I recently switched from the german keyboard layout to the US one and it's been a blast coding with it. Give it a try yourself!
Here is the mentioned special Keyboard Layout I use to still be able to easily type characters like ä,ö,ü, etc.
EurKey: http://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/layout.html
I edited the EurKEY Layout and swapped Z and Y, here is the download if you prefer that, too:
http://martinwolf.org/_files/EurKEY-qwertz.keylayout.zip