Shouldn’t this solution ncome with some performance hit?

Well … not here to convince anybody of anything.

But yes, the unnecessary finger movements mean a lot.

I’m not a professional typist or anything but much of my work is done in CLI or an IDE. While the bottleneck is usually my brains and not my fingers, the ease of typing that comes with all the keys easily accessed is an excellent experience.

Of course everyone is allowed to believe what they choose to believe though.

The idea is to minimize required motions of hands and fingers, not desk real estate. Even the ordinary keyboards have layers (Alt, Ctrl, …) and these minimalistic ones just use the idea of layers to put the most used and important keys on the home row where they are most easily accessed. And not on a key that you need to stretch your finger or even move your hand.

I don’t care about the aesthetics - my main keyboard is pretty ugly Fifi keyboard. But the ease of typing is fantastic. Occasional switch to ISO keyboard just reminds me that I am not a creature with a hundred tentacles sprouting from my chest ;) The amount of jumping and stretching is just terrible.

But yes, few months of muscle memory relearning can be painful.