I've seen and used a lot of keyboards. I have a clear opinion on what kind of a keyboard is good. Developers have other gadgets too, but the keyboard is really at the heart of the work. So, I decided to spend some time with the keyboards in my vicinity.
The first keyboard is mine. It's a bit worn but a very functional Filco Majestouch 2 keyboard, which has a nice tactile feeling and makes satisfyingly noisy clicking sounds while typing (Cherry MX Brown switches). The noise sometimes causes a few eerie looks, especially in an open office space, but so far my keyboard has been allowed to stay.
The second keyboard is a curious Apple used by a colleague of mine. He has Debian Linux installed, but for reasons that elude me, has decided to use an Apple keyboard. Go figure. This is a subject that may require a more thorough investigation.
This, cheapokeyboard, belongs to our marvellous and clairvoyant tester, who uses it very successfully to break our systems. He is also a Linux user, but has settled for the lowend keyboard. This puzzles me greatly, but he seems happy with it, which is nice. I may be able to convince him that a decent keyboard is really a factor in workplace happiness. We'll see.
The personal preferences behind keyboard selection are interesting, especially because they also shed light to the human behind the developer (yes, developers are also human). There are a lot of interesting keyboards, as well as other developer gadgets still out there. I will talk about them in the future, stay tuned!
Jussi Mononen is an experienced code digger who is not afraid of complex systems nor people. In his sparetime Jussi dreams of a football society.