Ctrl + Z incident

It was a typical afternoon. I was on the verge of completing my backlog, just needed a few more compilation checks before pushing my work up to the server and ready to be merged into the main branch. But just before the final check, the server hung. Then one of my colleagues came to me. "What the heck you did?! Kill some of your processes now, the server hangs because of you!" he said. Only then I realized all the processes I thought I'd killed were not killed but suspended instead. I "ctrl+z" instead of "ctrl+c" them, accidentally blocked all the resources on the servers, causing an embarrassing mistake.

My AZERTY keyboard

That was a few months ago. I have to admit that at that time, I had not used bash on daily basis for quite awhile, some shortcut keys were needed to be refreshed. I kinda forgot about the "ctrl+c". To kill a process, I only remembered the finger motion : ring finger on the ctrl key and index finger on one of the keys at the bottom row of the keyboard. That "ctrl+z" mistake, it was really my fault. But it was so embarrassing and like any human would, I want to blame other things and deny it entirely. Rather than admit the mistake, I blame it on the keyboard's layout. After years in France, I was so used to AZERTY keyboard. Only if it was an AZERTY keyboard, I would not have made that mistake because the 'z' key would have been on the top row instead of the bottom row as the 'c' key. The finger motion of "ctrl+z" would have been drastically different than "ctrl+c".

This could be a good idea for an episode of What The Fuck France because AZERTY layout is a very French thing. In a world where English is dominating so as the QWERTY layout, AZERTY still persists just like the French culture. Although QWERTY is very well documented, normally credited to Christopher Latham Sholes, the exact origin of AZERTY is obscure. Delphine Gardey even did an in-depth investigation on the history of keyboard layout in France but the origin of AZERTY remains unknown.

The thing about AZERTY is it doesn't even make sense. It doesn't make typing in French any easier and there exists a considerable number of French who express their distaste for it. French could have used a QWERTY layout with extra accent keys like the Swiss francophones and the Quebecois do. The only reason of its existence is the power of habit. But who the hell came up with this idea first. With my understanding of the French, I come up with a theory and it is simple: because the French doesn't like the English. There is no lacking of history and articles to prove that English and French are rivalries since like ever. So when QWERTY keyboard came into the typewriter market in France, I would imagine a bunch of trolls slightly modified the QWERTY into AZERTY and claimed it was French made and therefore it was better. Then the general public of France just assumed it was true because it sounded true and used it ever since. In conclusion, AZERTY is different for the sake of being different.

When I was first introduced to AZERTY, it was a pain in the ass since I was from an anglophone country. But after years of AZERTY, I am back and I have to re-adapt to QWERTY again. Nowadays, I still need some thought process whenever I need an 'A', or a 'M', or a full stop. One thing I have to acknowledge is that typing number is certainly a bliss when switching back to QWERTY because the extra "shift" key is not needed.