[shadowofneptune]

The given reason for going from 58 keys, then to 34, is ergononics. There has to be a better way to provide ergonomics than such a heavily shifted system, no? I'm not sure I could switch to a keyboard if it meant giving up QWERTY touch typing.

[jrockway]

I find shifting extremely comfortable, but not quite to the extent as the author of this post. Like the author, I use thumb keys on the opposite hand to make the other hand start typing symbols. For example, I press the key below V with my left hand, and then home row on the right hand "jkl;" becomes "({})". (Actually, the whole side becomes symbols. I use the characters below the numbers to type the shifted symbol there, so qwer is !@#$, though on the other side, I don't duplicate the parentheses and instead have `~ below 9 and 0.)

Overall, I find that this is ridiculously comfortable to use.

I suffered from mild wrist pain when typing on standard keyboards, mostly because my pinky had to do so much work for programming (and pressing backspace, kill the default position of that key with fire), and the Ergodox helped me a lot.

One thing I'll note, when I moved from Ergodox to Moonlander, I lost the 1.5U key next to the h/n keys (heh). I used to use that as backspace, but moved it to my left thumb. When you're backspacing an entire word (not something I do in Emacs, but something you have to do in the web browser), the up/down/up/down/up/down motion isn't as fast with your thumb as it is with your pointer finger. OS X users probably don't have this problem, as C-w isn't "close window" there like it is on Windows.

[frosted-flakes]

Why don't you just Ctrl+Backspace instead of hammering the backspace key? Works fine on Windows, contrary to your last sentence.

[lvc_]

Would you be willing to link your ML layout?

[comfypotato]

I haven’t given up touch typing QWERTY letters. Basically everything I need for “chat” is on my base layer of 42 keys. On top of that, I use a system of 20+ layers that has become second nature to me. It’s really wonderful and I feel like the average person confined to a built-in laptop keyboard is missing out. I’m constantly mapping application-custom functionality to a 2-stroke combo (Emacs).

That being said, the most important thing is that you enjoy what you’re typing on.