Why do we still use qwerty keyboards?

[Levitas1234]

The death of qwerty will be the death of me! LONG LIVE QWERTY!!! and abc is just retarded there is a reason they make qwerty keyboards, its because its alot easier to type.

 

[theultimateend]

If we were to change now, it would be like having USA instantly change to the metric system, or have England drive on the other side of the road.

The US never changes.

That's largely why we have so many problems. Quick sudden changes would fix a numerous set of problems but people in the US are too dramatic about it.

OH NOES I MIGHT HAVE TO LEARN A NEW SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENT! Yeah...and then you'd be on par with the rest of the world AND be using a much more efficient system.

Yea, it's ALL our fault. And where the hell are you from, Mr. Perfect?

I hate to break it to you but Mr. Perfect has been dead for quite sometime now. http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/11/TampaBay/Wrestling_s__Mr_Perfe.shtml

So if you are going to accuse me of being a professional wrestler at least pick a living one.

Oh my bad. I forgot I'm not allowed to make any sort of criticisms about the US. It isn't like that is what our entire system is founded upon.

Course you did little but support my point. I'd explain how but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Historically the US has been largely resistant to change. Not as much as some nations but definately up there. It takes lots and lots of work to get even the simplest thing changed.

Also since you seem so interested in me (can't blame you) I'm American.

The empire is dead, but the imperial system lives on in the U.S.
Which Empire? Britain.

And farighnheit isnt easy to relate to. There's no real basis for 0 or 100; if it's 0 it's 'really cold'. Either is the rest of the system. 12" = 1', 3' = 1 yard. ? yard = 1 mile
Celcius makes so much sense. Just like the rest of the metric system. 10mm=1cm,10cm=1dm,10dm=1m,1000m=1km. So much easier to figured shit out.


On the qwerty topic, it's because it's more efficient typing. The most common letters are under the fingers, while the least common are harder to reach, such as Z, and [];'/

Wrong on ALL counts.
Imperial is FAR more relatable than the metric system.
It is simply far less efficient.

The cool part of the Imperial system is that almost all domains of discourse the average person will be in fall into one or two units of measurements.

Cups for baking, pints for beer, F degrees for the average temperatures a person will experience, etc.

It is in intuitive system that sacrifices ease of conversion for ease of use.

It is easy and relatable because you've grown up with it.

Just like I think English is the easiest language in the world. But when I meet people who speak say...Spanish or Chinese they'll tell me that English is complicated (most of the time that is what I get).

Celsius deals with values of water. Boiling and Freezing. The Human Body is largely comprised of Water. It is an elegant companionship.

 

[ma55ter_fett]

I kind of like my qwerty keyboard.

 

[AkJay]

snip

OK, I'm going to take a deep breathe, and tell you this as calmly as I can.

I am done with this conversation, because neither you or I will back down from our standpoints, and this will only end in a thread lock, a probation, or a suspension. Do not quote me again. Do not message me. I'm done with you. Goodbye.

 

[Doug]

After researching it I realized it was because typewriters would jam a lot with a ABC layout so QWERTY was designed to minimize this. Now escapist, I for one can say I have never used a typewriter and am pretty sure they aren't a common occurrence at this point.

Actually I'm fairly sure the keys are arranged to make typing commonly used words faster.

Anyways, point is, we're all used to it.

Actually, its an urban myth - the jamming one, anyways. As for QWERTY being faster, meh, its probably as fast as any other layout once you get used to it.

 

[tmujir955]

I removed all my keys and replaced them to be in order from A-Z. It really fucks with people who use my computer when they look down and see something different.

You may be the most devious person I have ever met. You deserve an:

 

[dont_blink]

the fact that phones are starting to use qwerty keyboards just goes to show how much handier they are


oh, and it wasnt just because typewriters would jam, it's because all the more commonly used letters are at the start of the alphabet [well, most of them; we dont really use w, x, y or z very much, compared to a, c, d, and e], and if one button broke on a typewriter, the ones surrounding it stopped working too. and the more-used letters are the first to wear and break.
qwerty was developed to space the commonly used letters out to avoid this breakage.
=]

 

[Omikron009]

QWERTY keyboards, were, as probably mentioned before, designed to make typing faster by grouping letters that are commonly used together. Convenient isn't it?

 

[Danny Ocean]

I remember my IT teacher giving a lecture on this once.

On the original typewriters, the keyboard layout was different, and that layout allowed people to naturally type pretty fast. However, the fast typing often caused the keys to jam, so the keys were rearranged to the QWERTY position so people would type slower to minimalise jamming (I can't remember exactly why QWERTY slows people down, something to do with how the fingers worked or something I think). But since we're all so used to the QWERTY keyboard now it doesn't really matter anymore.

Thats pretty much the history. But now that we are using keyboards and not typewriters. Can you not argue that typing faster is what we want? QWERTY slows us down, that is bad. Slowing down typists is not a good thing in my opinion.

That's what my teacher said as well, so he uses a keyboard with a different layout.

Also, if we changed layouts now, it would be hell trying to make everyone get used to the new layout.

