Roughly a year ago, I found myself inwardly complaining about the fact that my 60% keyboard only had the Control key on one side. This minor inconvenience led me down a rabbit hole of keyboard optimization that is so deep I may never emerge In any event, I have settled on a 36-key split as my daily driver—and in the course of optimizing the layout, it became clear to me that I could do very specific things to make the layout better for Elixir, which is a favorite of mine. After 8 years using Dvorak, followed by a few years back on QWERTY, I had settled into using Colemak DHm as my primary layout for the alpha keys. I wanted to apply the pleasant inward rolls that Colemak was giving me to the symbol layer as well, with some special attention to Elixir. For programming in general, I grouped inward-rolling pairs like +=, (), [], and {}, but I also discovered that by using the grouping: < | - >, I could make comfortable rolls for a number of Elixir conventions all at once (<>, <-, ->, |>). I could also put other commonly used symbols, like " or :, in positions that better reflect their Elixir-specific importance, and still have room for rolled pairings that serve other purposes (like ~/ for Unix file paths). Coupling these improvements with the power of QMK firmware (oneshot layers/modifiers, dual-function keys) has made for a really comfortable and enjoyable experience. I don’t have any idea how much overlap there might be between the various communities (Elixir, alt layout, mechanical keyboard), but I thought I would share it here since a lot of my thinking was inspired by Elixir syntax.

If this type of thing interests you, you can see the layout itself in the QMK repo (the symbol layer is towards the end).

If you’re wondering about my choice of alpha layout, I’ve written about that elsewhere.

There is always room for improvement—you’d be correct to point out that EEx openers (<%=) aren’t that smooth—but I’m relatively satisfied for now.

Anyway, thanks to the community for this awesome language. I’ve only just started my journey but it’s really a joy to use.