[docdeek]

Moved to France 10 years ago and had to decide between buying a QWERTY keyboard or laptop online and getting it delivered, or just buying a local AZERTY keyboard. Went local, had a couple of weeks of re-learning how to type, and then things were fine.

From time to time I encounter a QWERTY keyboard (some in the French office here prefer it as they trained on QWERTY while in university or working internationally) but I’m basically lost right now on QWERTY. The little things that drove me crazy at first (Shift+ to get a number, Shift+ to get a period, AltGr+ to get a hash etc.) are now ‘normal’.

I imagine Dvorak will take you a few weeks to learn, a month longer to start touch-typing effectively, and then it’ll be your new normal, too.

[erelde]

I'm French, and AZERTY sometime drives me crazy.

Braces and parenthesis aren't logically placed, characters used in coding languages aren't easily accessible in general.

And I've generally concluded that I should install games in English and switch my keyboard layout to QWERTY when/if I play. Plus, mods usually are in English, and I hate when there's a word in French and the next is in English.

[slau]

I grew up on azerty. Switched to British qwerty when I lived there, haven't gone back. It's by far, for me, the best programming keyboard.

I'm in Denmark now, and I'm appalled to see how bad the Danish keyboard is for programming. I tried it for a couple of days on a loaner, and went back to British qwerty. Punctuation is a disaster.

http://smartkeyboardsolutions.com/images/Danish-10019-zoom.g...

[smonff]

I am also french and I only use QWERTY. AZERTY don't make a lot of sense. I don't say that QWERTY is perfect, but at least, you find ",", ".", "/", {}, () and [] couples at a place that makes sense without having to AltGr and stuff. Even @ and numbers are hardly accessible.