Alt codes are great for rarely used characters. For common accents for instance, moving to something that works within two to three keystrokes or a swipe is a g

Alt codes are great for rarely used characters. For common accents for instance, moving to something that works within two to three keystrokes or a swipe is a game changer. macos does it pretty well with Option＋key combinations to insert an acute/grave symbol for instance. Otherwise I think most people add shortcuts/custom key mappings to deal with it when their keyboard doesn't have the keys.