> I take it this layout was invented before Unix and its heavy use of forward slashes

My guess would be that Unix chose many of its special characters and keyboard shortcuts precisely because they were easy to type on a US keyboard.

I'm Chilean and I use the ANSI US layout because /, < and > are much easier to type than using ISO keyboards.

When I need to type Spanish characters like áéíóú, ñ, etc. I switch to latin american ISO layout using WIN + Spacebar and then switch back.

Why not just use US Intl, and use ALT GR to produce á, é, í, ó, ú and ñ, along with æ, ø and å?

I have a strange ISO/ANSI US keyboard, with an ANSI left shift and an ISO enter key.

I didn't know about the US intl layout when I decided to make the switch, and I don't know if it's worth to learn it now.

I used to switch between US and DK layouts, it's just so much easier to just have one layout. In my opinion, learning US Intl is worth it. Besides, it's pretty predictable for Spanish characters: á = altgr+a, é = altgr+e and so on.

Yeah it's great for Spanish. But I found that knowing (and using) native layout is more valuable to me because when I need to type on someone else's keyboard I'm not lost and can still touch type. If you never need to do this US international is indeed superior layout.

Trying to remember more than two layouts becomes confusing very fast. AZERTY and QWERZ are the two worst ones, fortunately I never need to use those.

The British/Irish ISO layouts are reasonable. They are very close to the US layout, but gain the additional key.

I don’t think UK/ISO and US are close? Especially backquote between LShift and Z feels awkward if you’re used to ANSI.

These keys are in different positions: "@#~\|

These keys are present on the UK keyboard, but not the US: £¬

Compared to every other common ISO keyboard layout, ISO UK and ANSI are very similar. For non-programmers, ", @ and (nowadays) # are the ones that matter. For a programmer used to an ISO keyboard, the UK layout may well be a better choice than the US ANSI one. (US ISO would be a good choice, but the extra key seems to duplicate symbols already present on the layout).

In intellij this was a bit frustrating to me, you can do ctrl-shift-`/` to block-comment (in german keyboard: ctrl+shift+shift+7). How do I double-shift?

I know you can configure that in IJ but I'm too lazy to do that, especially if there are many keys to remap.

So now I have a keyboard with UK Layout.

Check out the neo layout, optimized for programming, writing german and english.

I solved it by buying a UK layout keyboard for home. At work I confuse the hell out of people by using a German keyboard but UK layout.

Same problem with latin american keyboards found just a few kilometers south the US. If I remember correctly, the default modifier key in VIM is next to imposible to press on a l-a keyboard. It was ` ?

You mean the default prefix key. You really really don’t need to use prefix keys, like at all, in normal Vim use.