I've been using a keyboard layout I made with Ukulele that swaps the symbols with the numbers and I couldn't be happier. You get used to it in less than a day of typing and it makes all the () $ @ ! so much easier. It makes so much sense as a programmer when symbols are typed so much more frequently than numbers.
any idea how to combine this with vim/vimperator/pentadactyl?
it seems to work with ^ but with the vim plugins, following a link requires numbers. pressing shift every time is less ideal. and in vim you use numbers quite a bit too (for moving and editing).
Whoah I never even thought of doing that. It seems like it would work, I mean I really don't type numbers all that often these days... hmmm. I might chuck it on my laptop and see how I dig it for dev. Tempted to swap [] and {} as well. It's a similar concept to swapping F-keys for media keys, which I have and much prefer.
This is exactly what I've done with KeyRemap4MacBook. It has built in options for switching around numbers and symbols, as well as changing {} and []. Makes so much more sense for a programmer, and you can make multiple sets of options so you can disable them if someone else needs to use your machine for a bit.
I use programmer dvorak, which also has swapped numbers and symbols and it's a blessing. The good thing about this one is also changes layout of the symbols so it's really a lot nicer to use.
