I have a keyboard that's "missing" essential keys, but I have a special key that I can press with my thumb that changes that every single key does (it's called a Layer). So I never need to move my wrist to press the arrow keys: just hold the thumb button and press hjkl. Page up is layer+t, page down is layer+g. And so on. It's great, my wrists thank me. I can even program a macro that will trigger an OS shortcut that will send a packet to my Smart Coffee Grinder or tell Alexa to call 911. Or have the F479001600 key you mentioned.
There are a bunch of keyboards with this functionality. I personally use a Dygma Raise.
I like keyboards with layers support, but layers aren't a replacement for sufficient keys. Holding down the layer button means another finger unavailable for hotkeys. For instance, on my keyboard (ZSA Moonlander) I have the function keys in an alternate layer. This isn't a problem for a normal press (layer shift + 2 => F2), but it makes pressing something like Ctrl+Shift+F2 rather painful.
Yes, for such shortcuts that I use frequently I can create special custom keys in layers, but when using new apps or particularly complicated apps with lots of hotkeys (IntelliJ) that doesn't scale.
I eventually went with home-row mods and a miryoku based layout. I've found home-row mods to be quite finicky with respect to timing, but I think overall they are better than not.
I have a Moonlander and regret listening to all of the enthusiast reviews about it. It feels great to type on, but the missing keys and blank keycaps for a lot of keys is slowly driving me crazy. I dabble in a lot of things but don't really code anymore for my job. So it's not worth it for me to customize my keyboard and layers for whatever IDE today that I won't use for long. And I switch from PC to Mac to Linux a lot, so the having to keep all the keyboard shortcuts straight in my head while using a minimal, somewhat unlabeled keyboard is impossible.
Sounds like it ain’t worth much at all. Wanna trade?
I got a dell media keyboard I bought at Goodwill. No lie it has a lot of pointless keys dating back to the dinosaurs and comes with extra skin cells.
You can tap Scroll Lock until ya ded.
Crazy idea I've always wanted to try: somehow hack a USB foot-pedal to act as a layer key.
(Hard, because usually the layers are implemented inside the keyboard's firmware, rather than being processed by the OS. Maybe the foot-pedal would need to plug into the keyboard.)
Doesn't work for keys that don't send keysyms by default but instead act as e.g. media keys if you're not holding a modifier. (Media keys are their own USB HID usage page; the OS keyboard driver doesn't see them.)
I'm familiar with layers; in fact, I have an extensive layer setup in KDE. But then the problem becomes that I can never remember which key under what layer does what action. So, I basically use four keys from my other layers and have given up on all the others I set up.
My poor memory is my unique problem. Layering won't help. Having dedicated keys that I can see, though, helps me remember what those do. As someone else suggested, I can put custom labels on the extra keys.
Layouts being configurable in firmware is a must for keyboards for me at this point. Having to rely on OS/DE configuration or especially crappy third party software sucks.
There are a bunch of keyboards with this functionality. I personally use a Dygma Raise.