[pandastronaut]

I am always amazed by the dedication and craftmanship that keyboard enthusiasts put in their creation.

In the meantime, I have spent my life following the opposite path : minimizing all form of customization so that I can switch computer at any time without feeling lost or missing something ( I have to use computers from several clients all the time).

[whartung]

I am absolutely in this camp.

I won't say I never customize things, but, 99.99% of things, I do not customize.

I just cope with what's there, make do.

E.g. the limit of my emacs customization is Slime for Lisp (and, honestly, it took me several years to pull that trigger).

Same reason I learned vi a zillion years ago, while my friend was pushing emacs. I had to jump around random Unix boxen as a daily thing, and they weren't mine.

[CTDOCodebases]

I'm 100% this for software.

Living off the land with minimal customization.

[CTDOCodebases]

You can do both.

I use to type on 60 key boards using layers but when I switched to using a laptop keyboard it would mess me up as I used caps lock to switch layers and I had a navigation layer that used hjkl for arrows.

So what I changed to a TKL 80 key keyboard for QWERTY and then use Colemak Mod-DH on my split (Cantor Remix).

The result is I can type on both due to the context switch. So if I need to use a QWERTY board I am fine.

Also my golden rule with split keyboards is I only use open source designs. I don't want to invest time into a layout if the keyboard isn't going to be available in the future.

[mihaaly]

Exactly!

Dependence on special hardware instead of generally available ones is the making of future trouble for yourself.

Also in collaborative environments allowing others to work on your computer, assisting you in an easy way, is important.

For people working 40 years alone in a remote cellar the exact very same way throughout, and making several reserve clone of the unique and specialist hardware replacing the worn out ones, this could be ok.

[pandastronaut]

That's also part of my reasoning. I don't want to feel uncomfortable because of whatever customization I would be missing or make other people unable to use whatever environment or computer I work with. Most of the time, I am not allowed to plug a personal device or modify the setup anyway.

But I am cool with people that customize everything, from software to hardware, as long as this is not in the path of other people. Everyone can find its one and best way to work :)

[eddd-ddde]

On my main keyboard I can activate custom "layers" by holding some special keys, then each layer turns every other key into a special binding.

I have so many shortcuts programmed that whenever I'm working directly on my laptop's keyboard I found myself pressing wrong keys expecting it to do something different. It's really funny how muscle memory works.

[lawn]

So then you'd have to be comfortable with multiple operating systems, IDEs and to some extent keyboard layouts.

If you use a custom keyboard (and layout) then you only have one extra thing to learn.

I can still use VSCode and a regular keyboard/layout but I still maintain my own custom keyboard layout and highly configured Neovim setup.

[James_K]

My keyboard fits in my pocket. I never have to deal with using a computer that doesn't have it. And, as a bonus feature, you look like a mega-hacker when you take some hand-soldered circuit-board-looking keyboard out of your pockets with blank keycaps and plug it into a computer.