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When programming y'all able to access all the bracket set <>()[]{} and special symbols !@#$....?/,., well without looking at the keyboard? I never gained profi

When programming y'all able to access all the bracket set <>()[]{} and special symbols !@#$....?/,., well without looking at the keyboard? I never gained proficiency to do that. And these days, I feel I use the backspace/delete key too often.

wodenokoto 6y ago
Do you use US layout? I’d say most of those very difficult on non-us (especially Mac!) and after I switched from Nordic keyboard to US I had a small epiphany about why we use the symbols we use in programming. But honestly it doesn’t matter. I glance at the key it while typing. There is nothing wrong with that
- luizfelberti 6y ago
  I'd second this. Switching to US ANSI layout (not US International layout) is like magic, I find it so much better that I always import my keyboards from the US, and only buy laptops if they have the US layout. Brazil uses a national standard called ABNT2 (which I consider to be an awful format), but to my advantage, I find the way Macs do accentuation (at least for latin alphabets) to be quite sensible (alt+vowel), and get angry whenever I have to use Linux because it doesn't have "Mac accents" For your case though, I think the Nordic alphabet might be trickier on the US layout, since it shares less common ground and there's a lot more to it
mr_t 6y ago
Never used it so far, but recently came across the NEO keyboard layout [1]. Unfortunately the website is in German only, but just looking at the interactive graphic should give you sufficient information how it looks like. The only German word you need to know to understand the graphic is „Ebene“, which means layer. What I find particularly interesting is „Ebene 3“, or „layer 3“ and the corresponding repurposing of the capslock key. Personally I definitely intend to try the NEO layout soon. [1] https://neo-layout.org/ https://neo-layout.org/
StavrosK 6y ago
I don't have 100% accuracy with the symbols in the numbers (except the parentheses), but am pretty good with them. Nowadays I've remapped the parentheses to left/right shift and the brackets to Tab+hjkl, so it's much easier.
lmilcin 6y ago
My keyboard has no markings, except for the name of the manufacturer. I have no trouble hitting any key on the keyboard without looking at it. I can lock eyes with you while you dictate and type the email you would dictate, perfectly (albeit not at the a normal dictation speed, I only type about 100WPM at most). I can fix errors as I type using backspace because I always know where I am and where I made a mistake. The important part is learning this correctly. I had fortune of going to school where for a single semester I had a course in typing documents on an electric typewriter, with a professional typewriting teacher. Because it was so long ago I have trouble understanding not being able to type. I lay my hands on the keyboard and they just do it without me even thinking about it. I don't even know where keys are. If you ask me where a particular key is I can only point to handful of them. Otherwise I need to put my all fingers on the keyboard and think the key and then observe which finger goes where, and only then I know where the key is.
- franklyt 6y ago
  On the flip side of this, I type at 130-140WPM and never learned to type “properly”. I use my index fingers.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    I think of myself as "mechanically challenged". No matter how much I train, I cannot break 100WPM while typing effortlessly. And this goes to other activities that require hands to be agile and precise like playing instruments, which I never was able to do well regardless of how much effort I put into it. So I understand that there is a lot of people who are much more naturally agile with their hands. But I still think learning to type properly has huge advantages. Even if you dismiss every other advantage (say you decide you don't need to type fast), I think it just feels extremely satisfying to be able to focus on anything you want while your hands just produce constant stream of characters on the screen in a flowing, effortless motion.
  - aspyct 6y ago
    140wpm only with your index fingers? I'm gonna need a video of that :)
MauranKilom 6y ago
I switch regularly between German and US keyboard layout (due to different physical keyboards and also having to communicate in different languages). It is terrible that ( and ) are on the 8 and 9 keys in German layout and on 9 and 0 on US. It frustrates me to no end (add in how IDEs will auto-complete parentheses and I'm constantly lost in a complex decision tree of how to recover from being one key off) and I can't seem to build muscle memory well like this. The other symbol keys are also a wash. Particular offenders are y and z, ? and -, " vs Ä vs @, as well as + (who came up with the idea of requiring shift for that?!). I just can't intuitively keep up with what layout is active and/or how to adjust my typing, even if it's always the same for the same application. Frequently I settle for "try one thing and correct if necessary". Obviously slows me down a lot. Any suggestions welcome.
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  Can mostly offer my sympathy. Have the same problem with the Swedish layout. Especially the fact that all systems seems to have their own placement of the | character is quite hard on me. At the moment I’m trying to handle it my learning to code in the se-layout. Isn’t looking promising though, don’t think I’ll ever get used to the {} (it’s a bit curious that the Mac has the Swedish letters printed on the keys but not the other symbols you need) I think when I finally give up on this I’ll try a en layout that lets you type the required umlauts and rings by combining instead.
- Asraelite 6y ago
  I have my keyboard set to UK Extended. It's able to do most diacritics, so I just stick to it even when typing German and other suitable languages, like French. Umlauted vowels are done with AltGr+[ followed by the vowel. ß is done with AltGr+S. It's a tiny bit less ergonomic than having dedicated keys for these letters, but I consider the tradeoff worth it since the letters don't occur too frequently in German and I only need to memorize one keyboard layout. I don't know if something similar is available for US layouts.
- type0 6y ago
  Get yourself an US ISO keyboard or US keycaps and then set up a modifier key combination for special characters, it's best if you have some extra keys dedicated for macros though.
richardw 6y ago
I use a keyboard called “programmer Dvorak” that makes those characters first-class citizens. You need shift for numbers. I can do the numbers fine but it took a while. Not sure I’d recommend it though, need to learn normal Dvorak for use on other computers where you can’t install a keyboard. I can’t look at the keyboard. If I do I’m instantly confused. And I can’t use a Dvorak view on mobile - just looks too different. Maybe I should try again...

