GoKawiilFigma traces decades-old Shift+Numpad bug to IBM's 1977 keyboard design
A Figma engineer investigated a user-reported quirk where Shift+2 worked differently depending on whether it was pressed via the main keyboard or the numeric keypad, but only on Windows. The investigation traced the behavior back to keyboard layout decisions IBM made starting with its 1977 System/34 and carried forward through the Datamaster and the original IBM PC.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The case illustrates how software behavior can be shaped by hardware design choices made decades earlier, long before the affected application existed. It suggests that debugging modern software sometimes requires understanding historical engineering decisions that have been quietly inherited across generations of operating systems and keyboard standards.
- A reported Figma bug turned out to stem from keyboard layout decisions IBM made in 1977.
- The issue only appeared on Windows, pointing to OS-level handling of keypad versus main-row keys.
- Modern software bugs can have roots in decades-old hardware design legacies.
Source: aresluna.org — Marcin Wichary, 2026-10-21
Published there as: “A story of a Figma bug that wasn't a bug at all (2021)”
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