Why do programming languages use curly braces?

Re:Why do programming languages use curly braces? by jonascopenhagen on Tuesday February 26, 2013 @11:53AM (#5286721)

I write software in English, sure, but my keyboard layout needs to be Danish in order for me to write emails, etc. in Danish. Having to swap keyboard layouts would mean I'd be confused constantly.

On a Danish Mac keyboard the curly braces are written by holding down Alt + Shift + 8. Not exactly an easy combination to hit.

> Most programmers often write their programs in english anyway

I'm not so sure about that. There are tons of places where English proficiency is really low, even among programmers.

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Re:Why do programming languages use curly braces? by tbe on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @02:12AM (#5291093)

I write norwegian on a US MacBook just fine. All the weird characters are available by pressing the Option key.

When I first got the laptop I switched layouts between coding and writing mails, but after a while I found that learning the key combos for a few letters was easier for me than switching between completely different layouts.

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