Who needs alternatives?

Our dearly beloved QWERTY layout, that we have all come to love, is under attack as never before. There are some people who claim that it is slow and inefficient, and that we need to switch to another layout, such as Dvorak.

Really? How many people do you know who have actually tried to learn Dvorak? If you’re anything like me, you can probably count them on one hand. How many people do you know have actually succeeded? If you’re anything like me, you can count them on one finger.

Then there are the plethora of other wannabe layouts that bored teenagers knock together on a wet weekend using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. You get ones with names such as Colemak, or Asset, or Capewell Evolved, or Arensito, or Maltron, or Qwerf, or Asetion, or Enti-Key, or Woozy Wombat, or Typing Tribbles, or something like that. Chances are, you can probably count the number of people who have heard of any of them on one finger.

But is QWERTY really as inefficient and slow as any of these characters make it out to be? And do these alternative layouts actually make any difference? Well, take a look at the high scores on this typing game. The top ten scores — up to a whopping 155 words per minute — are all by QWERTY typists. Go figure.