[marginalia_nu]

A generation of Swedish programmers grew up on a cruel and unusual keyboard layout that's like

  ; is shift + , (1 step right of m)
  : is shift + . (2 steps right of m)
  - is where US layout has /
  _ is where US layout has ?
  shift + 6 = &
  shift + 7 = /
  shift + 8 = (
  shift + 9 = )
  right alt + 7 = {
  right alt + 8 = [
  right alt + 9 = ]
  right alt + 0 = }
  right alt + - = \

I invite anyone to try and press right alt + 7 and right alt + 9 on their keyboard. To make things more awkward, it must be the right alt key, it doesn't work with the left. This torture is every time you make a curly brace with this layout.

[rho4]

Same for German and Swiss layouts *sigh. After many years, I am now capable of typing curly and angular brackets by holding left shift with my small finger, left alt with my left thumb, and the corresponding symbol key with my right little finger, without loosing the ten-finger-stance on the keyboard.

(on our keyboards, left shift+alt is an alternative for the right "Alt Gr" key)

[SebastianKra]

If you still can, I highly recommend switching to international.

The main benefit is, how much better default keyboard shortcuts in many Apps become.

Tab switching with CMD+{} and back/forward CMD+[] can be comfortably executed. There are no more inaccessible shortcuts such as Shift+CMD+? or changing playback speed on Youtube.

Specials are somewhat annoying to type with `alt+u aou` and `alt + s`, but nothing I couldn't get used to.

[awelxtr]

Spaniard here.

I've done it all my life. Maybe my pain tolerance is way higher?

Edit: I don't know what's wrong with pressing several keys at once to do something. It is like complaining that piano has no individual keys for all the possible chords. What's the alternative? Pressing a single key? What would you be doing with the rest of your fingers anyway?

[AlbertoGP]

I’m also Spanish, living in Germany: the Spanish keyboard is actually rather nice, with it it’s easy to type Spanish, German, French, Italian etc. without even changing the layout. It’s even easier to type French than on a French azerty keyboard, but that’s a particularly bad one.

The German and Swedish keyboards mentioned above are rather bad for programming (in the German case, even for typing ß/ss): they have AltGr combinations at the top row, the numbers 7, 8, 9, 0 for instance to get the brackets and braces {, [, ], }. In the Spanish keyboard they are right of P and Ñ (; in US-English) and those positions are much easier to reach while pressing AltGr.

In addition, in the Spanish keyboard the plain Latin letters are in the standard qwerty positions.

After having had to deal with some terrible keyboard layouts over the years I’ve come to appreciate the Spanish one very much. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into designing it.

[marginalia_nu]

The problem is that you need to press multiple keys with the same hand. Typically when touch-typing you press modifier keys with the other hand, to avoid having to move the hand in awkward ways, or typing with the left hand on the right side of the keyboard or some other weird solution.

On top of that, alt+7 is spectacularly awkward, as you need to curl one finger really aggressively and extend another to reach both keys.

Many of these keys are indeed accessible with a single keypress in US QWERTY. That, or a simple shift-combination. They're also much closer to the letter keys across the board.

[fellerts]

The worst is tilde (~): right alt + ¨ (where US layout has ]), release both keys then press spacebar. If you hit any other key you apply the tilde modifier to it and end up with e.g. ñ.

` is a bit more ergonomic at shift + \, release, then spacebar. To get ``` you press shift + \ 6 times because ` luckily doesn't modify `.

[johnchristopher]

I switched to qwerty US International years ago and I won't go back. Makes coding much easier. Even diacratics are easier with that layout than with my first language layout (for when I type literature and poetry).

[marginalia_nu]

Yeah I switch keyboard layout when I do programming. The US layout is so much better suited for the task that it's not even funny.