As we all know, the QWERTY keyboard layout is dominant around the globe, especially in Latin world. However, some may not know that it is a result of culture instead of productivity, as this kind of layout focusing on the jams of the early typewriter, placing commonly used letter-pairs (like "th" or "st") so that their typebars were not neighboring.
Christopher Latham Sholes's 1878 QWERTY keyboard layout, slightly different from now¶
In modern world, most keyboards use ASCII keyboard by United States standard,
Apparently, one of the most stupid feature is that the CapsLock encroaches the golden spot, while the Control key is hard to reach. Hence, a common solution is swap them, and you can achieve this by modify the registry. But here I would like to introduce a powerful tools called AutoHotkey(AHK), which is not only a key mapping software, but also a hackable ultimate automation scripting language, e.g. for game robots. The entire documentation of AHK is immense, so I will just give an example here:
`::esc
esc::`
Capslock::ctrl
Control::Capslock
Clearly, it swaps backtick, capslock for escape, control respectively, it's a popular setting among developers.
Unfortunately, this method has flaws. Firstly, this change is not on a system level, and when you type in cmd the AHK will be invalid. Secondly, when you attempt to remote control a computer with AHK, the keyboard mapping could be a mess. Last but not least, the defects of the hardware, e.g. the feel, the global layout, can not be overcomed through software.
There are some special keyboards for coders. HHKB (Happy Hacking Keyboard) is one of the favorite.
