Incidentally, while testing on Windows (in both WSL and cmd.exe) with a Finnish layout: you do not need a space after typing out the tilde.
A US ANSI keyboard has all programming symbols in the right place. Yet it makes Latin/Nordic and other symbols easy to type via compose key (e.g. Right Alt), or similar.
For example, Compose a + ' = á, a + e = æ, o + / = ø, s + s = ß, s + o = §, etc.
An annoying issue is that most brands won't sell ANSI keyboards abroad. Apple is one of the few that get this right. A trick is to import from countries where ANSI is the default, such as NL.
I am able to write 120 words per minute, not so special, but good enough for me. I find the ansi/qwerty too slow with its compose system (I tried on the canadian-intl layout made for Québec).
My point was that ANSI is more ergonomic than ISO for programming, and all local characters are still easy to type.
Personally I always found that ^] for various terminal commands was much more of a hassle, to the point where it's easier to just close the terminal window.
Some Danes will just use a US keyboard layout, but that's not really as common as sites like HN will have you believe. In terms of programming it does make a little sense though. The 8 and 9 key is doing a lot of heavy lifting, Shift + 8 is (, Option + 8 is [ and Shift + Option + 8 is { and the matching close characters on 9.
There's not a lot of room for special characters on a Nordic keyboard, all most all of the require a modifier key. I don't know if that makes Nordic keyboard users more adverse to the use of these characters in commands and programming languages.
Yeah, tell me ’bout it. Back when I used Windows at work, a friend told me that instead of Ctrl ] one should press Ctrl ¨ – because on a regular Swedish keyboard, ¨ is on the same location that has ] on a US keyboard. (Not sure if this works with Linux/Mac, never tried there.)
So nowadays I only use `~` when I'm navigating in an interactive shell session, and never in commands or config files.
I had to switch over 25 years ago when moving. I just considered it a minor inconvenience. I don't think my programming output really suffers, there are so many other factors. Some (very few) people (native or foreigners) do use different keyboards for that reason. I have not noted that they would be better or faster programmers for that. I would claim the correlation between programming fast and introducing more bugs is much clearer.
As for the dead key, pressing tilde space is not the optimal solution. Especially if you are using ssh over ssh. That means you need to produce 2 tilde characters to control the inner ssh. I prefer pressing tilde tilde. With nested ssh that makes 4 tilde characters. Much easier to type than tilde space because you just hold the AltGr key during all for 4 key presses.