Here’s the Deal

QWERTY vs AZERTY

68 39

10 5

When comparing QWERTY vs AZERTY, the Slant community recommends QWERTY for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” QWERTY is ranked 5th while AZERTY is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose QWERTY is:

You don't have to carry your own keyboard everywhere, QWERTY is pretty popular.

Specs

Bottom Row Key Freq.13.9%

Consecutive Same-Hand Keystrokes (L/R)65.5%/34.5%

Home Row Key Freq.27.0%

Left Index Finger Travel28.5%

Left Index Finger Usage18.6%

Left Little Finger Travel0.4%

Left Little Finger Usage6.4%

Left Middle Finger Travel22.0%

Left Middle Finger Usage18.2%

Left Ring Finger Travel2.6%

Left Ring Finger Usage7.1%

Right Index Finger Travel25.5%

Right Index Finger Usage15.4%

Right Little Finger Travel3.5%

Right Little Finger Usage2.4%

Right Middle Finger Travel8.6%

Right Middle Finger Usage6.2%

Right Ring Finger Travel8.8%

Right Ring Finger Usage10.4%

Spacebar Row Key Freq.15.3%

Thumb Usage15.3%

Top Row Key Freq.43.8%

No specs yet!

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?

QWERTY

AZERTY

Pros

Pro
Popular

You don't have to carry your own keyboard everywhere, QWERTY is pretty popular.

Pro
Default keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts for most applications were designed with QWERTY in mind.

Pro
Good for Vim users

Vim is most natural in QWERTY, since this is the layout it was designed on. Learning a good editor will help with your programming a lot more than learning a new layout.

Pro
Easy access to important keys

Some of the most used keys in programming such as ; . / " | ' < > * are very easily accessible because they either have their own keys or are "shift options". People who grew up using alternative layouts, such as Belgian AZERTY, know from experience this shouldn't be taken for granted.

Pro
Nearly unavoidable for French people

Most of us learned to type with this kind of keyboard, switching can be hard, and impractical to type French.

Pro
HJKL intact for vim

Vim programmers are going to want their navigation keys to relate to each other in a sensible fashion. QWERTY and azerty seem to be the only games in town for this

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Cons

Con
Not an easy to gain speed on QWERTY

Learning to touch type using traditional touch typing methods, you would not be as fast as others on Dvorak and you would be making quite a few mistakes.
The reasons that most of record holders have placing in typing speeds is because they do not use traditional typing methods.

Con
Made for typewriters, not computers

It was created before computers got popular. This layout was created for typing machines, so as to prevent collision between character hammers from slowing down the typist.

Con
Very unintuitive

Why QWERTY?

Con
Correct typographic letters and symbols not easily reachable

Con
Bad for programming

But you get used to it... :-)
Characters very common in programming languages, like [] {} ~#|`@ are reachable only via the infamous AltGr key on Windows computers (and perhaps Linux ones; not sure for Macs).
With practice, you type them without thinking, but it is still a rather impractical gymnastics.