Russian Keyboard Layout and Programing

By Yuri Khan. Date: . Last updated: .

For Russian programers, you don't have these symbols in Russian layout:

` ~ @ # $ ^ & | [ ] { } ' < >

If you need to type them, you need to switch layout out of Russian. So, programing in Russia is quite painful.

Here is the detail.


As a Russian computer user, I have to deal with language-specific layouts constantly. I have to write in English, Russian and several computer languages. Now, Russia and the Russian language have a couple of unfortunate properties:

Russian layout 2022-01-07
Russian keyboard layout, from Microsoft Windows. [image source 2022-01-07 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Russian.svg]

As a consequence of this, the Russian layout cannot just place letters on letter keys and leave punctuation alone. It has to borrow

, < . > ; : ' " [ ] { } ` ~

keys for letters, and shuffle their punctuations over other, less frequently used keys. So,

/ ? becomes ., ;

" displaces @

; pushes $ out,

: evicts ^,

? replaces &,

and / takes the place of |.

Needless to say, it is inconvenient — it introduces modality. You have to remember which layout you are in, and you have to switch layouts if you are writing Russian and need any of

` ~ @ # $ ^ & | [ ] { } ' < >

Even if I heavily customize my Russian layout, it does not magically create 7 new letter keys. Truly Ergonomic 109/209 only offers four usable extra “International” keys (top left, bottom left, bottom right and second-top middle in the default), and three of those are in inferior positions (long stretch of pinky) only suitable for the less-used letters or characters.

So:

Russian Keyboard