I was born in France, so grew up with one of the weirdest ISO layout: "AZERTY".[1]
The worst offense is not even A-Z but rather symbols — take the key "ù" for instance: it's a non-mod key that is used for 1 single word in the entire French language. Literally, ONE WORD in the dictionary. And you need to Shift that 'ù' key to get '%'. How stupid is that...
I won't even comment on the weird 'M' position, which shortens the bottom row (index hits no letter, it's a symbol...) Like WTF, seriously.
Also, top row requires Shift for numbers... (no modifier yields symbols...) What a strange, impractical decision. Every number requires pressing a modifier, but underscore or '&' do not... Sure, yeah, OK.
Should we talk about period '.' requiring a Shift, but not ';' No, no we shouldn't. It's not like a period is common in language...
I thus call it 'weirdest', because it's as far as it gets from ANSI, and it has to be the worst ISO I've ever tried altogether. The question is, why do it so differently? Why not change as little as necessary based on ANSI? Was it a misguided sense of cultural appropriation? Did they like torturing typists and programmers alike?
So one day, as I was learning programming, I decided to stop fighting my keyboard, to preserve my sanity (and limit RSI).
QWERTY US (ANSI) is simply the best for tech (IT, prog). Not necessarily inherently (although it's very good for language), but because of the chicken-and-the-egg: most software is designed by/for US companies and programmers, so symbols like e.g. []{}|/ are used in programming, bash, tools, because they are easy to use on a QWERTY keyboard. And I vastly prefer the 1-row wide Enter to the inverted-L shaped ISO style (less RSI-inducing on the right pinky).
For non-US programmers, there's life before, and after switching to ANSI-US. I'm not even kidding, it's a life-changer in simplicity, comfort (ergonomics) and generally intuition— e.g. there's a reason why ()[]{} are close by. And it lets one buy keyboards anywhere (you'll always find QWERTY, but good luck finding ISO-XX in country YY.
Thank you to anyone who read this. I hope you feel the pain. Now revel in the fact that you weren't born in France and did not have to suffer the computer illiteracy and impractical engineering design of an entire generation before you.
/rant
I don't know if French AZERTY is funny or appalling, I'll let you be the judge of that; I just need to vent 25 years of frustration every now and then, even 10+ years later.
I wanted to chime in and revel in your company... Something similar (but never as bad as your painful description of AZERTY) happens with Spanish keyboards, and there are even varieties for different Latin American countries. As you mentioned, I finally found ever lasting peace when I switched to an ANSI-US keyboard, and never looked back. Thankfully my current employer defaults to these keyboards; it used to be a chore to provision them some years ago.
Different kinds of layouts for spanish language is asinine. But hey, this reminds me, Quebec and France also have different layouts. Why keep it simple, when you can complicate everyone's life?
The worst offense is not even A-Z but rather symbols — take the key "ù" for instance: it's a non-mod key that is used for 1 single word in the entire French language. Literally, ONE WORD in the dictionary. And you need to Shift that 'ù' key to get '%'. How stupid is that...
I won't even comment on the weird 'M' position, which shortens the bottom row (index hits no letter, it's a symbol...) Like WTF, seriously.
Also, top row requires Shift for numbers... (no modifier yields symbols...) What a strange, impractical decision. Every number requires pressing a modifier, but underscore or '&' do not... Sure, yeah, OK.
Should we talk about period '.' requiring a Shift, but not ';' No, no we shouldn't. It's not like a period is common in language...
I thus call it 'weirdest', because it's as far as it gets from ANSI, and it has to be the worst ISO I've ever tried altogether. The question is, why do it so differently? Why not change as little as necessary based on ANSI? Was it a misguided sense of cultural appropriation? Did they like torturing typists and programmers alike?
So one day, as I was learning programming, I decided to stop fighting my keyboard, to preserve my sanity (and limit RSI).
QWERTY US (ANSI) is simply the best for tech (IT, prog). Not necessarily inherently (although it's very good for language), but because of the chicken-and-the-egg: most software is designed by/for US companies and programmers, so symbols like e.g. []{}|/ are used in programming, bash, tools, because they are easy to use on a QWERTY keyboard. And I vastly prefer the 1-row wide Enter to the inverted-L shaped ISO style (less RSI-inducing on the right pinky).
For non-US programmers, there's life before, and after switching to ANSI-US. I'm not even kidding, it's a life-changer in simplicity, comfort (ergonomics) and generally intuition— e.g. there's a reason why ()[]{} are close by. And it lets one buy keyboards anywhere (you'll always find QWERTY, but good luck finding ISO-XX in country YY.
Thank you to anyone who read this. I hope you feel the pain. Now revel in the fact that you weren't born in France and did not have to suffer the computer illiteracy and impractical engineering design of an entire generation before you.
/rant
I don't know if French AZERTY is funny or appalling, I'll let you be the judge of that; I just need to vent 25 years of frustration every now and then, even 10+ years later.
____
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/KB_Franc...