I’ve used a US-QWERTY keyboard layout my entire life. I’ve seen other layouts that do things like reduce the size of the enter/backspace keys, move the pipe operator (|) and can’t wrap my head around how I would code on those.
What are your experiences? Are there any layouts that you prefer for coding over US English? Are there any symbols that you have a hard time reaching ($ for example)?
I use Coleman DH and symbols have never been an issue because I just put them on another layer 😅
I used to use ANSI, but then moved to England and bought a laptop and returned it because of the “weird” ISO keyboard, then forever bought dell because I could customise it.
Moved back to ANSIland, but will still probably just buy dell.
I’ve used AT QWERTZ ever since I was born.
I use Spanish QWERTY layout and it’s… weird for coding.
I’m used to it from my whole life so that’s what I use but sometimes brackets or special symbols are weird.
I’ve always wanted to change to use US-International layout. So I can keep ñ and áéíóú, and also have easy access to coding symbols. But I have never got around it.
Anyhow I still think that whoever designed ISO layouts messed up. We should use US international layout. That’s my two cents.
On UK keyboards the
£replaces the$and$replaces'Double quotation marks
"are in the same place though so a lot of british programmers don’t use single quotation marks because they are hard to press. If your touch typing you have to reach all the way to the bottom right with your right hand little finger and it’s just not worth it.I’ve used various layouts of non-US keyboards over time since I’ve lived and worked in various countries in Europe and whilst you do start by looking down to find stuff and for a while will at times unthinkingly choose the “old” position for a symbol when touch typing, you just get used to the new layout in a month or two, even if touch typing - your brain just starts directing your fingers to the new positions.
That said, for seldom used symbols you still have to look down and check on which key that symbol is (it’s generally printed on the key), I suppose because you don’t really exercise those enough for your brain to reliably start sending your fingers to the new position without looking.
(So given the languages I usually program with, for stuff like semicollon and open and close brackets and parentesis the brain quickly adjusts but stuff like the dollar sign I still have to look down and check, which is really noticeable if for some reason I have to do some shell scripting or similar)
Things like letters and numbers don’t change position so that’s not a problem.
Once you’ve become accustomed to a new layout, switching keyboards between those layouts is a bit like switching the side of the road you’re driving (say, between the UK and Continental Europe) - you get a couple of hours of extra memntal tension and having to think things a bit more at first and after that you’ve fully readjusted.
Is there any reason why you didn’t just switch the keyboard layout to US if that’s what you’re used to?
I switched to US at some point because many if the keys for programming were just so much easier to access. If I have to use a pc for any decent amount of time, I just switch the OS layout to US now regardless of the layout that’s printed on the keyboard.
I’m not used to the US Keyboard layout.
I think I only used it when I got a cheap second hand notebook in Canada during my vacations there.
The reason not to change the keyboard layout to something different from the physical layout is that once in a while you have to use a seldom used symbol for which you don’t really have the touch-typing muscle memory, and looking at a physical keyboard with a different layour from the one you’re using at the software level won’t tell you were that symbol is, turning the whole thing into an unnecessary PITA of trying to find it by trial and error (I usually get this the other way around: when the software defaults to US Layout but my actual keyboard doesn’t have that layout).
I do more than just programming on keyboards and some of the languages (spoken, not programming) I write in have accents and funny characters which don’t even appear in a US Layout keyboard.
Also sometimes you really don’t have much of a choice if you’re in some country and the local employer/hotel/internet-caffee provides some local keyboard and you don’t have the permissions to change the layout in the OS.
Yeah, yeah, you do have to climb and overcome the small learning-curve of learning to adjust to new keyboards, but once you have it’s not at all a big deal to adjust to whatever you happen to get your hands on.
I’m British and use the ISO-UK layout.
I use Colemak where most punctuation is at the same place as in the US English layout, which programming languages seem to be optimized toward. For the layout I prefer ISO for the larger Enter key.
I am German and I use the German keyboard layout…
I use a plain 34 keys layout based on qwerty for letters, comma/dot/semicolon. The numpad and symbols layers are handcrafted so that every symbol is easy to reach, it’s also optimize to type things like <- and -> easily
I use a country-specific ISO layout, and while I’m very aware that certain things are insanely awkward compared to a US keyboard, like { }, [ ], $ and /, you get used to it. You get used to everything over time. I even use the default vim bindings and have gotten used to them as well.
I just press tab and the IDE sprinkles all that sugar for me.
I use US-QWERTY but with the pipe/backslash key as backspace, and the key where backspace usually is gets turned into two keys, pipe/backslash and grave (yes, there is a keycode for grave (`) by itself).
I’m having to use US keyboard layout in Oz and not enjoying the half-height Return key very much.
CH layout, superior for everything inbetween german, italian and french. US layout has no äöü, which makes it cumbersome in daily use.
Swedish layout. Not ideal for coding (too many things like curly and square brackets etc are under altgr. And tilde and backtick are on dead keys.
But switching back and forth as soon as you need to write Swedish (for the letters åäö) is just too much work. And yes, in the Swedish alphabet they are separate letters, not aao with diacretics.
Win + space to swap is so fast and simple especially when it also swaps for you when switching apps
In polish we have ź and ż. For ż we use Alt gr + z, and for ź we use Alt gr + x. Same for other non-standard letters. The rest of the keyboard is a regular US layout.
So in Swedish you could use Alt gr + a and Alt gr + s for different variants of a.
I have the same problem in German (ä, ö, ü and ß), and I’ve resigned to using US layout with caps lock mapped as compose key. But then again, I code more than I write texts
