I use and strongly prefer a split keyboard for these reasons.
I’m not too far down the rabbit hole but when I got my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard[1] I was finally a happy camper. The improvement over the few membrane split keyboards available was noticeable. Especially once I figured out the layer mappings I like.
It’s sooo much better than the butterfly MacBook keyboard that I basically don’t use my laptop away from my desk any more. I always pack my UHK when I travel. I use a Logitech mouse between the two keyboard halves.
I waited years from the initial find on Crowd Supply to having it. Then several more years before the promised “modules” shipped. By the time the modules arrived I had adapted so completely to the keyboard I haven’t actually found much use for the extra key cluster. I want to like the trackpad module but it doesn’t have two-finger scrolling so it just annoys me when I try to use it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, this setup resulted in so much less hand, arm, and shoulder pain.
I'm still waiting for a tenkeyless version of the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. I like the idea of it but chording to get function keys and other keys is not something I can live with.
As a long time vim user I didn’t have as much trouble as I feared for the arrows: just hold my left thumb on mod while using hjkl. (This isn’t quite the native mapping that comes with the keyboard though.)
I mapped mod- and the four right edge keys to home, page up, page down, and end. These were familiar to me from an earlier split keyboard I used. (Goldtouch maybe? Or Kinesis freestyle?)
For function keys, Mod+2 is as easy as fn+F2 on a laptop and not much to remember/learn vs just a raw F2. But I have to admit that some of the shift-alt-Fkey combinations in IntelliJ are even harder to remember and type with an extra mod required.
Probably the thing that really got me was the default keymap requiring mod for escape. So I remapped the corner key to escape, (or backtick with mod) and I have mod-Tab to type tilde. It works, but when going back and forth to the laptop keyboard this is the one that throws me. Also I wish I could teach my Macbook keyboard to have an arrow key layer because I feel like command or caps lock plus hjkl would feel so much better than the tiny inverted T half keys on my laptop.
The UHK is what's termed a "65%" keyboard. A "tenkeyless" keyboard has physical function keys and the arrow key + cursor control cluster; the UHK does not have these things.
I’m not too far down the rabbit hole but when I got my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard[1] I was finally a happy camper. The improvement over the few membrane split keyboards available was noticeable. Especially once I figured out the layer mappings I like.
It’s sooo much better than the butterfly MacBook keyboard that I basically don’t use my laptop away from my desk any more. I always pack my UHK when I travel. I use a Logitech mouse between the two keyboard halves.
I waited years from the initial find on Crowd Supply to having it. Then several more years before the promised “modules” shipped. By the time the modules arrived I had adapted so completely to the keyboard I haven’t actually found much use for the extra key cluster. I want to like the trackpad module but it doesn’t have two-finger scrolling so it just annoys me when I try to use it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, this setup resulted in so much less hand, arm, and shoulder pain.
[1] https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/