols.
csdvrx 3y ago
> I am curious, what kind of conditions require you to be productive on "other systems"? For me, vnc and qemu: I haven't found an easy way to have gvncviewer use my caps-to-control-or-esc Even just caps-to-control would make happy!
- CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
  With QMK you don't have this issue since it runs on your keyboard
  - csdvrx 3y ago
    On other systems, I may run scripts but I can't carry my keyboard. Maybe we understand other systems differently.
    - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
      I see. From your comment it seemed to me like the other systems were remote systems from your machine.
xyzzy123 3y ago
On-site (eg in a dc), pairing, some kinds of hot desking, user support. I've mostly given up on customising and try to find efficient ways to work within each OS's defaults. The wildcard is when you're hands-on keyboard with a heavy customiser who has wildly different preferences than you :)
smrq 3y ago
In my experience, the stranger your weird keyboard, the less it impacts your ability to use a normal keyboard. Learning the guitar doesn't make you worse at piano-- your brain is capable of understanding how to use multiple tools, and the lack of physical similarity seems to help it disambiguate.

fake-name 3y ago

I probably regularly use 4-5 different machines regularly (2 at home, my work laptop, work laptop plugged into it's dock at work, embedded system flashing machine). I also help coworkers when handing off a assembled embedded machine, which regularly involves temporarily helping out on their computer for a few minutes now and then. I can't exactly see swapping coworkers keyboards out just to help debug something.

doubled112 3y ago
Exactly. My main work computer is a laptop on a dock, but I'm not always at my desk. I'm not going to carry the external keyboard around. The pros never seemed like they'd outweigh the cons. I love smaller mechanical keyboards, but I'm not going to venture off of QWERTY.

thayne 3y ago

I think a more common situation for many people is having to use the laptop keyboard instead of an external keyboard, for example because you are traveling.

tevon 3y ago
i ended up customizing an ortholinear keyboard, took a little while to learn, but seems like my brain keeps a separate "mental map" of it, and it doesn't interfere with my typing on a standard laptop.
- heeton 3y ago
  Same, I regularly switch from ortho colemak (with home row mods, key expansions, symbol layers, etc) to qwerty on my laptop with no issues. The only thing that messes me up is if I start looking at the keyboard or trying to bypass my muscle memory to type. E.g. to input a complex password with uncommon symbols.

csdvrx 3y ago

> I am curious, what kind of conditions require you to be productive on "other systems"? For me, vnc and qemu: I haven't found an easy way to have gvncviewer use my caps-to-control-or-esc Even just caps-to-control would make happy!

CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
With QMK you don't have this issue since it runs on your keyboard
- csdvrx 3y ago
  On other systems, I may run scripts but I can't carry my keyboard. Maybe we understand other systems differently.
  - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
    I see. From your comment it seemed to me like the other systems were remote systems from your machine.

xyzzy123 3y ago

On-site (eg in a dc), pairing, some kinds of hot desking, user support. I've mostly given up on customising and try to find efficient ways to work within each OS's defaults. The wildcard is when you're hands-on keyboard with a heavy customiser who has wildly different preferences than you :)

smrq 3y ago

In my experience, the stranger your weird keyboard, the less it impacts your ability to use a normal keyboard. Learning the guitar doesn't make you worse at piano-- your brain is capable of understanding how to use multiple tools, and the lack of physical similarity seems to help it disambiguate.