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Just to add a (far?) more extreme take on this: I use a 48 key keyboard (an OLKB Planck) which massively cuts down on hand travel and typing strain. Arrow and navigation keys, a numpad, all the function keys, every symbol I use whem programming, and various OS controls (volume, media controls, screen brightness, etc.) are all easily reachable without changing the position of my hands. I also chose to program all the modifier keys to work both as normal when held down and in a similar fashion to sticky keys when just tapped. For example, holding down shift and typing a letter works as normal, but hitting shift followed by a letter accomplishes the same result, meaning that capital letters and punctuation don't really interrupt the flow of typing or require chording. I also have rather resistive keyswitches (nominally 185g, ~170g in actuality) which was of ergonomic benefit to me. I wouldn't expect it to help most people, but it helped me learn to type without bottoming out the switches. Starting out, the heavier springs caught me before reaching the bottom. Now I type in a much gentler fashion, even if peak force is greater than on a standard keyboard. Moving down to 48 keys can seem intimidating, but I adjusted rather quickly. It only took me about a couple weeks to become comfortable with the layout changes (staggered keys to a grid layout and Workman instead of QWERTY). I believe that part of the reason it was such an easy transition was because I changed the layout whenever I had trouble adjusting to it. I had wanted to place the underscore on the same key as F in a QWERTY layout to make typing snake_case identifiers easier, but kept hitting the adjacent equals key instead. I could have pushed through it, but I embraced what my brain clearly felt was right whenever a similar thing happened and picked up the layout much quicker than I expected. Another common concern is losing competence with a normal keyboard or standard layout, but at least in my case that hasn't been an issue. I can switch back and forth between a 2013 Macbook QWERTY keyboard and my customized one with no issues, and I often switch from QWERTY to Workman on my laptop depending on how much I'm writing. Occasionally I'll switch layouts mid-sentence when I realize I'll be going into more depth than I expected. |