Most non-US keyboards are terrible for programming in general. I only use my native Norwegian keyboard layout when I need to type a significant amount of text in Norwegian. Whenever I need to type some code, I switch back to US layout. I believe most other programmers do the same.

Yes, programming with anything other than the US layout is simply unbearable. I simply switched to the US layout for everything. Although to be fair my native language is Italian, which doesn't need many special characters.

Most programmers I know use native+US layouts (like you), a minority always uses US (like me), almost nobody uses a native layout to code.

I'm an English speaker, so I'm curious: Italian technically requires some accent marks, right? Do you have a quick way to do those from a US layout, or do you just ignore them in casual conversation the way people tend to ignore capitals and (some) punctuation?

Yeah, technically it requires diacritical marks, but unlike French they are only written explicitly when they fall on the final letter of a word. Italian only has seven vowels, so these are the only common ones: è é ì ó ò ù à.

What I would do is this:

- Replace them with a single quote -> E' instead of È or É and so on.

- Ignore all uncommon marks.

In most contexts, it is perfectly acceptable to do that. A native speaker would understand without giving it a second thought or considering it impolite. I write emails to my boss like that.

If I had to make something meant for the public (say a UI, or a document), then I'd switch to the Italian layout for that purpose only and then go back to the US one.

Not for Italian, but I use a US keyboard layout with the addition of German umlauts behind right alt + letters (as well as right alt + ' and right alt + ` being dead keys to put accents on letters for foreign words). I find this much better than the standard German layout which puts all of @{[]}\~ behind right alt - and most of them on the right side of the keyboard too so you have to akwardly hit the right alt + combo with a single hand.