Undoubtedly, programmers are a major user of keyboards, and IDE developers love function keys for esoteric shortcuts for debugging, moving around, and running code. So why do so many split keyboards not actually have the function keys.
I think makers are missing out a huge audience.
Ctrl-[1-9] selects the first few, and last tab in most browsers.
I get your point, though. I, for one, wish vertically staggered keebs had more keys. (just straight up F1-F24, because more keys is more better)
it’s alt+num on debian and MATE! :)