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To clarify for people who only ever have seen English (or English derived) keyboards. The backslash (\) is usually bound to a third level shift. On some Windows

To clarify for people who only ever have seen English (or English derived) keyboards. The backslash (\) is usually bound to a third level shift. On some Windows you can reach third level shift with either a Ctrl + Alt or a single AltGr. On most linuxes AltGr is the only way to reach third level shift. This is a problem since AltGr is usually on the same side (right hand side) of the keyboard as the \ key, so you usually have to do some finger gymnastics to type it. On Macs Option double functions as a third level shifts which causes a whole different set of issues as many keyboard shortcuts also use the option key, so typing \ becomes ambiguous in some contexts.

arketyp 5y ago
I didn't always know that [ ] are immediate keys and { } are shift characters on a US keyboard. I had internalized the AltGr pain as something that just came with the territory of programming.
- johnwalkr 5y ago
  For this reason many Japanese programmers use US layout.
thriftwy 5y ago
This problem does not exist for Cyrillic layout, since we always have two keyboard layouts (qwerty, йцукен) and switch between them. Press-release shift, then ctrl-shift, lately caps lock became fashionable. Clueless software such as KDE offers cumbersome switching hotkey such as ctrl-shift-K, which nobody uses in favour of a single easy combo. So, if we can't find [ or } or / on cyrillic layout, we just switch to latin and punch it. I've never seen a latin layout which did not have '\' readily available. When you need to type a path, it almost always contains some latin letters ("/usr" or "C:\") so you will have to switch regardless. Still, we have one more variable to occupy our mind, "what's the current keyboard layout I'm on". There were even software which did automatic layout switching based on dictionary heuristics. йцукен is also very efficient key placement-wise so we don't have anything like Dvorak layout. What's a bummer is ',' which requires pressing shift.

arketyp 5y ago

I didn't always know that [ ] are immediate keys and { } are shift characters on a US keyboard. I had internalized the AltGr pain as something that just came with the territory of programming.

johnwalkr 5y ago
For this reason many Japanese programmers use US layout.

thriftwy 5y ago

This problem does not exist for Cyrillic layout, since we always have two keyboard layouts (qwerty, йцукен) and switch between them. Press-release shift, then ctrl-shift, lately caps lock became fashionable. Clueless software such as KDE offers cumbersome switching hotkey such as ctrl-shift-K, which nobody uses in favour of a single easy combo. So, if we can't find [ or } or / on cyrillic layout, we just switch to latin and punch it. I've never seen a latin layout which did not have '\' readily available. When you need to type a path, it almost always contains some latin letters ("/usr" or "C:\") so you will have to switch regardless. Still, we have one more variable to occupy our mind, "what's the current keyboard layout I'm on". There were even software which did automatic layout switching based on dictionary heuristics. йцукен is also very efficient key placement-wise so we don't have anything like Dvorak layout. What's a bummer is ',' which requires pressing shift.