this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Programming

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Are the characters used in syntax of most programming languages dependent on the keys of the standard keyboard or was the standard keyboard made specifically to allow programming with these keys? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The title would probably be confusing, but I could not make it better than this. I noticed that most programming languages are limited to the alphanumerical set along with the special characters present in a general keyboard. I wondered if this posed a barrier for developers on what characters they were limited to program in, or if it was intentional from the start that these keys would be the most optimal characters for a program to be coded in by a human and was later adopted as a standard for every user. Basically, are the modern keyboards built around programming languages or are programming languages built around these keyboards?

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[–] CrunchyBoy 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Fun fact: the standard qwerty layout was made to slow typewriter typing down by putting common keys off the home row and apart from each other. This was done to prevent the little key arm thingies from colliding and jamming when typing quickly.

EDIT: Apparently this is not a fact

[–] fubo 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point wasn't to slow down typists, but to reduce the number of bigrams (two-letter sequences) that would be typed with adjacent keys, since that's the specific movement that's most likely to cause the key levers to jam.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not true. The current layout is the result of years of evolution based on feedback by typists and vendors.