Related: We also need a new keyboard layout. The QWERTY arrangement is horrendously inefficient. It's going to happen very soon now, the gained efficiencies are significant!
Qwerty is just a relic from the time of typewriters. It was arranged that way to make sure that the typebars didn't bind even at high typing speeds, so yeah, not really optimized for efficiency.
>It was arranged that way to make sure that the typebars didn't bind even at high typing speeds
>From the very beginning, Sholes arranged his keys to be less likely to jam, based on frequency of use
Weird way to "disagree". QWERTY is pretty good for typing speed in the absence of jams, because the letter spreading helps both, but it wasn't the primary design goal.
As much as I have heard about this "myth" of QWERTY trying to slow down typists, I have never seen a single person that actually believed it. It's like a weird anti-meme.
I actually used to believe it, until I learned that it was the careful arrangement of keys opposite each other rather than a decrease in speed that led to fewer jams.
