i’m going to design and build a “programmer’s numpad”, because I’m sick of awkward hand movements for writing brackets with numbers and commas and spaces etc. here’s the first draft. make your modifications here: http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/ i’m thinking of adding another column, putting something between the numbers and the plus/minus.
From where I’m sitting it seems like less work to use a modifier key and stay around my normal hand position, than to lift up my hand and move over to the num pad every time I need to type a bracket.
Maybe there is a standard keyboard layout that can provide more optimal placement of secondary functions of keys with modifiers, to make it less awkward, rather than what is essentially a macro pad with single character macros.
Of course the weakness of any such customization is that you can no longer walk up to a random computer and be productive.