When comparing Neo2 (Classic Neo) vs AZERTY, the Slant community recommends Neo2 (Classic Neo) for most people. In the question“What are the best keyboard layouts for programming?” Neo2 (Classic Neo) is ranked 7th while AZERTY is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Neo2 (Classic Neo) is:
Easily reachable programming relevant symbols, like {}'()|~"_[]<>, on the third layer.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Best for programming
Easily reachable programming relevant symbols, like {}'()|~"_[]<>, on the third layer.
Pro Type mathematical symbols natively
Pro Many layers
You can type more symbols and letters, that do not even exist on other keyboard layouts.
Pro Its possible to type letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet
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
Cons
Con Developed primarly for the German language
English is considered a major target, but the homepage and docs are mostly in German.
Con Harder to learn
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.