3 ms·
> The ergonomics of non-US keyboards were naturally not considered, which caused the path separator to be ridiculously difficult to type on some national keyboa
by gatonegro 5y ago
> The ergonomics of non-US keyboards were naturally not considered, which caused the path separator to be ridiculously difficult to type on some national keyboards (e.g. German), perhaps as a perverse reminder that ergonomics do matter.
The more I've shifted towards a keyboard-centric workflow, the more I'm feeling this lack of consideration regarding non-US layouts. When using a Spanish keyboard, the placement of characters like forward slashes, backslashes, tildes, pipes, etc. can be physically painful after an extended typing session. I'm considering either getting a US keyboard, or doing some serious keyboard map tweaking.
It's somewhat amusing to think that my current ergonomic predicaments are essentially the result of operating system and keyboard design choices and conventions that are over half a century old at this point.
- Nitrolo 5y agoI have a fairly keyboard centric workflow as well, and I didn't notice this until a few months ago I got a laptop with a US keyboard. Suddenly all those key bindings and symbols made sense, or at least were somewhat reachable without contorting my hands. I never noticed how terrible DE keyboards are for programming before but I don't want to go back.
- gsich 5y agoGerman backslash is very easy.
- int_19h 5y agoIt's one of the reasons why, if you ask programmers from other countries what they think about programming languages with "native" keywords, the response tends to be overwhelmingly negative. Code is particularly punctuation-heavy, especially with the modern trend of C-style syntax. US-English keyboard layout has all of the needed things readily accessible - of particular importance is that ".,;" all require a single keypress. But then you have to stick to ASCII for identifiers and keywords.