I always buy Macbooks with JIS layout, not because underscores are convenient to type. It's convenient to push the かな button to start writing in Japanese then 英数 when finished. On an ASCII keyboard, Mac OS requires either C-<RET> or pushing the Fn key, both of which waste an entire second to display a modal, then another second to actually switch keyboard layout.
I will admit, JIS layout makes writing Clojure a bit easier, though it also makes quoting tedious. Escaping is even more tedious. Push M-¥ is one option. Another option is to configure Mac OS to output backslash, but then you can't input ¥.
When coding with an ASCII keyboard, I frequently make typos due to muscle memory. If you work in the US, that is another major disadvantage. Your work computers will have ASCII keyboards, not JIS keyboards.
Do you actually have to wait for the modal to show up? I was under the impression you could just press ctrl + shift and not wait for the modal and it would still switch layouts, but I could be misremembering.
Regarding muscle memory: That hasn’t been a problem for me as much as some shortcuts just not working.
Some applications seem to insist on controlling these by key codes, but display them as characters mapped to a US ANSI layout, giving me no way to actually configure the one I want for those keys that are physically different between ANSI and ISO.
I used to do this, and my company used to let me pick the layout of my laptop – but at some point they stopped, and since covid there’s now hotdesking, so I begrudgingly readjusted to a physical ANSI layout, mapped to QWERTZ.
Makes it very hard for colleagues to “quickly” type something on my computer if they can’t be bothered explaining what they want me to type in pair programming :)
I will admit, JIS layout makes writing Clojure a bit easier, though it also makes quoting tedious. Escaping is even more tedious. Push M-¥ is one option. Another option is to configure Mac OS to output backslash, but then you can't input ¥.
When coding with an ASCII keyboard, I frequently make typos due to muscle memory. If you work in the US, that is another major disadvantage. Your work computers will have ASCII keyboards, not JIS keyboards.