My world of Mechanical Keyboards in 2023

I dove into mechanical keyboards back in 2021 and even tried out a few interesting ones that year, recording a video review you can check out here (in Russian): https://youtu.be/oY6quH1jRxA?si=_I98Kiy2_0EzlGPP

Now I want to give you a quick rundown of 2023! Let's go in chronological order 👇

Mistel BAROCCO MD770 RGB – a split keyboard with a familiar layout. I only used it for a few days and it just didn't click with me, hard to explain why.

https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/5e53c3254c6f41f25c914273fb3a4d8b

Ergohaven K:02 – another split keyboard, but with only 58 keys (quite a change from the popular TKL size with 87 keys). The real challenge was the column staggered layout. It was a struggle, my muscle memory kept tripping me up, every keystroke was a challenge! I had to use it alongside a "normal" keyboard because, well, work has to get done.

https://ergohaven.xyz/k02

Idobao x YMDK ID75 Acrylic Case Kit – this is actually a DIY kit, but I got a pre-assembled used one. It's ortholinear, which was a new thing for me. At that time, I was painfully learning to type on the Ergohaven K:02, so I thought it'd be a great idea to practice on a solid ortholinear board first! It worked out well. I got the hang of the YMDK ID75's ortholinear layout pretty quickly (maybe the effort I put into the K:02 helped) and enjoyed using this keyboard for several months.

And the backlighting! Everyone who saw it in action was amazed.

https://ymdkey.com/products/idobao-x-ymdk-id75-acrylic-case-kit-via-hotswap-supported-rgb-wired

https://youtu.be/WiFIycUnXFs?si=GeaJkb-6ogz_xN_N

ZSA Moonlander Mark 1 – a well-known split keyboard brand with lots of reviews and articles. To date, it's the most expensive keyboard I've ever bought. My first impression was a letdown – I didn't get the hype. After a couple of weeks, I put it back in its box. I returned to the Moonlander a few months later, swapped out the switches – and it was like a whole new experience! I had been using MX Brown switches, which I respected, but I switched to MX Silver, which I had found too soft before. This time, they were perfect for the Moonlander, which was surprising since you wouldn't think the switches would make such a difference.

Just a note, choosing switches is very personal, so what works for me might not work for you.

Coming back to the ZSA Moonlander Mark 1 – it's the most comfortable split keyboard I've tried so far. Also I do have a dedicated key for $ (dollar sign) key on this keyboard for PHP programming 😇

https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/

Ergohaven Planeta – while the Moonlander was boxed up, I tried a "monosplit." The key layout is similar to many split keyboards – column staggered, and I was already trained on the K:02 and YMDK, so I could touch type on this layout with ease.

A big plus over the K:02 – Planeta has two extra keys! These additional keys were really useful, making the whole layout more comfortable. The cherry on top was the Dots keycaps – colorful dots that looked super cool.

https://ergohaven.xyz/planeta
https://candykeys.com/group-buys/gmk-dots

Ergohaven HPD (High Plains Drifter) – a split and curved keyboard. The curved shape is supposed to add extra ergonomics, making it easier to hit the top row keys. There are lots of videos on YouTube about this – just search for "dactyl manuform" reviews.

The thumb keys placement on the Ergohaven HPD is also well thought out – really comfortable!

Compared to my favorite, the Moonlander, the latter wins for me because of the greater number of keys, which I find important and useful for daily work.

https://ergohaven.xyz/hpd

That wraps up all my new keyboards for 2023. Here's my subjective ranking:
1. ZSA Moonlander Mark 1
2. Ergohaven HPD
3. Ergohaven Planeta
4. Ergohaven K:02
6. Idobao x YMDK ID75 Acrylic Case Kit
7. Mistel BAROCCO MD770 RGB

Plans for 2024

But the story doesn't end here! In 2024, I want to try out a few models that I've only seen in YouTube reviews so far:

ZSA Voyager – it's low-profile which I like! But I'm a bit concerned about the small number of keys. Regardless, it's worth a try. https://www.zsa.io/voyager/

Dygma Defy – it has a lot of thumb keys. I'm not sure whether this is convenient or just overkill? https://dygma.com/pages/defy

MoErgo Glove80 – it's low-profile and curved and it has 6 thumb keys on each side - all the advantages in one keyboard? Want to try! https://www.moergo.com/

Offtopic again.

While I was chilling over the New Year holidays, I watched an interesting video: a breakdown of all the possible combinations in a game of tic-tac-toe.

How many combinations are there? A naive approach to count would be: 9 * 8 * 7 * ... * 2 * 1 = 362,880.

The video's author narrows it down to 14 unique combinations. Even more, if each player makes "optimal" moves, there are only 3 combinations! Sic!

This video intrigued me so much that I went through all the combinations, sketching out a tree of possible games on a piece of grid paper!

Enjoy watching: https://youtu.be/QNFQvX-MQgI?si=tkfRsRdByZydxb-z

I just updated my PhpStorm to version 2024.1, and one of the big new features is the local AI autocomplete called "Full Line Code Completion". The press release made it sound super promising, especially since the AI's suggestions are double-checked by the IDE to filter out any unfit options.

