Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

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> you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping, otherwise the constant mental switch from one to another keyboard layout won't bring you any speed and flow improvement. My writing speed goes down to zero when I have to write on a British layout (which is already super close to the US layout compared to other countries).

That doesn't align with my personal experience at all. I do switch between English and Polish keyboard layout on a regular basis (and I mean proper Polish layout, the semi-forgotten PN-87; it's QWERTZ-based, but much more distant from vanilla QWERTY than so-called Polish Programmer's, especially when it comes to special characters). I'm really quick with both and I don't find switching inconvenient in the slightest.

So it's really individual thing and sweeping generalizations like "constant mental switch won't bring you any improvement" seem dubious to me. The truth is that YMMV.

I did the same (between German and English) and at some point I went to US QWERTY only. If writing German I trigger the German special characters through OSX smooth Command-U shortcuts and since then I improved my total writing speed by ~20% if not more. The constant switch before killed me.

Give it a try.

I do, and I can confirm that it's slower. With Polish Programmer's you need to use right Alt + [a], [e] etc. in order to type ą, ę, ł, ó, ś, ń, ż, ź, ć.

I do it on machines where I have no time nor interest to add the PN-87, or Polish typist layout (after mechanical typewriters where it was used in Poland before the computer era took over).

That's the case of my work machine, for instance, on which I don't type that much in Polish anyway. Yet I still do now and then, so I can gauge the difference.

Since I have to resort to these artificial combos, typing speed and convenience is inferior.

It's other small things that add up, too - for example Polish layout uses QWERTZ, "z" being much more common in Polish language than in English where it's rare. For this reason putting "z" under the weakest finger of all, the left pinky, makes for really poor UX for someone using QWERTY to type in Polish. It's much better located in the middle of the top row.

When writing in Polish, the flow is much better with Polish typist than "Polish programmer's" with its shortcuts. But as I said, your mileage may vary, and it seems so in your case.

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