my experience with 36 keys

As a byproduct of going deeper down into the Linux rabbit hole and discovering tiling window managers, the existence of split ergonomic keyboards was brought to my attention. The idea seemed simple: split the keyboard into two pieces so that the wrists and shoulders can be in a more relaxed position. They also play very well into the idea of not using the mouse such that everything you're going to be doing is more comfortable. In addition, did some reading on different layouts such as Colemak-DH, but I rather hold on to my high WPM on the qwerty layout as I don't find it too uncomfortable.

Usually people go out and buy/build these keyboards due to RSI or some back/neck pain. This wasn't the case for me. I just simply thought that they looked cool and I also enjoyed the open-source nature of the community. Of course, reducing the risk of pain by being proactive with preventing injury ensures that I won't develop them later on.

thoughts after a month of usage

It took around a week to get up 110 WPM when typing normal text without any symbols. This is to be expected, as the layout stays the same and the only issue was the column stagger (a row of keys are not straight as opposed to row stagger on almost all keyboards) which was not too bad. The main issue was rebuilding all of the muscle memory for symbols used in programming. As the keyboard only has 36 keys, the symbols need to be in a completely different layer which proved challenging in the start. Also using modifier keys was challenging and I went through a few approaches which I will detail later.

At the month point I can finally code at a relatively good speed and I also don't need a different keyboard on my desk at all times. The only thing I don't like that much are the choc keys which are low profile mechanical switches. I much prefer the higher profile keys found on traditional keyboards, but this will be a good thing to consider if I ever decide to build a new one. However, 36 keys is perfect in my opinion as I don't have to rely on combos and akward layers as I have more thumb keys.

my layout

My layout is based on wellum which in turn is based on callum's layout. I first tried, miryoku which was unbearable since the delays used when pressing modifier keys was causing accidental keypresses and delays when typing really fast. In hindsight, I should have adjusted the delays and tested the layout more thoroughly.

My layout removes all the russian keys and removes a lot of the layers found on the keyboard. The keyboard is completely without delays which comes at the cost of some keycombinations being harder to press. The modifiers work by being in a different layer and when pressed they're placed in a queue. When pressing a non-modifier key the modifiers are taken from the queue and added to the non-modifier key. I finally added a simple layer for keybindings for a tiling window manager which improves the ergonomics a lot.

Overall, this has been very enjoyable and I will definitely continue to use this keyboard.