Stack Overflow is the largest online community about software programming, and recurrent jokes circulate about its users on the Internet about its massive use of ‘copy and paste’ as a method to carry out their own projects.
To such an extent, that during the last April Fool’s (the Anglo-Saxon April Fool’s Day, celebrated on April 1), Stack Overflow made the joke of publishing that the users of the site would be subjected from that moment to a limitation in the number of ‘copy and paste’ that you could carry out within the website …
… So what the only way to overcome this limitation was to buy a new mini keyboard made by themselves and dubbed ‘The Key’ (see above), equipped with only three keys focused solely on the task of pasting (Ctrl + C) and pasting (Ctrl + V) code.
The nifty product ‘Control’ key, as you can see, had been replaced by the Stack Overflow logo. Or it would have been if the mini-keyboard in question had actually existed at that time.
On the other hand, tit was not so difficult to realize of that, given the way they wrote their ‘launch’ announcement, with wonderful paragraphs like this:
“The volume and pitch of our clicks were made by sampling the wonderful natural song of songbirds. We subjected that audio data to state-of-the-art deeep learning systems to produce optimized sound to improve productivity and mood.”
Such a successful joke that it came true
But Stack Overflow fans, once the scare of the false code copy and paste limit scare is over, they were rather disappointed that they could not get hold of a copy of The Key. So much so that those responsible for the portal began to think that perhaps there would be a market to launch a gadget as ‘geek’ as this one.
So, finally, they have launched to manufacture and distribute it. Any user can get one in presale, for only $ 29 plus shipping costs, on the Drop website. The first batch, according to Stack Overflow, will begin shipping on December 13. In time for Christmas shopping.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal, but the best artists copy and then paste” (Ben Popper, Content Director, Stack Overflow)
It is a mechanical keyboard, with Kailh Box Black switches and a metallic aluminum casing, with three anti-slip mounts and a USB-C connector.
If you can’t quite find a possible use for The Key (either because you don’t practice the noble art of copying and pasting, or because you’ve acquired great mastery when it comes to doing it with your usual keyboard), you will undoubtedly be happy to know that we are facing a programmable mini keyboard, so that we could assign any task to any of these new keys (or combination thereof).