> On 11 Nov 2019, at 17:05, Richard Damon <rich...@damon-family.org> wrote: > > On 11/11/19 10:10 AM, Random832 wrote: >>> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019, at 03:22, Greg Ewing wrote: >>> On 11/11/19, 12:41 PM, Richard Damon wrote: >>>> it was DESIGNED to be inefficient (that was one of its design goals, to >>>> slow typesetters down to be slower than the machine they were working >>>> on). >>> This is most likely a myth, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY >> This is a nice rhetorical trick: "Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY >> layout was not designed to slow the typist down,[5] but rather to speed up >> typing by preventing jams." - well *of course* the goal was not to slow down >> actual production of text, but this does not imply the method by which >> "speeding up by preventing jams" was to be achieved was not by slowing down >> the physical process of pressing keys. (And the argument that having keys on >> alternating hands speeds things up is related to modern touch-typing >> techniques, and has little to do with the environment in which QWERTY was >> originally designed). > > Yes, Someone on the Internet is wrong! https://xkcd.com/386/ > > My memory of the full story is that, YES, putting come combinations > verse putting them together let the machines go faster and perhaps let > touch typist go faster, but then they often went a bit too fast even > then so many of the common letters were moved from the home row or to > weak fingers to slow the typist down a bit to match the machine. This > was the impetus for the development of alternate keyboards, like the > Dvorak, which were designed to be faster for a trained typist to use. > > This gets to the key point of my comment, even though the Dvorak > keyboard has been show to be superior to the standard QWERTY keyboard in > a number of studies (like your claims that a symbolic notation is > superior to 'ASCII Soup'), a major hindrance to it being adopted is the > existing infrastructure.
And some studies have shown no or insignificant advantage and the original study was a fraud. I think we can safely let it go. It's way more important that there is a standard. _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/EJP6CZKYTB2TMPDEZWU5KB6WCYJHJEJH/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
