The Last Keyboard One Should Buy

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Do you pay attention to the keyboard?

Have you given much thought to the layout of your keyboard? For the folks who spend a large fraction of their waking hours clacking away on a hunk of plastic, it seems peculiar that we clack through life without giving much thought to the inanimate companion on our quest.

That companion persists even whilst technology constantly changes, it is our “stable” interface to the latest and greatest innovations. In fact, the physical keyboard has perhaps always been the de facto mechanism for doing stuff with modern tech, even the stuff prior to the era of personal computers (ahem typewriters).

If you have the opportunity, you should think about what you choose to spend your life with. A keyboard is a tool which very well could stick by your fingertips through several generations of computers – and if its a well designed board, all generations of computers you will own. This idea of a keyboard being a lifelong companion to your computational efforts, is the core tenet behind the HHKB. The affectionately named “Happy Hacking Keyboard” is one such option for a lifelong companion, designed by folks who paid attention to their keyboards.

I have spent several years with my keyboard and it is a joy to use every day, I hope that you can think about the things which comprise your environment and set them in an order which brings little moments of joy to your daily life. May you have respect for your tools, may you treat them accordingly and may serve your efforts to the best of their ability!

Why an HHKB?

• The layout is superb: at first glance one might feel as though someone tried to make a symmetrical keyboard and failed ever so slightly. However if you actually use computers beyond being bootloaders for Google Chrome and give this thing a lookover you start to notice some tasteful things. The re-placement of Caps Lock with Ctrl – my my that actually kind of makes sense. The location of the arrow keys, easily accessible to your middle & index finger by forcefully dangling your pinky finger on the function key. The closely located Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys. All of these placed in a way so as to keep your hands near the ASDF & JKL; rows, to mitigate the movement & change of context that comes with full-size keyboards. Not having to move your hand across over the 7 Seas and a few Great Kingdoms to move a cursor two fields/characters over with the arrows is nice. Plus whilst using this layout your fingers exist in between the spaces of VIM-bindings and Conventional Keys in a way I can only describe as “seamless”.

To close I leave you with the following tidbits;

• The board was created by a hacker (in the generally positive old-school programmer sense), for hacking: The wizard who came up with this design, Dr. Eiiti Wada, did so by writing a fucking paper about it. In it he details the frustrations he had with the keyboards/layouts of his era & forays into the proposal of a new layout which would be both futureproof and a joy to work with. The jist of his opinion about keyboards is encapsulated by his quote:

“Cowboys in the western United States leave their horses when they die. But never leave their saddles, regardless of how long they need to walk in the desert. Saddles are interfaces that are deeply adapted to our bodies whereas horses are consumable items. It should not be forgotten that computers are consumables nowadays, but keyboards are interfaces that we can use through our lives.”

• Who needs Neuralink when you have Vim?

• This is a brilliantly crafted tool, intended to be used.

• The THOCK of the topre switch – that is what will do you in.

References

• Material Journal- this spectacular post pushed me over the edge to cough up the rather ridiculous $240 USD for my first HHKB in the August of 2022. I am very grateful.
• Wada’s 1992 Paper (Original) and a Translation to English