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Connor J Kelly

On the dopest of Keyboards

On Starter Keyboards

  • Macbook Air or the love of a simple keeboard

The first keyboard, and the one that I learned to really type on was a MacBook Air membrane keyboard It was okay, but it wasnt anything to write home about.

  • Razor Blackwidow Chroma

When I built my pc in high school, I got a hell of a deal on a razor “mechanical” keyboard. It was nice to type on, but was loud. And not just loud, but kind of lackluster, I didnt see it as a major upgrade from anything before, just different.

  • Keychron K13 first and second

At some point, the Razor got old, and I wanted something smaller and better for programming. The keychron was great for this, it came with low profile linear switches and it was clean. It had bluetooth and wired and just worked great. I still think this is the best keyboard to just get someone who wants a nice no fuss keyboard. I got the K13, which is the side of a TKL (ten-key-less) but has a numpad. Essentially, its a lot smaller than a regular full side keyboard, but is convenient if you end up typing a lot of numbers. I loved it enough that I have two of them. This is where I realized how much I love low profile keyboards. I want the smallest amount of travel to make a keystroke. A shorter keystroke means that you can type faster and more efficiently.

  • Lenovo IdeaPad When my Dell laptop died, I got a Lenovo IdeaPad, It was a full size keyboard on a 16 inch laptop. This laptop would most influence my typing style, I would spend some 12 hours a day typing on it, during the most intensive coding sessions of my life. It would be on this keyboard that I would learn how to touch type better than on any previous keyboard, mostly out of spite.

  • ZSA Voyager & the false promise of a grail For a while, I saw a trend of Split keyboards, and I did a lot of research. I looked at all the split keyboards, and worked on designing a keyboard that would be perfect. I even 3d printed a bunch of cases, and hand-wired a half of a keyboard. Then, My birthday came by, and I decided to get myself something nice. I splurged on the keyboard that I wanted the most: the ZSA Voyager. From the moment I opened the box, I knew this keyboard was an endgame kind of keyboard. It had an aluminum case, it was all set up from the start, and it came with all the things you would ever need for the keyboard. Its one of those devices that just feels like its built for forever. And that makes sense, because it costs $350. Thats a lot of fucking money for a keyboard.

But it feels worth it, because its an eye opening experience. It taught me that the whole world is doing it wrong. Split keyboards are not just different, but they are the right design for ergonomics. The standard typing position with your hands together and up on a desk, its just not a position that is designed for people. But split keyboards, with limited numbers of keys, ortholinear key columns, and the ability to naturally position your hands; it just makes so much more sense.

Its the first keyboard that felt like I naturally touch type on. It took me about a week to go back to learn the keyboard layout, and more importantly, to use Home Row Mods. HMR was the largest brain rewiring that went on because it changes how you think about keys, now, each key has the ability to do multiple things, depending on different actions you input to the keyboard.

It changed how I interact with a computer too. See, one thing that really sucks at my work is that our dev environments use locked down Windows 10. There are some keyboard shortcuts that really just suck, like switching between desktop workspaces, F-keys, or alt-tabbing. Having those things at quick access removes the barrier to entry and makes it so that I actually use the things. It helps on little things like using a debugger, where it allows me to just interact with the debugger via keyboard, rather than figuring out where every one of the buttons on each of the 3 IDEs I use.

I love this keyboard. It is truly one of those keyboards that I would recommend to anyone interested, but there are very few people who need something like this. To understand how much of a difference something like this makes, you need to be someone who consistently spends upwards of 50 hours a week at a keyboard and have a personal interest in being super efficient in ergonomics. You also need to be the kind of person willing to spend an almost exorbitant amount of money doing it. The only reason I justify it is that I spend so much time at a keyboard and literally have arthritis. Most people into ergo keyboards will cite RSI (Repeated Stress Injury) as their reason, and it sounds like hipster crap until you get through a 8 hour coding session and the tendons in your hand hurt going into the next workday.

  • Typeractive Lily58 LP Wireless Where the Voyager takes it up a level, the Lily58 brings it down a notch. Its an unequivically worse keyboard, unless you desperately want a wireless split keyboard. And, to be fair, with a split keyboard, this does make a bit of a difference. (I write this as I sit on the couch, taking advantage of the wireless part).