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)?

  • brokenlcd
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    10 months ago

    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.

    • orsetto@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      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.

      • brokenlcd
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        10 months ago

        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

        • orsetto@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          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

    • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devOP
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      10 months ago

      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

      • brokenlcd
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        10 months ago

        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

    • Nerd02@lemmy.basedcount.com
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      10 months ago

      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.