How a decision from 1977 until today affects

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The developers of the Figma design software had to go back to 1977 in search of the reason for a supposed bug in their application. The result of their search is astonishing.

There are several keyboard shortcuts in the Figma design software. For example, users can use the shortcut Shift + 2 to zoom into a design element.

In November 2019, a user noticed that this only works if key 2 is used above the letter field. The 2 on the numeric keypad was not useful for this task. At Figma, people were surprised, especially because this “bug” only occurred on Windows, but not on the Mac.

This is a story of a Figma bug that wasn’t a bug at all

In November of 2019, one of our users reported this: ⁝ MW pic.twitter.com/eoWGYRRvoq

– Figma × Hillary (@figmadesign) May 20, 2021

After an intensive search, the Figma developers found the cause of the bug in a bug that is not at all. The bug hunters had to go back to 1977. Just this year, the mainframe expert IBM entered the market for small computers.

The first model was called “System / 34”, cost a six-digit amount, was extremely heavy and equipped with a keyboard that IBM had given the type designation 5251. The layout showed a block on the left with arrow keys and a few other less important keys, the alphanumeric block in the middle and a numeric keypad adjoining it on the right.

In 1980 the “System / 23” aka Datamaster followed. It was lighter, weighed around 50 kilograms. It was cheaper, around $ 9,000. But it had the 5251 keyboard again. However, IBM had placed the new spring switches under it.

A year later, IBM ventured into the PC segment. With the IBM 5150 aka IBM PC, the manufacturer entered completely new territory. The project had been pulled up in such a hurry that IBM decided to simply reuse several parts of the Datamaster and adapt them as necessary.

At that point it got exciting. With the advent of the killer application spreadsheets, there was a clear need for changes to the keyboard. The requirement to jump back and forth in different cells brought increased attention to the arrow keys.

Accordingly, they had to be positioned more sensibly. IBM invented the double assignment with the numeric keypad, which has remained to this day. The so-called Num-Lock key activates the numeric keypad. When the Num Lock is switched off, the arrow and other navigation keys are active.

IBM invented Shift + 2 so that users in spreadsheets did not have to laboriously switch between numbers and arrows using the lock key.

If you have activated the numeric keypad, you can jump back and forth in the Excel table or in the Word document or wherever you want by holding down the Shift key and pressing the navigation keys on the numeric keypad at the same time. Holding Shift works like deactivating Num Lock. This is a pretty comfortable thing once you get used to it.

In the late 80s, IBM changed the layout again by adding the additional arrow and function block between the alphanumeric keyboard and the numeric keypad. This layout has remained with us to this day.

At this point in time, IBM Shift + 2 could actually have been buried. After all, there was now a separate arrow block. However, users had become so used to the functionality over the years that IBM decided to continue to support Shift + 2. All future keyboard drivers – regardless of whether under MS-DOS or Windows up to the current version – retained the function over the decades.

This made it clear to the developers Figmas what caused the alleged bug. It’s not a bug, but a feature – albeit one that has hardly been used for around 40 years, which is why it has been completely forgotten.

It also explains why the problem does not occur on Macs. Apple never had the need to introduce the Num Lock key. At first there were no arrow keys on Macs because developers should kindly program for the mouse. When they were introduced in 1987, they were placed directly to the right below the alphanumeric keyboard so that there was never a double assignment.

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