Keyboards

Look at your keyboard. If it says QWERTY on a row of keys near the top it is laid out in a completely nonsensical way. Why is it laid out like that? For no good reason, that's why. It started out that way because that is how it made sense to lay out early mechanical typewriter keyboards. With the keys laid out in that order it took longer to type, and common key combos were farther apart, making typewriter much less likely to jam.

Almost all keyboards are set up this way, because it is harder to change a standard, than just use it forever. Just because 99% of keyboards are of the QWERTY type, doesn't mean that there aren't other types of keyboards out there. The type call Dvorak is the most popular of the nonstandard keyboards. It is laid out for typing speed, with letters that are most often used on the home row.

Just think, how often do you use the j and k keys? Not near as often as the e or o keys, yet your fingers have to move farther for these often used keys, than for those other little used keys.

Despite knowing how much better the Dvorak type keyboard is, I still use QWERTY keyboards exclusively. Why? Because I learned on QWERTY keyboards, and even if I changed every keyboard I own to a Dvorak keyboard everybody else's keyboard will still be in the QWERTY mode. What a nightmare to switch back and forth. It is hard enough to switch from MAC keyboards to PC keyboards and back, and the only difference is where the place keeper marks are.

I suspect that the QWERTY style keyboards will stay the most popular types of keyboards until something replaces the keyboard as the most used method of text input. Then, when learning keyboarding is optional I suspect that people that bother too will learn the Dvorak keyboard (or some relation).