Same! My first exposure to mechanical keyboards was back in 2013, very "all the cool kids were getting Das Keyboards." I didn't think much of it, but around that time I started developing some hand and wrist pain while typing. The company I was interning at paid a lot of attention to ergonomics and my mentor came back with a Kinesis Advantage 2, which was far less stressful than the flat Apple keyboards we were using. I don't even know if I realized it was a mechanical keyboard until someone told me.
I liked the Kinesis enough, but eventually decided to build myself an Ergodox. I wanted the complete split keyboard so that I could angle each half more aggressively to take pressure off my wrists. Back then I don't think you could buy a pre-built, so I bought into a kit group buy and spent a few hours soldering. It's a great keyboard, if not the most beautiful looking thing, and I've been using it every day at work ever since.
I lasted 8 years before I felt the need to build another keyboard, this time for my girlfriend's home office. We really did enjoy the sheer amount of choice on the market, via the well-developed hobby market. She needed a split, but she also needed it to fit well in her space. She's always hated the function over form aesthetic of my ergodox, with its clear plastic case, 3d printed risers, and exposed PCB/wiring. On the more functional side, she didn't love the ortholinear layout and wasn't interested in soldering (RSI, hence the interest in a split). We had a great time browsing the larger variety of switches, cases, and keycaps available to us, ultimately going with options that didn't exist in 2013 during my ergodox build to assemble a clean and functional split keyboard to exactly her taste. With hotswap sockets, it's also become normalized for the average keyboard to require zero soldering.
The growth of the keyboard hobby has made building keyboards, even niche ergonomic keyboards, so much more accessible to the average consumer.
I liked the Kinesis enough, but eventually decided to build myself an Ergodox. I wanted the complete split keyboard so that I could angle each half more aggressively to take pressure off my wrists. Back then I don't think you could buy a pre-built, so I bought into a kit group buy and spent a few hours soldering. It's a great keyboard, if not the most beautiful looking thing, and I've been using it every day at work ever since.
I lasted 8 years before I felt the need to build another keyboard, this time for my girlfriend's home office. We really did enjoy the sheer amount of choice on the market, via the well-developed hobby market. She needed a split, but she also needed it to fit well in her space. She's always hated the function over form aesthetic of my ergodox, with its clear plastic case, 3d printed risers, and exposed PCB/wiring. On the more functional side, she didn't love the ortholinear layout and wasn't interested in soldering (RSI, hence the interest in a split). We had a great time browsing the larger variety of switches, cases, and keycaps available to us, ultimately going with options that didn't exist in 2013 during my ergodox build to assemble a clean and functional split keyboard to exactly her taste. With hotswap sockets, it's also become normalized for the average keyboard to require zero soldering.
The growth of the keyboard hobby has made building keyboards, even niche ergonomic keyboards, so much more accessible to the average consumer.