Remember that most European keyboards don't have [ and ] accessible on the first/second level. That's already half of the western civilization, not some random's custom layout.
I switch between keyboard layouts all the time, depending on which input language I need to use.
I simply cycle between the langugaes I write in(Swedish, German and English) by pressing alt and caps lock.
I accept that U.S. English is the computer lingua franca.
I live in Europe and buy my Chinese-made keyboards from Amazon, US. In the company I work for, I have not seen a single keyboard with "European" layout. People who buy those keyboards aren't people who need to be good at using their editor, while on the other hand, people who want to be good at using their editor will buy a keyboard that works well with it.
Keyboard is a one-time investment of 20-200 Euro, but learning to use your editor efficiently is an investment of years of your life... amplified by the fact that there aren't that many good editors. So, any person who needs to work with the editor on a daily basis will have to make a choice between buying a keyboard that works well with that editor or a keyboard that allows them to type Euro / Pound sign more easily... And nobody in this situation is going to choose the keyboard that doesn't work well with the editor.
Yet nobody here has thought of just localizing the shortcuts like Microsoft Office and macOS have been doing for ages. Solves this problem very elegantly. Ironically, Word is the “professional” editor of most professions outside of coding, and people do learn the shortcuts to use it effectively.
This obviously varies by country, but at the places I’ve worked at, most people used the local layout instead of the US one. They couldn’t bother relearning it and then switching every time they wanted to enter some text in the local (Slavic) language.
Has the US keys on the first/second levels and most/all special symbols for European languages easily accessible w/ modifier keys. Entirely removed the need to switch keyboard layouts for me.
I'm from South America, and have lived in Europe for over 20 years, and I use a US layout, with compose key. It gives trivial access to accents and more, without the annoyance of different layouts (I used AZERTY for years while living in France, and it's just atrocious). I know many people here in Finland who code with a nordic layout, and for the life of me, I don't understand how they remain sane.
Yes, mine for example. Swedish keyboard layouts are horrible for coding. The [ and lots of other symbols require super weird hand movements to input. That is why when I code I usually use an American layout keyboard instead.
However, even if I wouldn't switch - wouldn't it just be to remap the keys in my config?
European here. I don't care, I don't use the Spanish layout, it sucks for programming. No one uses that at professional level for programming, US-Intl it's much better with the menu/super_r key as the 'compose' one.
