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). _______________________________________________ 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/LAGB732MOP67SZK2ZXOZ7FAILFRUK2LQ/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/