Macro keyboards are mini programmable USB keyboards that can be pressed to trigger shortcuts, a sequence of keypresses etc. They can have several layers so switching to a different one will trigger different keypresses from the same key, so e.g. different IDEs can be represented.
I’ve just bought one with a view to setting up shortcuts for debugging. Each IDE has its own unique keys for navigating through the code, so I figure it’ll be nice to just press one key to start debugging and one key to step into instead of a combination of ctrl+whatever etc
Do you use one? If so, what do you use it for and what size do you use? Is it too big / too small?
No macro keyboard but I have a programmable mouse with 12 buttons which I assume is similar. You can have different modes with different key bindings so I made 4 modes = 48 buttons.
I don’t have that many macros though, it’s mostly control keys that are used a lot, arrow keys etc. For coding I have some bindings with ctrl-C, ctrl-V, ctrl-Z, ctrl-/ which work in most editors. Something that’s a bit more interesting, I have a button that places the word “exit” in the clipboard, so you can then press the ctrl-V button to paste the word in a terminal, cause a lot of processes (like the ruby console) can’t be closed with ctrl-C.
Most REPLs can be closed with Ctrl+D which is the EOF character.
Huh true, I’ll have to check again see if it works with the usual programs (it probably does)