When writing web applications I, probably like many other developers, find it frustrating having to access so many important keys by pressing shift.
A programmer's keyboard could either be an ordinary keyboard with these extra stand-alone keys on it, or a separate keypad that could sit next to the keyboard.Important keys that could be de-shift-ified would include: < > + $ " { } ( ) ... etc.-- Parvenu, Jan 02 2003 custom keyboard layouts http://www.halfbake...0keyboard_20layoutsRelated. [Monkfish, Oct 04 2004] The language with a special character set of which you speculate does exist, Rods. It is called APL, and it dates from the 1960s. Never really caught on outside a niche.-- krelnik, Jan 02 2003 baked. seen it online, no link found yet...-- ironfroggy, Jan 02 2003 This isn't exactly what you have in mind, but you might find it easier to just remap your number row so the shifted and normal values are reversed (and use the keypad for numbers). Extra keys would slow you down anyway.-- Monkfish, Jan 03 2003 Yeah, just remap your keyboard. Lots of keyboards these days have all sorts of bizarre extra keys (with labels like "mail" and "shopping") which you could reuse for this purpose, but as [Monkfish] says adding extra keys won't increase your typing rate any.-- egnor, Jan 03 2003 And since we are there: How many programmers use the numeric keypad? So why not get rid of it and have the mouse where it should be, i.e., closer to the keyboard? (without moving the arrow keys and the keys above, please!)-- tross, Apr 11 2007 //(with labels like "mail" and "shopping") //
FOR i lol i mail shopping PRINT rotf i lol rotf i NEXT i-- phundug, Apr 11 2007 I am an avid user of the numeric keypad for entering numbers. I'd actually suggest to enlarge it with A-F keys ;)-- xipetotec, Apr 11 2007 random, halfbakery