Scandinavia and Germany have a small number of special characters in their alphabet. Coders from this region should consider moving to the US International keyboard in order to get easier access to brackets [], braces {} and other special characters which are commonly found in programming languages. Unfortunately, the US International keyboard has marked some of the special character keys as dead keys in order to support southern European languages. For many northern coders these dead keys are annoying. Fortunately, Microsoft has Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator which lets us remove the dead keys. The process is relatively straightforward:

1. Install Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
2. Run it
3. Load an existing keyboard: File -> Load Existing Keyboard… -> US International
4. Click on the Dead Keys (See Legend in the GUI) -> All… -> Tick the “Dead Key View”
5. Untick “Dead Key?”
6. Save Source File
7. Validate Layout
8. Build DLL and Setup Package
9. Follow the GUI
10. Run the generated setup.exe
11. Change the Keyboard Layout in your Windows Preferences
12. You may need to restart programs or the machine. YMMV

All in all, it took me about an hour of playing around and writing this up. I hope that it helps you.