(Full disclosure: I have a Happy Hacking Pro 2. I also have multiple Filco Cherry MX keyboards).
The difference with HHKB is:
1) the Topre switches over standard Cherry switches; it's personal preference, but they are more expensive. In my opinion they feel a lot nicer for long sessions. Very satisfying to type on.
2) It's made in Japan — I believe Topre Realforce are too, but they're also expensive.
3) The layout/size is (fairly) unique, and very awesome. Not having to move from the home row to hit any key at all feels great.
Anyway when you amortize the cost over how long these keyboards (any of them) last, and how much you use them, the price difference isn't such a big deal.
Leopold is a great brand, and they were my top pick till they ran out of stock. Instead I bought a DAS with brown switches and haven't looked back. I highly recommend mechanical keyboards, they are very enjoyable to type on.
So I was sitting all alone in my large office at night, browsed Hacker News and as usual opened this in a new tab but did not really look at it becuase I was browsing some other article. Now suddenly I start hearing a slow coding sound coming out of nowhere, I looked around but there was none. The sounds still kept coming , I even went to look under the desks!! Thoughts of an office ghost started trembling in my mind but then I suddenly realised that those pesky sounds were originating from my Mac and I said W!!! Ghost inside my Mac! Holy Sh! With some courage I bothered to look around my tabs and then nailed on this monster. Great work guys! Would be hard to forget about those horrifying 10 mins!
But honestly, I'm not sure if there is a less-soothing sound than someone cranking away at a keyboard. Takes me right out of my zone of concentration, and there is a reason I put on headphones :)
Actually, I found the sound to be comforting. I miss working in an office with a team on site. Of course, I still can't go hang over their cubicle and ask them a technical question, but I only expect so much of that site. ;)
Interesting, I kinda liked it. But given I am a keyboard freak, the sound of an apple keyboard makes sad. Add a mechanical keyboard in there too, there's the real programming sound :).
No worries at all mate, thanks for the props! We have rewritten a new version with some cool new requested functionality, just bug testing atm, planning to push live in few days ;) stay rainy and code on!
Hi windsurfer, thanks for the heads up, we have found it works on some android devices but not others (it seems to like chrome browser on droid) .
We didn't want to offer a crappy broken version to the masses, so we are working on native app versions for both IOS and Android, stay tuned :)
P.s. new desktop version will go live by this weekend :)
Next : Airplane engine cabin-muted samples ? (can be emulated with low pass filter on laptop fan, found that to be quite calming too, like thunderstorm noise)
Does anyone feel like they work more productively when listening to people bash their keyboards or is this more of a novelty thing? Personally, I can understand the rain sounds, this - not so much.
whoosh I guess I thought some people might enjoy the sound of other people at work? Rain sounds weren't exactly intuitive for me either living in Seattle. Thanks :)
Except that happiness and despair haven't got much to do with the language. It's the work you do and the environment you're in that make you happy or unhappy.
Exactly. The tools themselves are rarely the source of anguish.
I'd MUCH rather write a language I don't enjoy in a clean, well-architected project than use my favorite language in a bandages-on-"quickfixes"-on-bandages project.
No, I must be a one trick pony who has only ever used one language, on one platform, in one workplace and has no experience on which to base his claims. What sense would it make to post a comment based on personal experience, right?
I disagree, I haven't had a single bad experience with PHP in years of use, maybe I'm just lucky or too close minded, but having used python, perl and ruby for programming too, I actually prefer PHP.
