Keyboard-Layout

Experience

Opinion

Published

January 1, 2025

Since around 2006 i basically write only using the NEO2-Layout. There are many advantages that are not obvious to an onlooker right away.

Don’t get me wrong. I still can type QWERTZ - just because you learn an additional layout does not mean that you forget everything from before.

The secret sauce lies in the deeper layers. Especially layer 3 having all the “hard to reach” things like brackets, braces, etc. right on the home row. And the 4th layer is magic for text-navigation. Left hand has the full navigation, right hand has the complete Numpad - even on laptop-keyboards that are lacking those.

For me as a person having the usual German Keyboard with AltGr this just means:

Putting the thumb down on AltGr - it is above there anyway.
Use left hand as normal arrow-keys (that work EVERYWHERE because they are just arrow keys)
Also use Home/End/PgUp/PgDown/…

Before i always had to switch over or hope that a thing had support for vi-style “hjkl”.

That’s why i also prefer Neovim as my primary editor - just not having to touch your mouse at any time for anything is such a godsend :)

Best thing: If you don’t want to switch, there is also a “Neo-QWERTZ”-variant .. where you can just try the deeper layers while not leaving your QWERTZ-layout behind. But i have just seen and never tried it. Your experience may be sub-par.