Detailed Critique of Jeff Atwood's CODE keyboard

From the critique:<p>&gt; The CODE keyboard is just a very expensive version of your standard keyboard that can make cool clicking noises (which some of your co workers may not find that cool).<p>From the product page:<p>&gt; These switches are unique in the Cherry line because they combine solid actuation force with quiet, non-click activation, and a nice tactile bump on every keystroke. These hard to find switches deliver a superior typing experience over cheap rubber dome keyboards – without deafening your neighbors in the process.

Why not put special keys for things programmers use, eg:<p>&quot; Build Debug Step In Step Over Step Out&quot;<p>Isn&#x27;t this F10,F11,F12 etc...

A keyboard critique without even touching the keys, nice. 15 minutes fame IMHO.

An interesting rant. I ordered one of the keyboards to play with and see how it holds up. For me the &quot;features&quot; for keyboards are:<p>1) accuracy<p>2) repeatability<p>3) positional awareness<p>#1 is about hitting the right key that you wanted to hit and is facilitated by keeping distances correct. I had a vaio keyboard where the keys to the right of the home key were a bit further away from the home row than the left ones and it drove me nuts.<p>Repeatability is about allowing your muscles to actually train. Since much of what I type is by muscle memory anyway the more often the exact same muscle sequences are actuated the more &#x27;trained&#x27; into the muscles they become.<p>Positional awareness is about &quot;feel&quot; and knowing where your fingers are, relative to where they should be, by how the keys feel. This is something I really didn&#x27;t appreciate until I learned to play the piano where playing a chord can happen anywhere your hands are in the right place, and getting from one chord to another is again a function of where you are vs where you want to be.<p>I use a Logitech G15 at work (a G10 at home) which is ok, although I can type faster on my old ThinkPad keyboard. (black with cherry key switches and heck-a loud.) I like the programmability of the &quot;macro&quot; keys so that I can put basic sequences in them, but would appreciate better Linux support :-) Anyway, we&#x27;ll see how this keyboard compares.

I can&#x27;t say that I find any of these critiques relevant.

Surprised at how many posts here are disparaging this keyboard. Seems pretty rude to me to put down a pet project like that. You don&#x27;t have to buy it.

&gt; Why not put special keys for things programmers use, eg: Build, Debug, Step In, Step Over, Step Out, and a special key between Ctrl and Alt just dedicated for ‘Auto Complete’ so we don’t have to hit Ctrl+Space ever again!<p>Because those aren&#x27;t system commands, where as media keys are.

If it made cool clicking noises, I&#x27;d be more interested. It makes a standard quiet cherry noise. Now if it was a complex white ALPS switch or something completely new, we&#x27;d be talking something genuinely interesting (or at least actually rare&#x2F;difficult to come by).

I would love to find a clicky key keyboard with the function keys on the left side like they once were.

Has anyone actually substantiated this &#x27;vast majority&#x27; of coders who prefer an ergonomic design?

Another fact which is ignored in this &quot;review&quot; is the possibilities for tweaking and customization; e.g. switching the layout, pulling of key-caps, etc.