1. Wrong. QWERTY was not designed to slow people down. It was designed to reduce jams whilst typing at speed. Read the wiki page. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY]

That pretty much brings down your entire argument, doesn't it? Still, even if QWERTY is not the most efficient layout, it is the standard. People are very fast with it. I myself can type quite fast, about 90 words per minute if I recall correctly. It would cause chaos if you were to attempt to change it, and it wouldn't bring any real benefit besides increasing the maximum typing speed from whatever it is now to whatever it might be with the new system.

It probably won't be much higher, because most people type comparatively slowly.

It's because if we switched it would result in us losing all the current typing skills the population holds. It's just too much hassle for little benefit. You'd have to retrain all typists and everyone's typing would slow to a crawl initially. The Short run problems are too numerous to make it viable.

You could say the same with switching from hunter gatherers to agriculture. terrible short term, great long run.

No. This is why:

1. Agriculture does not require all of your time. You can leave your crops to grow whilst you go out and gather. Knowledge is not lost.
2. The women probably did it, so it didn't reduce the manpower available for hunter-gathering.
3. It wasn't for efficiency or yield, it was for defence and the result of stationary habitats.

 

[Phenakist]

Should we swap all our books to read right to left while we're at it?

Sorry, it's just one of those things that you just wouldn't bother trying to change, we all learned to type on a qwerty keyboard and until they develop some completely new keyboard concept like a sphere or something that actually requires a different layout, nobody's gonna change or even consider it, we all had to learn how to use a qwerty keyboard at some point so why change for 1 person?

As far as Metric vs Imperial, the only Imperial unit's I use are pints and miles aside from that all metric

Note: Just slide a finger across the top row to type qwerty, try it, 'tis fun

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

People who don't know how to touch type will still have to constantly look at the keys to find the letters they want, and everyone else would have their typing skills rendered obsolete by a shift to a new layout to appease people who (and this is key here) don't know how to type.

Devices use the ABC layout these days because they are typically not full keyboards, so you're relegated to 'hunting and pecking' via your thumbs - if you're going to make a keyboard you literally cannot type properly on, why would you bother preserving a traditional layout? Ergo the ABC setup. It doesn't tend to confuse those of us with typing experience because we can't type on those devices, people who don't know how to type can use them as effectively as anyone else with less confusion since the letters are alphabetically arranged - everyone wins.

Making full-size keyboards with the ABC layout though would only benefit the people who can't type on any keyboard now - it would take the same amount of training to learn to type on that layout as it would for the existing dominant QWERTY layout.

 

[Gmano]

Have you tried switching to Dvorak? It is really fast, but you have to re-learn how to type, and it means that you either have to switch layouts on every computer you come across, or become able to type in both layouts without screwing up.

It is like the imperial system of measurement, metric makes much more sense, but everybody in the us is so used to it that it is still used. (and, for that matter, everybody in Canada gives height in feet and inches and does cooking in tea/table spoons and give weight in lbs, and people in england give their weight in stone, and distances in miles!)

Edit: it makes you think of the tower of babel... We are too powerfull so we will now change the keyboard, measurements and, just for the heck of it, make you learn esperanto and/or loglan.

 

[RedPandaMan]

Well, it's because we are used it, and people do not like to change.It is also pretty efficient, but I prefer DVORAK.

 

[Gmano]

Have you tried switching to Dvorak? It is really fast, but you have to re-learn how to type, and it means that you either have to switch layouts on every computer you come across, or become able to type in both layouts without screwing up.

It is like the imperial system of measurement, metric makes much more sense, but everybody in the us is so used to it that it is still used. (and, for that matter, everybody in Canada gives height in feet and inches and does cooking in tea/table spoons and give weight in lbs, and people in england give their weight in stone, and distances in miles!)

Dvorak actually has very few benefits over qwerty; Navy experiments showed some improvement, but most other tests show very little.

Personally I think it is a little faster, though that may be placebo effect...

Either way, the point remains that I gave it up due to the fact that it was impractical for me (as a student) to have to continually switch keyboards.

 

[Ham_authority95]

Too used to it really.

 

[anaphysik]

Momentum, and the fact that QWERTY keyboards aren't actively hostile to typing.

I've heard that DVORAK keyboards are supposed to be more helpfully arranged, but I don't know for sure. In fact, I don't even know if that's what they're called. Every time I type that name, New World Symphony starts playing in my head.

Heheh, Dvořak was great.

In general, the QWERTY layout is designed to minimize space between letters typed in a row.
Dvorak's layout is designed to evenly distribute typing load between both hands.
At very high wpm, Dvorak tends to win out. For regular dudes and dudettes, it's entirely a matter of preference. QWERTY was standardised first, so it's dominant nowadays.

I have a friend who types only in Dvorak. I look down at the keyboard too often to use a layout substantially different from the one in front of my eyes (German one is simple, but Greek and Cyrillic always have me fumbling for letters). (Frex, if I had a Dvorak keyboard, I'd be fine with typing in Dvorak.)

 

[Shurikens and Lightning]

Actually, its an urban myth - the jamming one, anyways. As for QWERTY being faster, meh, its probably as fast as any other layout once you get used to it.

OK, I'm going to link you to a page now. I want you to read it and get back to me. Got it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY