3. Caps Lock Must Die!
The QWERTY keyboard has a lot to answer for. Supposedly the keys are laid out to slow down typists15, and when the keyboard made the leap from typewriter to computer we had to tack on a bunch of special keys down around the spacebar. But somehow Caps Lock, that most useless of keys, kept its position right on home row. This, friends, is a travesty. Two travesties in fact. But we can fix them both in one fell swoop.
The first travesty is the modifier key ghetto, down around the edges of the keyboard. Look at those poor suckers. <alt>, <ctrl>, either <windows> or <command>, based on your keyboard’s default OS. Sometimes <fn> sneaks in there, sometimes it’s a <menu> key that not a single person has ever once used. But there all of them are, clear down there, far away from home row, forcing you to do some really awkward things to use them, and as power users we use them frequently. Especially <ctrl> and <alt>.
Which leads us to travesty number two: the <caps lock> key, right there, right on home row. A key that serves no purpose in a day and age where we no longer type out telegraph messages to each other:
ATTENTION FRIENDS STOP REALIZED YOU ARE STILL PUTTING CAPS LOCK KEYS ON KEYBOARDS STOP THIS IS STUPID STOP PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP
At long last, steps are being taken. Google Chromebooks don’t have a <caps lock> key any more, it’s been replaced with a “search” key. Expensive custom keyboards these days include a dip switch that lets you permanently change <caps lock> into an additional <ctrl> key. And this, friends, is what you need to do.
Even without an expensive keyboard, you can remap the <caps lock> key to do something useful with it’s life. I strongly recommend mapping it to <ctrl>, as this will make tmux commands, not to mention vim commands, much easier to type, by placing all the needed keys right on home row.
So do it today. Take a moment and remap your caps lock. Do it today. Thank you.