Do any of you program on non-US keyboard layouts?
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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A lot of us don't live in the US to begin with, so I assume a significant portion of us just use whatever the local standard is. That's where I've been at so far, the Brazilian layout is a QWERTY variant so not that different. It does make some things more awkward, but you get used to what you have to work with.
Brackets and curly braces are less convenient off the top of my head, backticks too. Vim is a tad less ergonomic without some extra fiddling, for instance. In fact, I've been considering getting a US keyboard for coding to make that kinda thing less of an issue, US international makes accents and whatnot accessible enough that I think I could make it work.
If you're cheap like me, just change the keyboard layout on the software side and instead of looking at the now incorrect key caps, look at the American keyboard layout image on Wikipedia instead. It doesn't take long to relearn the few differences. And the parentheses are more ergonomic on the us keyboard layout IMO.
Edit: compared to the German layout. Brazilian looks ergonomic enough for programming without having to switch.
I think the @ being a shift 2 would confuse me the most in the beginning, before getting used to it.
I'm a Brazilian web developer living in Germany for 32 years and actually never used a Brazilian keyboard. I may be returning to Brazil for a while, i don't know yet if I'm adopting the Brazilian variant or just keep using the German one.
Just keep using the layout you're used to. I'm Brazilian too, but I've lived abroad my whole life, and US layout is what I'm most used to (even though I've never lived there, funny enough). When I'm on other keyboards, I just switch the layout to US International, and stop looking at the keyboard.
Ah, interesting! I'd have guessed about a dozen annoyances before that one even came to mind haha. Hope you have a good time around these parts at any rate :)
Also, I'd never taken a serious look at the German layout but going by the truly wild differences there you may as well stick with what you have IMO, I think it's what I'd do at least.
I also never checked the Brazilian tbh. Guess I'll just check it out, if the opportunity arises.
Yeah, it's been a good time here - the pandemic and the inflation made things pretty difficult though, but i assume, just like the pandemic, everyone around the world is struggling with inflation atm.
This PT-BR keyboard layout is a mess, a mix between the US layouts and the PT-PT one. That's why you've less than convenient brackets and curly braces. Frankly I see no reason why there's still this two layouts for the same language. Can't we just agree on some mix of PT-BR and PT-PT?