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Comment by morjom | Hacker News Reader

Are moonlander and ergodox too zany or too out of the default? I used a MD600 for a while, and found that keyboards that are just qwerties chopped in half diagonally in the middle-ish aren't really taking advantage of the splitness enough, so ergodox or a dactyl seemed better for me.

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My moonlander took a few days/weeks of getting used to, but it’s not very «far out» in my mind. The biggest hurdle is getting used to the ortholinear keys, but this quickly feels much better. Would warmly recommend to anyone spending much time in front of a keyboard, really.

The biggest hurdle is wondering why your space bar is no longer working on a normal keyboard, and realising that you are actually smashing the alt key :D

But seriously, I love my Moonlander(s) and have no regrets buying them.

> The biggest hurdle is wondering why your space bar is no longer working on a normal keyboard, and realising that you are actually smashing the alt key :D

This hasn't really been an issue for me after the first week or two of use. My muscle memory adjusts based on which keyboard I'm using. Typing this on my MBP's laptop keyboard while I work using my Moonlander day-to-day.

> But seriously, I love my Moonlander(s) and have no regrets buying them.

Also got a second for the office because of how much I love it. Only minor regrets because spending over 1k on two keyboards (after caps, etc) is a tough pill to swallow.

It is, but then I broke a finger and was able to remap both keyboards to compensate. That was pure magic.

Agreed, I make small tweaks occasionally to improve some behavior and it gives me a good feeling deep down to know I can change what any key does at its most basic level. I don't even use layers too much but most of my keys will have both a tap and tap-hold option and it's crazy to think that I can choose to change it at any time without any issue, and having it carry over between computers since it's all in the keyboard itself.

I still haven't figured out a good combination for an Esc/backtick key since I use both keys pretty commonly and there just isn't space for both.

I got a Moonlander about 3 months ago, and it took me about a month of getting used to the key layout until I was typing at similar speed to a Macbook keyboard (which for me is fairly fast, about 120wpm). The hardest letters for me was shifting from my index finger to my ring finger for 'c', and shifting '.' from my other index finger to my other ring finger. I basically got used to never typing a key with my ring finger below the home row and with the ortholinear keys it was just no longer possible to type quickly while having my index finger handle everything. The keys also poke out quite a bit more than other keyboards so when you stretch to type a key with the "wrong" finger you are also much more likely to accidentally press another key.

Getting used to spacebar, backspace and enter, all of which I shifted to thumb mappings, took only a few days. You hit those keys so often you learn the muscle memory very quickly. This to me is by far the best part of the moonlander, having 4 super-accessible thumb keys and 2 semi-accessible thumb keys that I can program is a massive, massive improvement over a standard keyboard. Your thumb is completely wasted in a normal layout.

I still am far below my "normal" speed for programming, but that is because I'm trying to figure out the best custom mapping for (){}[]<>=+ and then train the muscle memory.

Overall I'm very happy with the purchase, I feel like it is much more ergonomic and with another few months of service and perfecting my layout it will hopefully end up being much faster and more convenient than a normal keyboard layout as well.

In my experience, splitting the keyboard in half delivers 95+% of the ergonomic benefits with virtually zero tradeoffs beyond the couple of days it take to adjust to it.

Could you elaborate on the benefits in taking more "advantage of the splitness"? Maybe I'm overlooking a big missed opportunity.

For me, I at least need to transition from my laptop keyboards (linux/mac) to my split keyboards without distracting from the work at hand. More generally, I think professionals should never stray too far from industry standard tools.

My main issue with ergodox is consumer lock-in. Dependence on custom keybindings is one thing, but dependence on custom physical keys is bad practice outside of special circumstances.

> More generally, I think professionals should never stray too far from industry standard tools.

I have used a Moonlander for close to two years now. Other than the few days at the beginning before muscle memory developed, I have had no issues going from a Moonlander, to a standard mechanical, to laptop keyboards. It's not nearly as big of a problem as you're making it seem, coming from my own experience.

And why can't someone choose to use a tool that helps them? What's so wrong with that?

> My main issue with ergodox is consumer lock-in. Dependence on custom keybindings is one thing, but dependence on custom physical keys is bad practice outside of special circumstances.

What even is this argument? Oryx is just a layer on top of QMK, an open source keyboard firmware. The keys are all standard row 3 keycaps, with the exception of the thumb cluster which are 1.5u and 2u keycaps. Sure, the thumb cluster is unique, but that can be said for dozens of different keyboards: A lot have macro keys, or twists and knobs to control things like volume. Arrow key designs are different from manufacturer to manufacturer. Hell, the entire layout is different based on which country you're in. Having a thumb cluster seems like an extremely minor lock-in considering muscle memory isn't limited to one layout at a time.

> In my experience, splitting the keyboard in half delivers 95+% of the ergonomic benefits with virtually zero tradeoffs beyond the couple of days it take to adjust to it.

"standard layout, but split" doesn't quite do enough to fix a big deficiency of standard layouts:

Disproportionate use of the pinky finger compared to the thumb. - The thumb is much stronger than the pinky fingers, but the pinky fingers get used for many more keys than the thumb.

It's much more comfortable to be able to use the thumb for enter, backspace, tab, escape, than having to move the hand & use the pinky finger for these.

>In my experience, splitting the keyboard in half delivers 95+% of the ergonomic benefits

Splitting a staggered keyboard is only 2% of the ergonomic benefits in my experience. You're just splitting a terrible design into a wider terrible design. It's the finger movement that is un-ergonomic.

Have you used an ergodox or other ortholinear keyboard? I absolutely can't stand to use non-ortholinear keyboards now.

I don't care about lock-in. Staggered qwerty is lock-in to terrible keyboards.

I have my own keyboard for work and home. When I spend >12h per day on a keyboard, I need it to be how I like it.

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