I've mostly ignored the mechanical keyboard craze so far. Recently I decided it was time to improve my typing. I'm moderately fast but developed bad habits over the years. Bought a Microsoft Sculpt "ergonomic" keyboard and can't use it. Looked a little further afield and boy oh boy there's a lot of activity in this area! To cut to the chase, here's my solution (I hope):
https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/planckWhere are the number keys and the rest of the punctuation??! This thing has "layers" which you access by the two keys I've highlighted. What's more, it's completely programmable, so you can change the key layout (and the layers) to be whatever you want (more on that later). There's even a web-based user interface for customizing your keys.
The key layout is ortholinear - the more I tried to improve my typing, the more the conventional "staggered" layout annoyed me. Also, you can just swap out the keyswitches for a different set if you want. And also, it has individual backlighting for each key, which can be used as a mnemonic for the active keys in each layer. (Seriously, the image below makes it look like a gimmick but it doesn't have to be used that way.)
I think this is the first time I've been excited about a keyboard since... well, ever.
