Do any of you program on non-US keyboard layouts?

namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 131 points –

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)?

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I program with the italian layout and i's fine, the only annoyances are that to use the slash you need to use shift, all while the backslash has a dedicated key; also you need to use alt codes to type a tilde.

Same. Forward slash always annoys me. It's in the middle of the keyboard, so you have to either 1. make a very uncomfortable move with your right hand, or 2. make an uncomfortable move with your right hand, or 3. use both your hands, which sucks.

Luckily I'm using linux, so I have tilde and backtick (`) as AltGr+' and AltGr+ì, which are pretty easy to type.

Just a thing for making it more sufferable; i remember that there was a program for linux called xkeycaps to edit keyboard layouts; so you could swap the backslash with the normal one. I used it so long ago that I'm not even sure if it still available and working though

Getting used to it is going to be a hell of a ride, but this is a wonderful thing.

Also using other pc is going to be even harder lol

the only annoyances are that to use the slash you need to use shift

Oof, that sounds really annoying. I can't possibly imagine how I would use the terminal that way

After a while it becomes muscle memory; the good thing is that you can see if someone is a programmer/linux user because the key for the numer 7 is more worn out than most of the others

On Czech keyboard I use AltGr+q and it's fine, muscle memory really does the hard work for you.

I mainly write JS and not having a backtick on my keyboard annoys the fuck out of me. Other than that the Italian keyboard is alright, never had any other problems with it.