Of course we all type with our beloved input devices - but what is that typing in service of? What are you doing with your keeb(s) most often? What are you doing with your keeb(s) that’s the most fun? Maybe you’re an author or coder. Maybe you’re a champion of Quake or Osu. Let us know! I’ll start:
Most often: Probably a toss-up between customer service emails at work, journaling… and posts on this website.
Favorite: Lately, my favorite thing to do with my keeb is “play” Kind Words - a “game” about being genuinely wholesome. It’s an anonymized platform for giving and receiving things like advice, moral support, and music suggestions! I’m hard-pressed to find a keeb task more worthy that I also enjoy so much.
I’m a UX developer, so most of my typing is in service of that; writing out a lot of HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript. But the other half of my work is testing and verifying functionality on that, which means using lots and lots of keys/macros that folks don’t think about so much (like how Page Up/Page Down behave, or the difference between hitting up/down in a dropdown vs shift+up/shift+down) to ensure usability for folks who use the internet all kinds of ways. I love it!
Emails, Cisco Team chats, and project management and engineering documentation consume most of my keyboard time. As iaman said, I as well love what I do and enjoy being able to use my job to put new builds and frankenswitch experiments through their ringer.
TBH I probably end up typing the most in slack, then emails. I do a decent amount of CAD and a bit of programming here and there when I can’t get a firmware engineer to do it for me or if I need to automate something. At home I mostly talk on here and play league/other video games, although there’s hardly any time for that these days.
I’m another developer, so all of my boards are used as a tool of the trade. They get a lot of use because I usually spend about 15-20 hours a week outside of work coding side projects as well.
CTO/project manager/developer here.
My keeb is my tool of the trade for coding/emails/IM’s etc.
Since navigating code/text efficiently is important to me, 65% is the smallest layout I can use.
I’m writing books. I hope to get good enough to get published one day. Current book is at 141k words.
Sometimes, if I’m not in the mood to write, I bust out a new board that I haven’t used in a while and it helps motivate me cause I’m just excited to type on it!
@nosferatoo
I can totally relate with the navigation keys and board size. I’m currently struggling with my first 60% build. Though I’m still eager try custom layouts to make it work: trying to see the lack of dedicated arrow keys as an opportunity to take the load off my RSI plagued right hand/wrist, and map the navi/arrows to the WASD area.
@ddrfraser1
That’s smart to use the novelty / variety of board to overcome oneself! Also kudos on writing, good luck! You can do it!
I’ve got 2 60% keebs that I’m about to sell.
Tried it, can’t use the layout.
The argument “but you have arrow keys on a layer” is laughable, IMO.
Keyboard should not be an obstacle, forcing you to invent new ways of use via using layers etc…
It is a tool that should serve my needs, hence 65% minimum.
I strongly dislike 75% (cluttered and visually unappealing to me), but will get me a good TKL (or two).
Agreed with you about most of these assertions. I do love my YAS-62. Minimum usable set for me and nice compromise, size-wise. I like the 60% form factor, but I need me some arrow keys.
That said, I’m quite excited to (eventually) receive a ModelFKeyboards F77, which will have the TKL bit to the right configured as arrow keys and number pad.
I’ve always kind of felt the opposite, I don’t get what the big deal about the arrow keys is, why people need them, and to the extreme that 65% has become so popular… I probably use them like once or twice a day on average, probably most common when I have to do a spreadsheet. Otherwise it’s mostly just when I type bad and have to fix it.
I rarely used the arrow keys and basically never used the navigation cluster - until I started doing pre-press in addition to design. I now use them constantly to navigate around large PDF files intended for print. I’d never even considered a 65% before but it turned out to be the perfect layout for that workflow, with my right 4 keys set up as home, pg up, pg dn, and end.
I spend most of my time programming (I do it for a living). Arrow keys are a must when programming unless you use an editor like Vim or Emacs, which I don’t since I do IOS/Android development.
Typing of the Dead is definitely one of my favorite keeb activities. (You should wait for this to go on sale if it interests you, although not sure when that’ll be).
