[loicd]

The QWERTY layout has a funny difference with for instance the french AZERTY layout. On an AZERTY keyboard, the parentheses () are directly accessible whereas the square brackets [] are not. On a QWERTY keyboard, this is the opposite : you need SHIFT for the parentheses () but not for the square brackets []. I've always wondered why the QWERTY layout favored the square brackets over the parentheses. Naively, parentheses are more common and should be more easily accessible...

[jaclaz]

Not really-really.

You are comparing your English QWERTY, with the French AZERTY, but there are many more languages QWERTY.

On the Italian keyboard (which is also QWERTY) the round brackets need Shift, but the square ones need AltGR.

[speedbird]

As it happens I’ve always found the American Querty keyboard much better for C programming than the English one due to bracket / punctuation layout.

[Kwpolska]

I think that's a leftover from typewriters, the pairing of () with numbers existed there, and [] wasn't available. See [0] for an example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric

[yunruse]

I’ve always set up a custom keyboard for exactly that! () on their own keys, [] on shift and {} above 0 and 9. It always struck me as the most natural alignment for prose and programming.

Thankfully between Ukelele [0] and MSKLC [1] it’s pleasantly simple to do

[0] for macOS: https://software.sil.org/ukelele/ [1] for Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102...

[rantallion]

And if anyone wants to go really custom, it's worth checking out the QMK firmware supported by many mechanical keyboards. Aside from the level of customisation made possible by QMK, another benefit is that everything lives on the keyboard - no need to install keyboard profiles on each machine you might connect the keyboard to.