I agree that ease of accessibility of the key is very important in choosing a variable symbol.
The first time I ever stepped into ERB, typing <% was a chore, since it was just a bit further than I had been used to typing tag characters. For en_US Americans on OS X, the £ character is a simple Option+3 though. Can anyone tell me what the key combination for the character is on en_US Windows platforms?
I'm always amazed how hard it is to type a | pipe on an american keyboard. On British keyboards it's next to left shift so you can type it with just one keystroke.
Oh god, I had to use a British keyboard while working on a project this summer, and that damn backslash/pipe key next to the left shift was the bane of my existence. I don't know how many times I accidentally hit that when trying to hit the left shift. Why would you ever put it there?
And the tall Enter key - uggh, why? Even if you need an extra key because of the pound symbol, you could just put it where the backslash/pipe key normally goes, instead of having a misshapen Enter key. And swapping " and @ - completely nonsensical. ' and " should be on the same key.
As I recall, the UK keyboard layout was designed to allow entry of every character in the ASCII and EBCDIC character-sets, which explains why it includes "¬" and both vertical bar ("|") and broken bar ("¦").
Putting double-quote above "2" makes perfect sense if you've ever looked at an ASCII table. A lot of 8-bit micro-computers did that, even in America - for example, the Apple II.
> As I recall, the UK keyboard layout was designed to allow entry of every character in the ASCII and EBCDIC character-sets, which explains why it includes "¬" and both vertical bar ("|") and broken bar ("¦").
Seems kind of pointless. If you're going to include some extra keys, how about a few Greek letters, or accented English letters (without AltGr)? Of course, that's not to say there aren't pointless keys on the US English keyboard (what the hell is "`" for?).
> Putting double-quote above "2" makes perfect sense if you've ever looked at an ASCII table.
But there's no reason to base the keyboard layout on ASCII tables. The keyboard should be designed to be as intuitive as possible, rather than staying true to some obscure technical details.
Presumably they didn't include any Greek or other letters because they weren't in the basic ASCII or EBCDIC sets. I guess they wanted their keyboard to be standard across both kinds of computers: micros and mainframes.
I find it hard to believe that you really think that the tiny hit-target for the enter button on an american keyboard is a good thing. It is one of the most frequently used keys.
If you think hitting the huge left shift button is hard then imagine how hard it is for someone used to a British keyboard to hit enter on an american keyboard.
> imagine how hard it is for someone used to a British keyboard to hit enter on an american keyboard.
Not too difficult, I'd say, because you can just move your right pinky directly to the right from the home position and you're good to go. The problem with the British Enter key is that it's tall instead of wide, so you have to reach even further to the right. I don't see any benefit to the increased height, because I'm always going to hit the Enter key from the home position anyway.
It's a similar issue with having the backslash/pipe key next to the left Shift. I move my left pinky down and a little to the left to hit the left Shift, but instead there's a backslash/pipe key there, which means I have to move it even more to the left, which is just uncomfortable.
£ would require the use of the middle finger.
To British sensibilities, it would mean swearing at PHP on every variable declaration! Actually, that said...