wodenokoto 6y ago

Do you use US layout? I’d say most of those very difficult on non-us (especially Mac!) and after I switched from Nordic keyboard to US I had a small epiphany about why we use the symbols we use in programming. But honestly it doesn’t matter. I glance at the key it while typing. There is nothing wrong with that

luizfelberti 6y ago
I'd second this. Switching to US ANSI layout (not US International layout) is like magic, I find it so much better that I always import my keyboards from the US, and only buy laptops if they have the US layout. Brazil uses a national standard called ABNT2 (which I consider to be an awful format), but to my advantage, I find the way Macs do accentuation (at least for latin alphabets) to be quite sensible (alt+vowel), and get angry whenever I have to use Linux because it doesn't have "Mac accents" For your case though, I think the Nordic alphabet might be trickier on the US layout, since it shares less common ground and there's a lot more to it

mr_t 6y ago

Never used it so far, but recently came across the NEO keyboard layout [1]. Unfortunately the website is in German only, but just looking at the interactive graphic should give you sufficient information how it looks like. The only German word you need to know to understand the graphic is „Ebene“, which means layer. What I find particularly interesting is „Ebene 3“, or „layer 3“ and the corresponding repurposing of the capslock key. Personally I definitely intend to try the NEO layout soon. [1] https://neo-layout.org/ https://neo-layout.org/

StavrosK 6y ago

I don't have 100% accuracy with the symbols in the numbers (except the parentheses), but am pretty good with them. Nowadays I've remapped the parentheses to left/right shift and the brackets to Tab+hjkl, so it's much easier.

lmilcin 6y ago

My keyboard has no markings, except for the name of the manufacturer. I have no trouble hitting any key on the keyboard without looking at it. I can lock eyes with you while you dictate and type the email you would dictate, perfectly (albeit not at the a normal dictation speed, I only type about 100WPM at most). I can fix errors as I type using backspace because I always know where I am and where I made a mistake. The important part is learning this correctly. I had fortune of going to school where for a single semester I had a course in typing documents on an electric typewriter, with a professional typewriting teacher. Because it was so long ago I have trouble understanding not being able to type. I lay my hands on the keyboard and they just do it without me even thinking about it. I don't even know where keys are. If you ask me where a particular key is I can only point to handful of them. Otherwise I need to put my all fingers on the keyboard and think the key and then observe which finger goes where, and only then I know where the key is.

franklyt 6y ago
On the flip side of this, I type at 130-140WPM and never learned to type “properly”. I use my index fingers.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  I think of myself as "mechanically challenged". No matter how much I train, I cannot break 100WPM while typing effortlessly. And this goes to other activities that require hands to be agile and precise like playing instruments, which I never was able to do well regardless of how much effort I put into it. So I understand that there is a lot of people who are much more naturally agile with their hands. But I still think learning to type properly has huge advantages. Even if you dismiss every other advantage (say you decide you don't need to type fast), I think it just feels extremely satisfying to be able to focus on anything you want while your hands just produce constant stream of characters on the screen in a flowing, effortless motion.
- aspyct 6y ago
  140wpm only with your index fingers? I'm gonna need a video of that :)

MauranKilom 6y ago

I switch regularly between German and US keyboard layout (due to different physical keyboards and also having to communicate in different languages). It is terrible that ( and ) are on the 8 and 9 keys in German layout and on 9 and 0 on US. It frustrates me to no end (add in how IDEs will auto-complete parentheses and I'm constantly lost in a complex decision tree of how to recover from being one key off) and I can't seem to build muscle memory well like this. The other symbol keys are also a wash. Particular offenders are y and z, ? and -, " vs Ä vs @, as well as + (who came up with the idea of requiring shift for that?!). I just can't intuitively keep up with what layout is active and/or how to adjust my typing, even if it's always the same for the same application. Frequently I settle for "try one thing and correct if necessary". Obviously slows me down a lot. Any suggestions welcome.

CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
Can mostly offer my sympathy. Have the same problem with the Swedish layout. Especially the fact that all systems seems to have their own placement of the | character is quite hard on me. At the moment I’m trying to handle it my learning to code in the se-layout. Isn’t looking promising though, don’t think I’ll ever get used to the {} (it’s a bit curious that the Mac has the Swedish letters printed on the keys but not the other symbols you need) I think when I finally give up on this I’ll try a en layout that lets you type the required umlauts and rings by combining instead.
Asraelite 6y ago
I have my keyboard set to UK Extended. It's able to do most diacritics, so I just stick to it even when typing German and other suitable languages, like French. Umlauted vowels are done with AltGr+[ followed by the vowel. ß is done with AltGr+S. It's a tiny bit less ergonomic than having dedicated keys for these letters, but I consider the tradeoff worth it since the letters don't occur too frequently in German and I only need to memorize one keyboard layout. I don't know if something similar is available for US layouts.
type0 6y ago
Get yourself an US ISO keyboard or US keycaps and then set up a modifier key combination for special characters, it's best if you have some extra keys dedicated for macros though.

richardw 6y ago

I use a keyboard called “programmer Dvorak” that makes those characters first-class citizens. You need shift for numbers. I can do the numbers fine but it took a while. Not sure I’d recommend it though, need to learn normal Dvorak for use on other computers where you can’t install a keyboard. I can’t look at the keyboard. If I do I’m instantly confused. And I can’t use a Dvorak view on mobile - just looks too different. Maybe I should try again...