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Comment by pletnes | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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