0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp
Unrelated, this one is cute: https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209
QWERTY predates electronic devices.
Some of the most interesting aviation research in the past few decades have been around human factors like psychology, perception, and cognition. If there was some substantial effect to having the buttons be arranged in a different pattern, I do legitimately hope it would have been found by now.
Do keep in mind these devices are cost-prohibitive in the extreme to design, build, and certify. The idea of having separate, parallel processes in order to have a different button layout between regional devices creates a thousand headaches of its own, both before and after production. The issue goes even further, in that just the FAA alone requires simulators of these aircraft to have replicated button look and feel criteria that would make your head spin. Is there even going to be a question as to if you're going to have to have two simulators? Will type-ratings be transferrable? Will there be separate differences training and/or currency requirements between the two distinct input methods?
Some or even most of those answers might turn out favorably for manufacturers or operators or pilots. But just having to ask them drives costs up considerably.
Boeing found a way.
These days everyone types on a keyboard. It's way more universal, to the point where a non QWERTY layout has to impose additional cognitive load.
It was common to type on a keyboard also before, it just was a typewriter's keyboard.
I've seen a YouTube video in the last couple of years that explained the true origins of the QWERTY keyboard. Originally, the keyboard was alphabetical and arranged two rows, based on a piano keyboard, the black keys went A-N left to right, and the white keys went O-Z, right to left. Then it got shortened in width and the letters got folded over (this is why at the right edge of the middle row you have HJKL and the bottom row has MN reversed as NM).
I'm not 100% sure this was the video I saw, but it has some of the points: https://youtu.be/c8f6us-Sjlo
This is sort of like saying a c compiler is there to stop you from dereferencing null pointers
I like it! How else could we describe it?
C compilers exist to prevent developers from writing reliable code.
C compilers caught on because they allow geeks to act macho to other geeks.
C compilers exist because programmers on 32-bit systems were nostalgic for the DEC PDP-11.
C compilers exist because the industry worked out that fast code was way more lucrative than reliable code.
Anyone got more?
Every aircraft that I've ever flown has an alphabetical keyboard. Typically horizontal space is valuable, yet vertical space is less valuable, so it's easy to make the keyboard long but not wide. However, as others pointed out, it seems to be changing in newer jets.
For one thing the ASCII ordering is now suddenly jumbled up. Maybe our great supreme intellectual leader Elon will issue Magacode to supersede Unicode, kym epcy epc ngy vky yxcohy!
This is necessary because the order of words or characters is sometimes only sensibly defined if you know the language a text is written in.
Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated v and w as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled with a v or a w. The two letters were often combined in the collating sequence as if they were all v or all w, until 2006 when the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dictionary) declared a change.
I'm thinking of the Swedish calendar[1] and Högertrafikomläggningen[2] when they switched which side of the road they drove on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar: TL;DR: The plan was to skip all leap days in the period 1700 to 1740. Every fourth year, the gap between the Swedish calendar and the Gregorian would reduce by one day, until they finally lined up in 1740... he Great Northern War stopped any further omissions... 1712 had 367 days... 1753... The leap of 11 days was accomplished in one step, with 17 February being followed by 1 March
although f and v would make more sense in terms of the actual sounds made?
Depends on the language. In German, f and v sound similar. And from your profile description I am guessing you are from the Netherlands, which I guess also might have f and v sound very similar to one-another.
In Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, we have pretty clear distinction between f and v.
Only until you're used to it. Then it's just as natural as switching between a keypad with a 1 in the top left versus one with a 7 in the top left. Your brain just takes the wheel.
Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin older pilots' muscle memory.
You get used to it, same as you got used to a QWERTY keyboard.
(note: this based on my experience often interacting with another device with an alphabetic keyboard, not an FMC)
https://www.aviationtoday.com/2016/04/27/spectralux-launches...
Remember, also, that not all countries use QWERTY. France, one of the homes of Airbus, uses AZERTY. What should they do about their keyboards?
Changing anything significant on an aircraft requires certification though. So you typically have to have a very good cause to do it.
I have news for you.