I'm going to hazard a guess that the problem is not the physical keyboard, but rather the OP's use of a non-US keyboard layout. My native portuguese keyboard layout uses AltGr-8 and AltGr-9 for square brackets, and 7/0 for curly braces, and it's incredibly uncomfortable. I eventually changed to using the US International layout (with dead keys) to make it less awkward to write code, to the detriment of writing in portuguese.