A keyboard designed exclusively for copy and paste? The stuff of magic.
When we first heard about The Key, a miniscule mechanical keyboard with just three keys, we resolved to get our hands on one. Imagined into existence by coding forum Stack Overflow with the help of designer Cassidy Williams, The Key has just one purpose: to copy and paste. A noble calling, if ever there was one. The only problem was that The Key didn’t actually exist. It was all just a cruel joke, an April Fool’s stunt par excellence. However, sensing the team had inadvertently come up with a rather good idea, Stack Overflow secretly commissioned Drop to manufacture a small number of boards. And in September last year, The Key eventually went on sale for the first time, priced at $29. The core philosophy behind The Key is simple: everyone copies sometimes, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. “They say good artists copy, but great artists steal. They were wrong. Great artists, developers, and engineers copy. Then they paste,” wrote Stack Overflow, when The Key made its debut. “Every day, millions of innovators and creators across the globe move society and industry forward by copy-pasting code. But for too long, this process has been stuck in the past. Say goodbye to cramped fingers, sore wrists, and wasted movement. Say hello to The Key.” The Key is first and foremost a joke at the expense of developers, who regularly steal code snippets from Stack Overflow to use in their own projects, but for whom being called a “copy and paste programmer” would be a mortal insult. On April Fool’s Day itself, Stack Overflow threw up a pop-up every time someone tried to copy material from the platform, telling them they had run out of free copy-pastes and must purchase The Key to unlock more.
