The QWERTY keyboard was designed to reduce mechanical jamming in early typewriters.
We kept it for computers. Which don't jam.
How many of our systems are just preserved solutions to problems that no longer exist?
And how would we even know?
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@Daojoan
urban legend.
The researchers tracked the evolution of the typewriter keyboard alongside a record of its early professional users. They conclude that the mechanics of the typewriter did not influence the keyboard design. Rather, the QWERTY system emerged as a result of how the first typewriters were being used. Early adopters and beta-testers included telegraph operators who needed to quickly transcribe messages from Morse Code
http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/%7Eyasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.html
reject the idea
I think it's also largely arbitrary, which is why most alternatives are nichey.
Optimizing layout for typing -- typing what? English? Spanish? German? (Considering only Roman alphabetic here)
At some point it's your nonconscious learned semiautonomous embodied skill, like shoelace tying, drinking water from a cup, etc, doing the work. The whole POINT of these sorts of skills is to render them not conscious.
I doubt there is a layout that makes your fingers happier reaching for a particular letter, beyond some basics like common keys (sic) clustered near the center etc.
@Daojoan Thank for asking such a profound ?
If both parties would focus on these issues…
Who knows where that kind of thinking could lead us!
Backspace still exists even though you do not need whiteout to fix your typo.
Carriage Return and Line Feed still exist too.
The Escape function has changed. In olden daze, you would rip out the paper and start over. Progress!
@Daojoan 80 column code is cause of punchcards
@Daojoan the Electoral College is another great example of this. I’m coining the term right now: Vestigial Systems.
@Daojoan the fact computers do not jam is a testament to QWERTY's success across multiple domains!
I did try dvorak for a while, got my typing speed up on it. Easy enough to swap around on a model m, with the uniform two part keys.
It is better. It even feels better.
Until windows randomly reverts it's layout for some inputs. Or you go to type on ... any other keyboard ever.
@Daojoan @briankrebs Actually, it wasn’t - this has been investigated and debunked. It was consultation with telegraph operators that mostly influenced the layout. https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/139379/1/42_161.pdf
The eyeball routing the nerve fibres IN FRONT OF the light sensing rods and cones, before sending the entire nerve bundle through a hole in the light sensing coverage.
Is a personal favourite
@Daojoan like the save 💾 icon
@Daojoan they make the alphabetical keyboards if you want them.
@Daojoan I recommended a change to IBM over 50 years ago while working there. They thought I was being silly.
@Daojoan Keyboard is a bit more complex (eg there are reasons typewriter is all one one row...)
Obvious other ones
- The 4'8 and a bit standard railway gauge was basically arrived at by network effects and nearby mining railways. It's way too narrow but we persist in running trains over it at high speed because it's easier than fixing the track width
- Long summer school holidays in many countries so kids could help with the harvest
- The floppy disk icon for save
@Daojoan
We've always done it this way.