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They are small and thus take less space on the desk, or in your bag (perfect for traveling and on-site-work). And not all keys are necessary for everyone. Numpa

They are small and thus take less space on the desk, or in your bag (perfect for traveling and on-site-work). And not all keys are necessary for everyone. Numpad is a big part with little use for many people. And the newer generation of keyboards is often programmable, so you can remap them on very sophisticated levels on the keyboard itself. This reduces the demand for more keys even more. For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key. Function-keys are similar mapped to number-keys with the same thumb-key. This makes writing from homerow much faster, and I need to move my hands not so often. I basically just must my fingers, instead of the whole hand.

derefr 2y ago
> For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key. That sounds so bizarre to me, as so many keychords I use every minute of every day involve modifiers plus arrow keys.
- rfoo 2y ago
  Where do you put your thumb when you are using arrow keys? Maybe it's my small hands, but I can't use my right hand thumb to hit anything when I'm on arrow keys, and have to rely on using left hand to press modifiers. So, I use a keyboard with split space bars, and map the right one to a layer switch key, when I want arrow keys I then hold the right side spacebar, and use ijkl (similar shape to arrow keys). Feels like exactly the same [1] as using arrow keys except I don't have to move my hand. [1] Okay, 'I' is slightly off because row-staggered nonsense but honestly it just took me two days to get familiar to it.
- BossingAround 2y ago
  I'd say the majority of office jobs won't really use arrow keys. Most people will rather use the mouse to move around, and engineers would use something closer to the center of the keyboard (like hjkl).
- PurpleRamen 2y ago
  I have capslock mapped to ESC&CTRL, so my pinky is also around the important modifiers. And because of vim and gaming, hjkl & wsad are habitual for me anyway.

derefr 2y ago

> For example, on my keyboard I have no dedicated cursor-keys, but they are mapped to hjkl and wasd with a thumb-key. That sounds so bizarre to me, as so many keychords I use every minute of every day involve modifiers plus arrow keys.

rfoo 2y ago
Where do you put your thumb when you are using arrow keys? Maybe it's my small hands, but I can't use my right hand thumb to hit anything when I'm on arrow keys, and have to rely on using left hand to press modifiers. So, I use a keyboard with split space bars, and map the right one to a layer switch key, when I want arrow keys I then hold the right side spacebar, and use ijkl (similar shape to arrow keys). Feels like exactly the same [1] as using arrow keys except I don't have to move my hand. [1] Okay, 'I' is slightly off because row-staggered nonsense but honestly it just took me two days to get familiar to it.
BossingAround 2y ago
I'd say the majority of office jobs won't really use arrow keys. Most people will rather use the mouse to move around, and engineers would use something closer to the center of the keyboard (like hjkl).
PurpleRamen 2y ago
I have capslock mapped to ESC&CTRL, so my pinky is also around the important modifiers. And because of vim and gaming, hjkl & wsad are habitual for me anyway.