Every one of us using keyboards for a daily typing in almost every device that we use. Starting from obvious once like phones, tablets, then going through ATMs, ordering panels in restaurants, in government institutions, banks, offices, train stations, ... and finally ending back again to regular personal computers.In my beginnings of the engineering career, when I was discovering what the computer really is, how it works, and learning all those new electronic and digital knowledge. At that time I wasn't wondering about the keyboards. First, no one in my kids' neighborhood (except me) were interested with it, so I discover it on my own, in my free time. Simply by using a lot of different PC/laptops and its keyboards. At the time I didn't realize it, then years goes by, and after all those years, now I think there is no such thing as the best keybindings config. Yeah, controversial, I know, and it's good - but let me explain why I believe this is especially true by giving you few reasons.As you see, keyboard sound simple, but if you use it every single day, for long time, people tend to optimize own processes over the time simply by find the shortcuts and some best practices. In my case, it was the process of typing itself. After years I realized that for some group of people, the keyboard will always be just a keyboard - like my parents, or a lady in the government institution office, or a sales man on gas station - they do not care. For them this is just a thing to type, nothing more. Although if you spend so much time with it, you start realizing a couple of things:
everyone may have different writing or hardware preferences,
everyone may use different keyboards layouts (ISO, ANSI, ABNT, KS, JIS),
even if someone using similar keyboards where they live1, they may use same keyboard layouts (e.g ISO) but they use different keys-layouts (in Poland , in Germany/Austria , in France )
QWERTY
QWERTZ
AZERTY
or even more simpler, more close to us humans:
what about people with disabilities - as not everyone may have fully functional hands
the size of a human hands can also make huge difference while typing and finding your best practices!
As you see, this means that keyboards themselves, the way of typing on the keyboards, and/or finally all the optimization with finding the best keybindings - this can't be objective (maybe to single persons or a groups of people), but not for everyone and most likely best keybindings it's a SUBJECTIVE and personal thing! So now when you search for best practices for some keybinding, you will find only a subjective point of few of some people from different regions that may be completely wrong or incompatible for you!
First keyboard
Let me tell you a story about my first experience with keyboards, what was my journey and what I use today.
Over the my early years I tried just a few keyboards - mostly the ISO-type as they are kinda a standard in Europe - but I also tried the ANSI type from a friends laptop, and I liked it very much more. I think I realize it vividly, when I discover the ANSI-type was especially designed to type english letters - and in programming this is mostly the daily routine.
Therefore after many years of just looking and talking, one day I got one, my first one, as a gift from a colleague2! It was 2016, the european market for mechanical keyboards was not so big as we see now. There was few good brands, but not so many fancy brands as we have today. I got "WASD keyboard" as it was the closest to something what I wished like to use. I never tried it before, but I knew it's the best - and wasn't wrong. If you search for some good, universal mechanical keyboard, ANSI-type will not fail you.
Footnotes
For example, in USA it's ANSI. In Europe the most universal keyboard layout is ISO, but the keys-layout may differ between countries and even between cities! For example QWERTY in Poland, ↩
If you reading this, you already know I thank you many, many times before, but even now I want to Thank You again and I will never forget! That was one of the best gifts I've ever got from a friend! And until this day I still use it daily - imagine that! ❤️ ↩