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@retoor Yup.
In the old days of typewriters keys were apparently breaking because the typists had been using them too quickly or something like that. -
@D-4got10-01 not breaking but basically every key would move a hammer with the keyed letter that hits the center (striking the ink lint and paper behind it) and then travelling back. Now with certain letters the hammer of the next letter could/would collide with the hammer traveling back.
The qwerty layout was designed to eliminate those mishaps while typing extremely fast.
It is however possible to optimise for finger travel without consequences these days so it's kinda ridiculous that we still use QWERTY. Especially considering the vat majority of people using the keyboard have not ever touched a mechanical typewriter. -
@hjk101 I'm still pretty sure the alphabetical layout wouldn't be much better... maybe the DVORAK layout would help more.
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@JsonBoa yeah alphabetical would be worse, qwerty is at least designed for typing. Lovely rant by the way.
Dvorak is one of the high potential ones, Colemak and friends are already a lot better.
Something I did not consider was mobile swiping. That might be more accurate on qwerty. -
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@retoor Probably because it was a (human) optimisation option ;P
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My wife went to do some work for a charity. They "got her the best computer available". It was a poor mangled MacBook whose better days were somewhere in the dawn of the last decade.
She tries to type anything... and only gibberish appears on screen.
She comes to me, absolutely me puzzled. I try to type anything... gibberish. I boot up in safe mode, everything is OK.
I look around for system configs... there is a custom keyboard mapping enabled by default.
We check the weird stains on the keyboard... they are regular and in all keys. Like if there used to be adhesive stickers on the keys, and those stickers were later removed.
I boot up again... and type "q". It becomes "a". I type "w". It becomes "b". I dread typing "e". Sure as bug, it becomes "c".
By the love of byte, someone asked for a custom keyboard layout... IN FUCKING ALPHABETICAL ORDER.
It was easy enough to change the layout after that, but the weirdness continues: my wife asked around, and apparently the laptop used to belong to some old dude... who was convinced there were characters missing from his keyboard. Apparently he could never find them in a regular QWERTY layout.
I wish I could give some encouraging words for the kid who came up with the solution. Working around technophobes is a drying art, that needs to be rewarded.
rant
keyboard
technophobes
old people