When programming y'all able to access all the bracket set <>()[]{} and special symbols !@#$....?/,., well without looking at the keyboard? I never gained proficiency to do that. And these days, I feel I use the backspace/delete key too often.
I have no trouble hitting any key on the keyboard without looking at it. I can lock eyes with you while you dictate and type the email you would dictate, perfectly (albeit not at the a normal dictation speed, I only type about 100WPM at most). I can fix errors as I type using backspace because I always know where I am and where I made a mistake.
The important part is learning this correctly.
I had fortune of going to school where for a single semester I had a course in typing documents on an electric typewriter, with a professional typewriting teacher.
Because it was so long ago I have trouble understanding not being able to type. I lay my hands on the keyboard and they just do it without me even thinking about it. I don't even know where keys are. If you ask me where a particular key is I can only point to handful of them. Otherwise I need to put my all fingers on the keyboard and think the key and then observe which finger goes where, and only then I know where the key is.
So I understand that there is a lot of people who are much more naturally agile with their hands.
But I still think learning to type properly has huge advantages. Even if you dismiss every other advantage (say you decide you don't need to type fast), I think it just feels extremely satisfying to be able to focus on anything you want while your hands just produce constant stream of characters on the screen in a flowing, effortless motion.
Even in ideal situation where consecutive characters fall are alternating between left and right hand, that gives 5-6 characters PER SECOND for a single finger to type.
This guy does it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9psfOxJysw
But it does not look comfortable or effortless at all.
Add to it that you have to look at the keyboard instead of comfortably focus on the screen, you are straining your hands, your eyes and your neck.
So you still loose.
It is a gimmick, there is no way you can work like this hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Most likely this is some kind top speed you can technically reach, but you will not be able to sustain.
I don’t look at the keyboard to type with two fingers (and my thumb, technically).
I can probably sustain 120 effortlessly. 130-140 if I’m comfortable.
I’ve been doing it for nearly two decades and haven’t had a problem.
These days I can type 55-75 words per minute, and have no difficulty typing "blind".
Edit: Did a trivial online typing test, at typingtest.com, for a few minutes "Typing Speed 98 WPM, Accuracy 99 % Adjusted Speed 97 WPM" So better than I estimated!
I’d say most of those very difficult on non-us (especially Mac!) and after I switched from Nordic keyboard to US I had a small epiphany about why we use the symbols we use in programming.
But honestly it doesn’t matter. I glance at the key it while typing. There is nothing wrong with that
Brazil uses a national standard called ABNT2 (which I consider to be an awful format), but to my advantage, I find the way Macs do accentuation (at least for latin alphabets) to be quite sensible (alt+vowel), and get angry whenever I have to use Linux because it doesn't have "Mac accents"
For your case though, I think the Nordic alphabet might be trickier on the US layout, since it shares less common ground and there's a lot more to it
It is terrible that ( and ) are on the 8 and 9 keys in German layout and on 9 and 0 on US. It frustrates me to no end (add in how IDEs will auto-complete parentheses and I'm constantly lost in a complex decision tree of how to recover from being one key off) and I can't seem to build muscle memory well like this. The other symbol keys are also a wash. Particular offenders are y and z, ? and -, " vs Ä vs @, as well as + (who came up with the idea of requiring shift for that?!).
I just can't intuitively keep up with what layout is active and/or how to adjust my typing, even if it's always the same for the same application. Frequently I settle for "try one thing and correct if necessary". Obviously slows me down a lot.
Any suggestions welcome.
At the moment I’m trying to handle it my learning to code in the se-layout. Isn’t looking promising though, don’t think I’ll ever get used to the {} (it’s a bit curious that the Mac has the Swedish letters printed on the keys but not the other symbols you need)
I think when I finally give up on this I’ll try a en layout that lets you type the required umlauts and rings by combining instead.
Umlauted vowels are done with AltGr+[ followed by the vowel. ß is done with AltGr+S. It's a tiny bit less ergonomic than having dedicated keys for these letters, but I consider the tradeoff worth it since the letters don't occur too frequently in German and I only need to memorize one keyboard layout.
I don't know if something similar is available for US layouts.
I had a similar problem (Spanish and English keyboard share the () problem, and we have ñ where ; usually is, but Spanish keyboards are qwerty and not azerty). I switched to the US-international keyboard layout and use that to write in any language now. I find it a good compromise, although it's not perfect neither to write in Spanish nor to program/write in English.
As for communicating in different languages, though, why do you feel the need to regularly switch between the German and US keyboard? IMO the German keyboard can do everything at least as well as the US one can (in terms of accents and so on), except for braces and brackets.
If the latter bother you (I know quite a few people who use the US keyboard for this reason): Why not adjust the second and/or third layer of your (German) keyboard layout and make braces and brackets more easily accessible? Same goes for any features that you might be missing.
A lot of people seem to be recommending switching to an entirely new (first-layer) layout while your issue could probably be fixed by:
1. changing the second and third layer
2. using that same layout everywhere, on both US and German keyboards.
Not sure I’d recommend it though, need to learn normal Dvorak for use on other computers where you can’t install a keyboard.
I can’t look at the keyboard. If I do I’m instantly confused. And I can’t use a Dvorak view on mobile - just looks too different. Maybe I should try again...