I find Ctrl+C surprisingly non-ergonomic, and the problem goes far beyond a single shortcut.
Programming usually involves thousands of small editing operations every day: copying, pasting, undoing, moving the cursor, navigating by word, jumping to the beginning or end of a line, selecting, and deleting. Together, these actions constantly pull the hands away from the home position, adding up to kilometers of movement over time.
I started experimenting with a keyboard layer that keeps normal QWERTY typing unchanged but moves most editing and navigation commands closer to the home position.
Left Alt temporarily activates the layer.
For example:
Alt + Q / W - copy / paste
Alt + H / J / K / L and nearby keys - cursor and text navigation
the same navigation layer also covers word movement and beginning/end of line
Alt + Shift + navigation - selection
Alt + CapsLock + navigation - directional deletion
CapsLock - Enter
There is no persistent mode to enter or leave. The layer exists only while Alt is held.
The main idea is not to memorize more shortcuts. It is to reduce hand travel: most common editing operations can be performed without reaching for Ctrl, the arrow-key cluster, Home, End, Backspace or Enter.
After using this setup, conventional Ctrl shortcuts and the separate navigation-key cluster started to feel surprisingly inefficient.
I eventually turned the experiment into a small open-source Windows tool:
https://aleklabs.dev/keyboard-layer
I'm curious how other developers handle this.
Do you use the default keyboard shortcuts, Vim-style navigation, programmable keyboard layers, or your own remapping?