Undoubtedly, programmers are a major user of keyboards, and IDE developers love function keys for esoteric shortcuts for debugging, moving around, and running code. So why do so many split keyboards not actually have the function keys.
I think makers are missing out a huge audience.
I don’t remember the last time I had to press a number key and the enter key at the same time. I can’t remember the last time I had to press a number key and ctrl at the same time, so obviously by your logic, that’s two more keys that do not need to be on the keyboard!
Ctrl-[1-9] selects the first few, and last tab in most browsers.
I get your point, though. I, for one, wish vertically staggered keebs had more keys. (just straight up F1-F24, because more keys is more better)
it’s alt+num on debian and MATE! :)