Are the characters used in syntax of most programming languages dependent on the keys of the standard keyboard or was the standard keyboard made specifically to allow programming with these keys?
The title would probably be confusing, but I could not make it better than this. I noticed that most programming languages are limited to the alphanumerical set along with the special characters present in a general keyboard. I wondered if this posed a barrier for developers on what characters they were limited to program in, or if it was intentional from the start that these keys would be the most optimal characters for a program to be coded in by a human and was later adopted as a standard for every user. Basically, are the modern keyboards built around programming languages or are programming languages built around these keyboards?
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I won't consider any keyboard to be designed for programming unless it has dedicated keys for characters like
{}() < >_+| & !*:"without needing to hold shift for them (Lemmy seems to be improperly escaping my less-than sign and ampersand)There's "programming" layouts, like dvorak-programming that replace the number rows for special characters and you need to shift to get the numbers.