If the human brain is smart enough to adapt then Why Qwerty/Azerty and why not Abcde...?

Many OS support that layout, give it a try, then you know

Both are bad. Why alphabet order in the first place? There's no logic behind it other than tradition. The same is fair about querty order.

@iiii Qwerty does have a logic. It was designed to keep mechanic typewriters from jamming when typing quickly, achieving that objective through cleverly arranging the keys with respect to their relative usage.

When electronic keyboards came, they were arranged in the same way because millions of typists already had learnt the muscle memory for the 10 finger system.

@Fast-Nop it does not have logic as a modern layout. I meant that.

When the robots take over and rule us all they won't be wrong for doing so....but they will be flawed because we made them.

@iiii the keyboard layout you use is up to your decision.

@stop if you can rearrange the keys on the keyboard or not rely on the labels that is. In such case, yes, it is very possible to use any layout.

@iiii it actually does make sense as a modern layout, because it spreads the most common letters out across multiple fingers. I'm just guessing since I don't know for sure, but I'd assume that it helps to reduce typing fatigue.

But the question about adaption is good. I'm German, so I'm used to QWERTZ.
I ordered a keyboard a few years ago, not thinking about the layout, and it was QWERTY (mind you, it's not just the letter being swapped, the special chars are WILDLY shuffled around).

I thought fuck it and tried to get used to it. After two weeks I just gave up, it felt fucken impossible to learn it. Why is that so hard?

Colemak master race.

@nitwhiz As a German who has used QWERTZ for a (too) long time: While it takes a while to get used to QWERTY, the special character placement is much better for development. No need to break for finger anymore for those {}.

I am interested in giving colemak-dh a try thiugh, I just have to figure out of to properly set it up in my OS.

We use qwert* because it is just good enough.

It was created with the english language in mind and while you could task someone to do what Latham Sholes did in the mid 1800's, I doubt they would be able to produce something that is efficient enough to replace qwerty. Other keyboard layouts suffer from the problem that they are not really that much better.

It's not some Random pattern, It was designed considering hand positions and frequency of letters used.

@theabbie but not for ease of typing, but the opposite: to prevent machine hands entangling with each other. Have you ever seen a typing machine?

@saucyatom did you switch to US layout for that reason? I'd like to try that but mac book keyboards are built in ☹️

@EmberQuill spreading consecutive letters evenly between fingers has the benefit that the next finger can move to position when the current one is being pressed. It's kinda analogous to instruction pipelining in processors. That should also improve speed. But that doesn't mean there could be a more optimised layout than qwerty for modern needs.

@Lensflare Mostly, yes. For other purposes there isn't much of a difference and if you often switch between German and English the lack of Umlaut in QWERTY might be an issue. I was thinking about making my own layout for that reason (QWERTY German), but I didn't realize it (yet).

My keycaps are still QWERTZ though, which makes learning it a bit harder (since you can't look at it), but it's not a big issue.

@iiii No I haven't, but they don't have choice, If they changed design earlier, most of the people proficient in typewriters would become useless.

@theabbie that's true. But it's the same reason why querty is still here with all its quirks: the legacy of all those numerous people who know that layout.

Just go Dvorak if you want a more optimized layout. It's specifically good for English but most languages it's a lot more efficient than QWERTY