Also dev here. I miss the numpad maybe once a quarter but better ergonomics and posture make it worth it. Without a numpad I can keep the letter part of the keyboard right in front of me instead of slightly shifted to the left.
My keyboard is also programmable so CapsLock+WASD are my arrow keys and once you have that down, you will never want to go back.
Likewise, ortholinear programmable keyboard. Holding down one of the left hand home-row keys turns a numpad-sized chunk of keys under the right hand into a numpad.
One does (it's a southpaw, numeric keypad on the left). A few are TKL (full size keyboard without the numpad).
Actually, as a programmer, I pretty much never use the numeric keypad. But when I start seeing smaller layouts with no arrow keys, Fn keys, or even number keys, I tend to agree: there's a definite trade off between function and aesthetics. The beauty of custom keyboards is people get to decide those trade-off's themselves.
As a dev I also have very little use for a numpad. Unless it’s a the weekend and I’m messing around in Blender, it along with the traditional home/end cluster and arrows are just a bunch of dead space pushing my mouse way too far the right. I much prefer the numpad being it’s own separate thing that can be moved around, but a southpaw setup would be ok too.
The worst thing is when laptops come with numpads, pushing the trackpad off to the left and making it impossible to center my arms while typing. Drives me crazy.
The only thing I've ever used a numpad for in my life is Blender (3D modeling) which has some core shortcuts mapped to the numpad. Unfortunately that means these 60% keyboards wouldn't really work for me, but I've never ever used the numpad for programming.
How do you reconcile "heavy use" and straying from home row? Any serious who actually engages their keyboard in heavy use would be just as productive with a 60% keyboard, as they wouldn't move their hands from home row position to use the numpad or the arrow keys or anything. That's why for example Emacs uses Ctrl+{f,b,n,p} for navigation instead of the arrow keys.
Yes, I had to use a keyboard with a non-IBM layout (for lack of a better description) for a while at work, it’s absolutely maddening the location where some of the keys are. Impossible to get used to when you’re using a lot of shortcuts in eg editors.
