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.
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?
People rode horses for millenia until someone built a car.
I have enough difficulty when a UI decides to use abc layout, no way would I want to learn a new keyboard layout. QWERTY it good enough
QWERTY Keyboards on a touch screen are still the stupid!
I know what you are trying to say but the more times I read your post title, the more I feel like I'm having a stroke.
a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter
Or are you have... the stroke?!
Now I'm having another one. I heard if I keep stroking I might go blind (ノ゜ー゜)ノ
a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys
BTW, the supposed origin of the QWERTY layout is uncertain, and the story about it being based around avoiding adjacent bigrams has been called into question often enough (PDF, see pg. 169ff). You can see there plenty images of typewriters that had O next to U still (I was left of U), which if you think about bigrams makes no sense as especially back then it was one of by far the most common ones.
The supposed slowdown is also false as explained in the PDF, as early typewriters were used to receive morse-code, and could type at 60-80 words per minute while the best morse senders capped at ~30, meaning that no slowdown would have been perceivable anyways.
One proposed origin could be that the early still-not-quite-there developments were based on most people using 4-8 fingers to type not all 10, and alwys the inner fingers and discarding the outer ones.
I seem to see a story I believed for years get debunked almost weekly now, thanks
It's the layout I know by heart so switching to anything else would just be worse. No thank you.
I don't want to use a different keyboard layout every time I switch devices.
Hey OP, could you send some links about QAZWSX? I coulndt find anything
Same here, especially something with AI?
I'm currenly using Unexpected Keyboard with dvorak layout which works insanely well (especially for Termux and such)
I just offered to private message someone an implementation because I didn't want to be accused of shilling but since you and @happyredditrefugee@lemm.ee are both interested and it would look dodgy to be offering so many private messages, I'll just post here is that's okay?
What is a QAZWSX keyboard (couldn't figure it out by web search), and what does keyboard layout have to do with machine learning? I'm genuinely curious.
Just an alternative keyboard layout
I broke the concept down in more detail here https://lazysoci.al/comment/9715945
Thanks for replying. It sounds like you basically get two (or some number well below one keys per character) keys and the set of possible characters gets somehow distributed between the two "real" keys, then the keyboard uses a predictive algorithm based on previous input to guess which keys were meant to be pressed.
IMO I'd be willing to try out an implementation of such an idea so long as I could run the predictive algorithm locally on my phone. I do think that current autocorrect + predicting which keys were pressed would require a lot more training data than just a generic autocorrect to get it working sensibly, and I think it would take a lot longer to converge to the user's "style" if it ever does.
everywhere I use 10 fingers to type, I use dvorak; but I still use qwerty on my phone.
I tried dvorak on my phone keyboard, but my thumbs kept bumping into each other. It was too annoying so I switched back.
Exactly the same here. Since I swipe type, I have to imagine that would be a nightmare on Dvorak with all the vowels clustered together.
I've never seriously tried dvorak. How long did it take you to get proficient?
Qwerty is bad for physical keyboards, but it's actually pretty good for mobile especially for swipe typing. I use coleman-dh on an ergo split keyboard but i still use qwerty on my phone because it just works better.
you had me until machine learning. Nope
I'm taking my pink hatted reindeer off the shelf!
For most people its not worth switching
What I found when I first learned about DVORAK and other layouts and why we use QWERTY, there were some studies that had shown that there wouldn't really be any significant increase in proficiency using different layouts, and the time needed to readjust to a new layout just isn't worth it.
There is plenty of evidence qwerty is slower there are also plenty of alternatives that get minimal to no use cos well standards.
I'll like to see more info of this "QAZWSX" keyboard layout if you have any. I did a quick search for it but ended up in Reddit with a comment you made (I think?. The usernames were almost identical). I don't like the AI part on a keyboard though.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.