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)?

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 months ago

      The enter key I got used to on an ANSI keyboard I had for a while but what actually made the bigger difference was the \\/| key being above the enter key at the far right end of the keyboard which is hard to reach with the pinky. Rather important key for being that hard to reach.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
      56·
      9 months ago

      No way - the two enter keys are about the same size - yours is just rotated 90 degrees and further away. That’s not an improvement. Even worse though is the tiny left shift key - I can’t get used to that.

      With an ANSI keyboard you can comfortably reach the enter and left shift without taking your other fingers off the home row. With ISO you have to move your arm which is particularly bad for the shift key since you might need to press other keys at the same time, but now your hand is in the wrong position.

      • SteveTech@programming.devEnglish
        8·
        9 months ago

        On the ISO keyboards I’ve seen, the enter key has way more than double the surface area than ANSI, so it’s definitely not ‘just rotated 90 degrees’. Also these people probably grew up with ISO and struggle with ANSI, just like you probably grew up with ANSI and struggle with ISO.