Please substantiate that. From what I’ve heard these things can lead to injury:

1. Repeatedly/repetitively using small/weak/fine-motor muscles

2. Contorting your hands (like holding multiple modifirs with the same hand and also pressing whatever non-modifier)

Moving your whole hand from the venerable home row to for example the nav cluster doesn’t fall under any of the above, since you can move your arm with your shoulder. I have never had problems with using larger muscles like my shoulders all day for simple, non-strenuous tasks, and I haven’t heard of people who have reported problems with it yet. I have however heard of people who have gotten in trouble because they repeatedly do tiny motions with their fingers or hands. Which is tempting since it can feel easier to use those muscles for precise control -- I certainly pen-write with my wrist too much when I should be using my shoulder more -- but can easily lead to fatigue or worse.

I have had more problems with Emacs’ modifier-heavy default keybindings than I’ve ever had with modifier-less peasant software like word processors, ergonomics-wise.

It isn’t a problem for me ergonomically to move to the arrow keys if I want to do a bunch of “meta” keys like move word right or left,[1] which is harder to do on som fn-keyboard where you both have to hold down the shift key and the fn key. I also am able to use the arrow keys from the somewhat overrated home row, but that is on a non-configurable keyboard (remapped in software).

I would say that people have a minor point when they say that moving your hands wastes time. Kind of like me going for a five minute walk every so often wastes time compared to sitting at my desk for eight hours straight. Now I’m putting a fine point on it, but I actually think that even a little bit of gross movement like that can be more beneficial than hurtful.

I’ve used a cheap 60% keyboard for a while and it was never really my thing (just got it for the n-key rollover):

1. You can’t reprogram the fn key on the keyboard (again if cheap)

2. You can’t reprogram the fn key in software since it is effectively “blessed” (your OS can’t see it)

3. Now you’re stuck with whatever fn layout that they made, which is often subpar (example: my 60% has some fn-whatever combos that turn off keys or lock them which just causes problems whenever I accidentally press them (always accidentally))

4. Big Brand keyboards are customizable but their software is likely to be too limited, which means that you have to buy somewhat boutique keyboards in order to truly map the fn layer business the way you want

5. I already alluded to how multi-modifier keybindings can be a pain: a lot of software assume that you use a regular keyboard so they will throw keybindings like Ctrl+Shift+PageUp at you, which might translate to something unwieldy like Fn+Ctrl+Shift+P. That’s too much hassle. (Intellij is a real sinner in this regard.)

I currently use a tenkeyless keyboard which gives me the only less-than-fullsize keyboard advantage that I care about: my mouse is closer.

[1]: Yes, sometimes I use built-in/embedded editors or textfields (like Firefox’s address bar) that are not Vim or Emacs; No, I don’t want to configure every last software that I use that contain mini-editors to use some kind of Vim-like plugin so that I can e.g. move word-right with `w`.