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)?

  • DeebsterEnglish
    1•5 months ago

    I use this too, and find it better in almost every way.

    Swapping @ and " is a mixed blessing since the quote is used quite a lot when coding, but then so is the @. In prose I prefer to use US-style double quotes for quotations and leave single quotes for contractions, possession, etc, so I have to do that awkward shift-2 combo a lot.

    Having an extra key is great for us coders since we use most of those weird glyphs (never used ¬) and having easy access to # is chefkiss.png.

    ISO layout’s tall enter key is great for touch typing since you don’t need to be very accurate with your little finger and moving the | \ key next to Z is much more convenient. I like the symmetry of the slash keys, too.

    Alt-Gr make loads of shortcuts easier, although occasionally I want that key to be a normal alt instead.

    Top one is ISO-UK: