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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've used AT QWERTZ ever since I was born.
Does Dvorak count? I switched over when I made an egrodox style keyboard which in itself made typing generally more comfortable.
I use the FR-AZERTY layout. You honestly get used to the layout you have to work with.
Did you know about the New AZERTY ? I've been using it for a few years now and it's definitely a great improvement, while remaining compatible enough with the standard one so you are not lost when you use a colleague's setup.
I heard about it, but the issue I usually have with other layouts is that I find myself looking for “infrequent” symbols a lot. Maybe this one would be easier to get used to than other layouts such as Bépo since, as you said, it is relatively compatible with regular AZERTY.
I'm italian and I'm absolutely ashamed to say that I use an italian ISO keyboard for programming. It's missing some symbols like the backtick but I can't get used to US ANSI so I just configured some macros to type the missing characters.
Being Norwegian i code on the Norwegian keyboard layout. I get confused every time I get defaulted into English.
They wouldn't be using them if they didn't think they were superior. Even if it is just because they are used to them.
use Vista speech recognition} fantastic
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I began programming java climate model with UK keyboard. When I moved to the continent, switched to swiss then belgian keyboard to better type emails/docs in french, but it was so tedious for code brackets {[()]} and some other punctuation, eventually switched back. Recently converted whole codebase to Scala 3 (here's the model), now can drop most of those brackets. I speculate whether one motivation for creating scala3 (made in in Lausanne) was swiss/french keyboards.
My laptop has an italian layout keyboard because it was a pain to find a good priced one with the US layout. On windows there's no way to do the ` and ~ symbols without using Alt combinations and on linux you need to use a weird compose key. Also square brackets require you to press Shift and curly brackets require both Shift and Alt.
I use UK standard layout, and Apple UK for work. It always takes me a few minutes to switch between them, but both are absolutely fine for programming. Just the odd placement of # that bothers me a little, but I tend to use that only for Python comments - which I tend to do more commonly from a keyboard shortcut anyway.
I use the German Layout Neo which has especially nice layers for programming https://neo-layout.org/
French keyboard azerty has easier accents, cant live without em now.
Used to have a qwerty so sometimes the muscle memory derps a little, but when I accidently change the layout Im always mildly impressed that I can remember which key is which.
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 use UK-Layout, with some remappings for my precious umlauts
q+altgr ->ü
a+altgr -> ä
s+altgr -> ß
z+algr -> ö
bonus: in contrast to the peasentry I have an uppercase ẞ (altgr+shift+s)
I use Canadian Multilingual on a ISO-style keyboard, mostly because my main language is French and typing accents on a US keyboard is horrible.
Coding makes a hefty use of Alt ("option" on mac), but they're relatively well-placed (see the labels on the bottom-right of the keys in the pic)
My main annoyance with it is that the ANSI-style keyboard puts "ù" to the left of "1", instead of the "/" you get on that key on a ISO keyboard (where ù is between the left shift and z). You can see how annoying this would be when programming or using the command-line. And of course, Apple stores only stock MacBooks with ANSI keyboards...
You can adapt to a new layout pretty easily. I already did it twice due to moving to new country.
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'm columnar-ortho now, but for standard it's ISO or bust. You can keep your shitty enter key and your overly long shift key
I used to use the Brazilian ABNT-2 layout, it's pretty much just a US layout with accent keys that activate like a second layer for some specific keys to display specific Portuguese language characters such as ç á à â ã é è etc. It's surprisingly ok for programming as it doesn't get in the way because you have special keys to activate the 2nd layer and most of them you need to spread shift + something in order to activate them. I'd say it's a good layout.
Started on US, now using DE for decades. But able to still use us. Slash position is a plus there.
But Swiss, that's the stuff of nightmares! Oh and mac while usable unnecessarily sucks too imo.
Used US and JP qwerty, both are fine after a while, but switching can be annoying (mostly I mix up whether " or @ is Shift-2).
The one thing I hate is the fragmentation of the bottom left cluster. I started out on keyboards with Ctrl Fn Super Alt, but now I much prefer Fn Ctrl Alt Super.
I use a sub-40% layout that I love. I wrote all about it here: https://natecox.dev/lets-talk-about-keyboards
As a German I have to admit that the ANSI US layout is the one American standard that's superior to the European ones. That said, I still need some Umlaute and accented letters from time to time, which is why I use the EurKEY layout, which adds all of those keys back and many morek, most of them accessible without having to use a dead key.
