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)?
I use the FR-AZERTY layout. You honestly get used to the layout you have to work with.
Did you know about the New AZERTY ? I've been using it for a few years now and it's definitely a great improvement, while remaining compatible enough with the standard one so you are not lost when you use a colleague's setup.
I heard about it, but the issue I usually have with other layouts is that I find myself looking for “infrequent” symbols a lot. Maybe this one would be easier to get used to than other layouts such as Bépo since, as you said, it is relatively compatible with regular AZERTY.
The thing is, this layout moves symbols to places that are much easier to remember (~ is altgr+n, ç is altgr+c, $ is altgr+d, parenthesis/brackets are next to each other, etc...) I got used to it very quickly because the new placement makes sense, and the fact you only have to remember symbols and not alphanum chars helps a lot. Definitely worth trying IMO.
Fuck. AZERTY is a pain in the ass. Why is it that the French keep pushing that layout that should be gone by now? Look I write Latin-based languages as well and I would like to see some kind of international ISO query keyboard that could work for all of us.