> Meanwhile every use of shift, return, backspace, ctrl etc is done with the weakest fingers and often include some hand stretching to reach those keys.

As previously stated, this is only an issue for non-practiced typers. With practice, it no longer feels like stretching. It just becomes muscle memory. It's like a novice golfer complaining that it hurts their hips when they rotate through the swing, or a tennis player complaining that trying to add spin with a wrist twist feels weird, or any millions of other example of "feels weird without practice". Hell, most people can't do the most basic of yoga poses without practice. Muscles need to be stretched and trained into doing what you want them to do. Once they are, all of the complaints go away and things feel normal.

Is QWERTY the most efficient, no. But as someone else commented, speed is not my issue. Thinking what needs to be typed is definitely my speed regulator. If I were to just do basic text dictation or re-typing while reading a direct source, my speeds increase dramatically.

I find that most typing complaints are from those that never had formal typing instruction and are self taught with games or similar. I was fortunate to have one full year of typing while in high school, and it is by far the most used class instruction I've ever had.

I think having Shift available for the thumb would help a lot (in the middle just below Space bar).

Most experimental layouts that add more features make the mistake to overload it, some of these things even look totally thumb-driven.... This make everything very confusing. Just Shift for a start, would be good. The pinky is too much overloaded. Offloading some of it to the thumb would actually be an improvement.

Less things to connect, less switches, less caps, ... I think it's mostly about manufacturing cost. If you build a keyboard yourself, you're glad if you have to solder less. So for sure any prototype of a new design will start small. If you go full size price goes up a lot.

For usability alone those small sizes don't make much sense in an office or on a desk.

It’s about hand movement, not desk space.

The “missing” keys are on additional layers reached via a modifier key, or by overloading keys on tap/hold, or by increasingly esoteric methods the smaller the board gets: chording, tap dance, etc. They’re typically no less accessible than capital letters, while allowing you to keep your fingers on the home row.

For me, the additional keys on my larger keyboards rarely prove useful in practice. I end up mostly using the same subset available on the 60% I’m typing on now – it’s quicker and more comfortable than reaching over to the dedicated key.

Yeah, I got a compact keyboard once because I was focused on other features. Never again. Give me all the keys.

My favorite keyboard was the one I had about 1996, but the "retro" IBM-style keyboards are awfully pricey these days.

There are a lot of full-sized keyboards there aka 100%, for example look at Keychron, there are 39 100% and 30 96% along with some variants.

But the obsession with <80% keyboards are steaming from a couple of factors and less soldering as other commenters said is one of them. Other one is what "the community" as many others were overwhelmed at some point by "the influencers" who adored that "digital nomad" lifestyle[1] and ~65% is surely more convenient than 100% one. Another point though I'm not sure it's conscious one is what a lot of people not even using 100% in their life anymore because their devices has a not 100% keyboard from the start - laptops, or don't have a keyboard at all - smartphones. So there is no attachment or "spatial memory" of quickly punching some number on keypad or using navigational block naturally. And at last but not least if you have 100+ keys it's hard to justify all that layers shenanigans and whatnot, heh.

As N=1 I can tell what despite what I ended with K3 Pro (it's 75%) accidentally I'm pretty happy with it because it's compact enough what I can toss it in the laptop bag (though rarely) with my 14" or postman-like[3] with an 8" Android tablet but I still do have the function keys (I was aiming at 65% at first), don't need another keyboard at the desk and 65% isn't that much smaller than 75% despite the looks.

EDIT: oh and don't forget what 90% of the market is just [stupid] fashion anyway, you can't be a serious about MK, DIY and all that when you can buy "solid mega gaming mechanical keyboard with cool anime girl themed keycaps and 95 modes of RGB backlight! (only 3 keycaps btw, but it's not mentioned)" for less than $50 not only from no-name (or RJELTHKETG) Chinese shop but from the big names too.

[0] https://www.keychron.com/collections/all-keyboards

[1] from the home to Starbucks and back making a lot of photos and selfies in process, if you understand what I mean

[2] https://www.keychron.com/collections/keychron-k-pro-series-k...

[3] albeit it's thinner and vertical https://www.victorinox.com/en/Products/Travel-Gear/Backpacks...

The physical keys are the same ones no matter if it's qwerty or dvorak, of course, so yes you can reach the keys without shifting your wrists over.

But some movement is there, and once I reached even 10 wpm or something, it was immediately noticeable that this is more comfortable because so much of what I now type is on the home row. Fingers need to stretch less, wrists wiggle less.

> In short bursts I can reach higher speeds than what I can maintain over a period of time. It's fast enough for me.

I don't do Dvorak for the speed. I did it for the comfort and getting rid of RSI. But I'm also faster.

To me it's a bit of a separate question of "does speed matter?". I'd say yes, because sometimes you're taking notes while someone is talking, and the less time you have to type while listening, and the less you are behind on noting down what was said, the easier it is to not lose the thread.

> [transcribing what someone is saying is] a very specific use-case

Some version of this happens every single meeting I'm in.

You don't necessarily need word for word, or maybe you want word for word, but you don't need every sentence, but note taking during a meeting will be much worse if you can't type fast.