When comparing Neo2 (Classic Neo) vs Maltron Letter Layout, 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 Maltron Letter Layout is ranked 14th. 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 Punctuation is also optimized
The comma and period are more frequent than KVJZXQ.
Pro E on the thumb
E is the most used English letter by far at almost 13%.
Pro Highly optimized for frequency of use
This includes di- and tri-graphs, as well as the individual letter frequency.
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 Requires a physical keyboard
The Maltron layout requires an expensive physical Maltron keyboard. Most layout options are a simple change in software, to remap existing keys. (Touch typists mostly don't look at the labels anyway.) But there's no way to add the required thumb keys for this layout in software.