alt Hacker NewsI resent the idea of an absolute standard of ergonomics or typing technique. I often use my left thumb to key z/x/c/v/b. I often reach with my left index finger to key y/h/b. During certain chords, my hands often cross over the split.
I tried multiple split keyboards over the period of 2 years and never grew out of these habits. I always wished, at the least, that some of the middle keys were duplicated between the two halves.
Eventually I received some permission to accept my personal "kinetic signature" (so to speak). Then the chronic wrist pain that led me to try split keyboards in the first place vanished. So I went back to using a normal tenkeyless. This led me to believe that split keyboards were ideal for some people, but that other people (like myself) are predisposed to a sort of perfectionism that entails physical guarding and chronic pain.
I still wish I had a wireless split keyboard for times when I'm supine and need to type, though.
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Thanks for sharing. One of the challenges (always has been probably) with our heavy "influencer" culture is we tend to gloss over that what works for me, might not work for you and vice versa.
I recently switched to a split columnar layout but not for solely for ergonomics sake - I do the same things as you but with my right hand handling b, g, t, and my left hand moving over to accommodate (with "incorrect" fingering for c, and variable fingering for the whole of the left side).
My choice to move to a split was primarily motivated by a need to reset my typing style and a hatred for where the escape key sits on a keyboard (not forgetting the waste of space that is the spacebar.)
It would be neat if someone would make a zmk / qmk keyboard with five thumb keys where the space bar is. Might be the sweet spot for most.
When folks ask about my keyboard preferences, I always state that these things are personal and there is no "one size fits all". Fully realize that my keyboard, layout, hot keys, etc won't work for 99.9% of people.
However, I feel very strongly that if your body is telling you that something hurts or it is in pain, you should take action rather than right through it.
Curious if there are any split keyboards with "overlap", eg, the center of the keyboard is duplicated on both sides
> Then the chronic wrist pain that led me to try split keyboards in the first place vanished.
The elephant in the room with the 'ergonomics' argument for split keyboards is that you get a marginal improvement using the keyboard this way and ten times the effect by just getting up and going for a five minute walk every hour or so.
The same goes for mousephobia, which overlaps with split layout users. I still use neovim every day, but the quickest cure for the CTS symptoms that 'ergonomic' keyboard purist vim users seem to get much more than their IDE coworkers is just moving your hand to do something other than type in the exact same position for hours on end - something like grabbing a mouse. I strongly suspect that CTS in software engineers will go down in the next coming years as coding agents become more common and SWEs pick their hands up more (or just physically type less).
The same goes for back pain, if you're otherwise ablebodied enough to start resistance training it's infinitely more beneficial than whatever chair you're looking at.