Whether you, like me, beleive that QAZWSX keyboards make far more sense, especially in a machine learning world, I think we all agree a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys doesn’t make sense in modern society on modern devices.
Whether you, like me, beleive that QAZWSX keyboards make far more sense, especially in a machine learning world, I think we all agree a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys doesn’t make sense in modern society on modern devices.
It makes perfect sense, we’ve been using it forever, it’s the standard, almost every person that’s taken a typing class for the last 150ish years (in the English speaking world), has done so on a qwerty keyboard. Why bother changing something that just works?
Just because you’re used to something, doesn’t make it good.
What evidence do you have that QWERTY is bad?
Honestly, it’s a mere shower thought, so I didn’t come prepared with notes and statistics in hand, what I will say is the amount of screen real estate is by far the worst issue.
Use something else, try coming back.
Sure, and we’ve tried a lot of alternative layouts over the decades.
None of them stuck around, by and large. Some have ultra-niche followings, sure. But overall, the latin-script world has stuck to (Q|A)WERT(Y|Z). For a reason!
True. But the rule of thumb is that in order to replace an existing working solution, a new model needs to be at least ten times better in quantifiable ways. Otherwise it’s worth staying with the established solution.
What’s ten times better than qwerty?
Have you ever tried to type on your phone in landscape while still seeing the content? That’s 8 times better in itself.
“Have you ever tried to do this thing you’ll never actually need to do?”
It sounds a hell of a lot more like you’re trying to automate text communication
Wait, you’ve never had to type on your phone in landscape? Never played a game and had to type a message in chat? Never had to type while watching a video? Never had to do something in terminal and the text wasn’t legible in portrait? 🥹
People rode horses for millenia until someone built a car.
Because touch screens are very different from typewriters and having to precisely press tiny keys without making full use of their capabilities is extremely inefficient.