But here's the real deal:
1) The new PhpStorm 2024.1 is pretty buggy. A lot of the standard features are broken, making it tough to work with.
2) The new Full Line Code Completion? It works about as well as you can see in the screenshot below.

I wanted to give the new local AI from JetBrains a longer test run, but unfortunately, the overall bugginess of PhpStorm 2024.1 forced me to roll back to version 2023.3.

It's sad but true: the first release of every new major version of PhpStorm has been too raw for the last couple of years. I always end up going back to the previous version. Looks like it's best to wait for a few minor updates before diving in.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2024/04/04/full-line-code-completion-in-jetbrains-ides-all-you-need-to-know/

I’ve been using the JetBrains Space for last two years for my work projects. Space - it’s like a GitLab, all in one platform for IT companies.

What I like about it: responsive web interface, super convenient web-based code review (hello to sluggish GitLab 👋), great mobile app, and awesome Code Review integration in PhpStorm (although I hear GitHub and GitLab's Code Review integrations are cool too, haven't compared them myself).

Downsides: the built-in issue tracker is basic (not enough features, looks weak, missing a lot), and the CI/CD pipelines were a pain to deal with. There's not much info online, the documentation is dry, and even ChatGPT doesn't know much about it.

Just read on their blog: "we have decided to discontinue Space as it stands now and pivot it to a new product that will focus primarily on Git hosting and code reviews."

Turns out, the features that I thought were well-designed and implemented in Space are staying as part of SpaceCode, while everything else is being discontinued. It makes sense, but it's still a bummer that JetBrains couldn't create an awesome all-in-one cloud-based development platform 😢

Fun fact: JetBrains already had a product focused on Code Review called Upsource, but they shut it down two years ago.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/space/2024/05/27/the-future-of-space/

I've just updated from macOS 14 (Sonoma) to the newer macOS (Sequoia).

Everything seems to be working correctly!
brew services list - all up and running.
- Nginx works
- PHP-FPM works
- MySQL works
- Redis works

Yes, I do use a local development environment installed directly on the host, not in Docker.

Tried the "Augment Code" plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.
It's yet another AI assistant, but this time they promise project-wide indexing and support for large codebases—which is exactly what I need!

However, after installing it, PhpStorm started to noticeably lag. After a while, it completely froze. I thought maybe the Augment Code plugin was aggressively indexing my project, causing the slowdown, but Activity Monitor didn’t show any significant CPU usage.

After a Force Quit (macOS app kill) and restarting PhpStorm, it froze again! I wanted to remove the plugin, but I couldn’t even get to the Settings > Plugins section before PhpStorm froze.

So, I deleted the plugin directly from the file system in the plugins directory (`~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains//plugins`). After that, PhpStorm launched without freezing.

But here’s the catch: IntelliJ IDEA’s settings and plugins sync system automatically downloaded the plugin again! And in the IDE settings, instead of an "Uninstall" button, there was a "Restart IDE" button (since the plugin had just been downloaded). After restarting, it froze all over again.

I found a solution online: launching PhpStorm from the terminal with the parameter phpstorm disableNonBundledPlugins. That allowed me to uninstall the plugin successfully.

I'm trying out a new keyboard: ZSA Voyager: https://www.zsa.io/voyager

It has 52 keys. I've never used a keyboard with so few keys before. The main difficulty: there's no dedicated row for Ctrl, Option, and Cmd keys (macOS terms).

But there are a couple of thumb keys on each side.

This created a tricky puzzle: should I put Ctrl, Option, and Cmd on a separate layer, or use the so-called "home row mode"? In home row mode, ctrl, option, and cmd are placed on regular letter keys and activated only when held down for some time, e.g. more than 200ms.

I've tried home row mode on other keyboards just out of curiosity. My experience was that visual feedback after pressing letters in “home row” becomes noticeably slower. Typing feels unpleasant, like it's lagging. Sometimes there are false positives too. People say you can fine-tune tap/hold timings to match your typing speed, but I don't believe in this approach (though I haven't tried it myself).

🙅 After several hours struggling with home row mode on ZSA Voyager today, I gave up again and dropped the idea of home row mode.

At the end of working day I've placed Ctrl and Option on a separate layer, with Cmd on the main layer (under my thumb). Let's see how it goes tomorrow.

Preliminary conclusion: 52 keys might be too few after all.

🔝 Currently, my top split keyboards ranking is:
1. Glove 80
2. Ergohaven HDP
3. Ergohaven K:03
4. ZSA Moonlander
5. Dygma Defy

We'll see where ZSA Voyager lands on this list.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a series of funny videos where popular movies were dubbed with jokes about programming. Couldn’t stop watching until I finished them all!

Here’s a masterpiece about three developers: a PHP dev from the 2000s, an Angular dev from the 2010s, and an AI dev from today’s world 😂

https://youtu.be/Rf7x-4lgeno?si=04fWmXadW2YLzJtl

Just updated macOS to the latest version: Tahoe (26).

My PHP and nginx are running through Herd - nothing broke, nothing crashed, everything works perfectly!

My feelings!

Usefull top alternative for macOS: https://github.com/metaspartan/mactop