Keyboards and Layouts for Software Developers

History of Keyboards and QWERTY, AZERTY Layouts

Many times, when I was designing a public interface for a framework—especially for prefixes of intermediate namespaces—I also took into account how easy the prefix was to type on my keyboard. I talked to my teammates about it. The idea was great, until now.

Now I know that the majority of the world uses QWERTY, but there are also AZERTY, QWERTZ, and other less common keyboard layouts. So the prefix “ib” that I chose for my UIViewKit framework happens to be part of the common set across these layouts—I got lucky.

Now I realize that the choice is more complex and should probably be made with the QWERTY layout as a reference.

In upcoming posts, I am going to share my findings about keyboards, UHID, system keyboard layouts, and using a keyboard when you are bilingual.