[mechanicum]

It’s about hand movement, not desk space.

The “missing” keys are on additional layers reached via a modifier key, or by overloading keys on tap/hold, or by increasingly esoteric methods the smaller the board gets: chording, tap dance, etc. They’re typically no less accessible than capital letters, while allowing you to keep your fingers on the home row.

For me, the additional keys on my larger keyboards rarely prove useful in practice. I end up mostly using the same subset available on the 60% I’m typing on now – it’s quicker and more comfortable than reaching over to the dedicated key.

[adornKey]

On the other hand there is spatial memory. Overloading things has some downsides - it adds more possibilities for errors - and makes muscle memory complicated.

In a lot of software those extra function keys are well used, easily go into muscle memory and help to safe a lot of time.

[alpaca128]

I actually make fewer errors and in some cases reach higher speeds when typing a lot of special symbols as everything is reachable without moving my hands and I arranged all special symbols in a way that makes sense to me. Muscle memory works perfectly fine, with the difference that I don't need to make blind error prone hand movements across the keyboard to use arrow keys etc.