I’m with you there. What QwertyKeys/Neo and TKD for instance, have been able to do at their price points is incredible (even Geon prior to these guys). I think anyone should be proud to own one of those boards. I’ve been in the hobby a while, and I still will throw money at a good value proposition (I have a Cycle 7 and Neo Ergo, and love both).
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The second Alt, often called AltGr, happens to be the only way to type accented and Umlaut letters of many languages with a “US International” keyboard layout with AltGr dead keys.
It took me some time to figure this out before giving up my rare Swiss ISO keycaps and go full out on standard US keycap sets. Now, I don’t know what to do with all my ISO keyboards… 
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Well, that’s true, but modern keyboards all come with FN keys so i don’t see why they couldn’t just use that for Umlaut letters instead. That was also my plan when i changed from ISO DE to ANSI until i noticed that i never even use Umlaut letters so i never bothered doing it. “Ue” instead of “Ü” is usually good enough for people to understand if i ever need it.
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Yep for German, but I also type Dutch, French and Spanish where there are no such shortcuts on offer…
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Same here!
I actually learned some basic touch typing in elementary school on Apple II computers that our tiny, rural elementary school managed to acquire, but I was slow. High school typing on electric typewriters is where I really learned to touch type and have it stick.
Unlike @Deadeye, I have no idea which electric typewriters we used in my high school’s “Business Typing” course, but I remember using copious amounts of the manual correction tape/papers rather than any sort of correction ribbon on the actual typewriter.
ASCII art was fun and often hilarious to see when—inevitably—someone in the class missed some step and turned in what looked like a corrupted TXT file.
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Confession time. My unpopular opinion is that it’s more enjoyable to just type on scratchy, noisy stock switches than it is to disassemble, lube, film, and reassemble them. You may judge me now 
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Very true.
Honestly, as long as I have a nice stable switch on the space bar with good stabilizers, it’s 90% of the way there for me.
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Agreed. I’m much pickier with stabilizers and will take the time to at least attempt to get them to sound/feel nice. But a whole board of switches? lulz that’s a nope from me.
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Thankfully the amount of factory lubed switches that don’t suck is better higher and higher these days. I hate lubing switches too, but generally will if I absolutely have to.
Opinion wise…clickies aren’t the evil I thought they were. Something about writing code on clicky switches is just…therapeutic. Thank God I work from home.
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Stock Cherry Blacks are smooth enough.
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I’m treading on holy ground here, probably heretical for some, but here goes…
GMK keycaps have been touted as the gold standard. The colorways are beautiful and the legends are fine, no doubt. But ABS is ABS. Within a month, that grippy, lucious matte finish is smooth and shiney. Value for money, GMK just doesn’t hold its own. Within the ABS domain, the DCX keycaps are almost half the price, have colorways as beautiful as GMK and are just as durable. MT3 add a bit of sculpt and are still significantly less than GMK. Key Kobo is even less expensive and is no slouch. In the PBT domain, Osume keycaps are every bit as beautiful in terms of colorways and legends, are more durable, and come in at half the cost of GMK. I picked up some Keychron and Akko PBT keycaps that are 25% of the price of GMK keycaps, feel and look great, and they still don’t shine.
So yes, GMK is as pricey as gold, but as a standard it falls short.
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I learned to touch type in highschool myself (mid 90’s) in “Computer class”. I think the computers were running windows, 3.1 or 95. We used some kind of typing software – not sure if it was a Mavis Beacon product or something else. I know the market has shifted towards mobile devices, but I still think teaching kids touch typing in school would be beneficial.
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While I get what you are saying I will push back on this, the quality of the raw ABS (or PBT as well) can vary wildly IME. I am also a fan of KKB, DCX, & JTK for similar reasons as you. They really do bring a great value to the table. However IMO comparing all three side by side on the same board there is definitely tangible differences. They all sound a little different to each other with GMK sounding the best to me. Also KKB, DCX, & JTK seem to wear a little faster than GMK IME.
Then there is other things to consider like the font & kerning which GMK definitely has the upper hand in. The font is down to personal preference, but the kerning & overall quality of the doubleshotting is better with GMK compared to any other Cherry profile ABS keycaps. So while the differences are smaller things, I do feel there is a tangible difference between them. Going from that I feel GMK has the best overall quality so they get to be the de facto standard bearer for Cherry profile ABS keycaps till someone catches up to them on all fronts.
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Also, JTK fits weirdly on switches. You can press on the side of a keycap and make it lean. Not sure why they do that
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Piggybacking on the GMK topic, allow me to throw in a wildly unpopular opinion that might get me a bit of slapping with a large trout:
The Cherry keycap legends – especially on modifiers, e.g. the tab key – look horrible (by today’s standards) and it’s a pity that many sets are still using them.
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By modifiers legends, do you mean just text, just icon, or even both text and icon?
Both, hence the mention of the tab key. However, in my opinion removing the icons improves the overall aesthetics significantly (GMK WoB vs GMK Noire for example), hence I think it’s more the icons than the text.
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Kinda funny how I’m the exact opposite lol, I prefer icon only the most, Icon + Text a close second, and text only mods the least. While I do like the current icons we typically use today, I’m not partial to them so I think your point can still stand. I just have yet to see/use a set with mod icons that I think are leagues better than the “standard” ones.
Edit: Totally forgot that what I prefer the MOST is actually a mix of icon only mods and icon + text mods, I forget which keys specifically I like being whatever of the two. But I remember buying some cheapo set that did just that.
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Agreed and this is why I like cheap, doubelshot, GMK clones. Most of those remove icons and just have the legend text.
Taking cover now.
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I do think that keycap designers are a bit too beholden to conventions of how legends should look. I guess it makes sense that they are trying to address the largest market, but it leads to a situation where so many keycap sets look so bland and uniform, with only some novelties to differentiate their legend styles.
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