Can you name a piece of software that uses this scheme? Or, better still, the OG software that used it. If I steal this, I'd like to have something to call it. (I've seen this scheme before: I think it might be used by the keyboard built into the Squeak image that comes with Scratch 1.4.)
The earliest I've used was Protracker, which was the most popular tracker in the early heyday of the format (late 80s - early 90s), but the earlier Soundtracker was the OG "tracker", and probably used the same layout, but I'm not sure. https://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Soundtracker_History
But if FL Studio (formerly FruityLoops) and Renoise use the same layout, as others have said, then those are probably going to resonate with a wider modern audience :D Or maybe just call it "FL Studio / Renoise / tracker layout"?
I don't do computer keyboard note entry any more, but I still have the muscle memory for that 4-row layout from hours spent with it in the late 90s :D And I'd totally use it in your game. (My MIDI keyboards are kinda too far away from the mouse and monitor.)
renoise use that convention https://files.renoise.com/manual/Renoise%20User%20Manual.pdf (page 38). I used psycle modular music in 1999 and I know that it was not the first tracker-like software to use that convention but it's as far as my memory goes.
I broadly agree with the author’s point there, but disagree with the specific language he used. In my view, engineering includes those pesky non-technical considerations, like the business context and the human factors, which bring their own tradeoffs and priorities to the engineering decision-making.
That is, his “pure engineers” are not really doing engineering, at least under my understanding of the term, whereas (some of) the impure engineers actually are! :)
I still refuse to buy Sony labelled products from that one. When you have to go through several dozen computers to wipe their rootkits off... even though creating a custom deployment image was faster, it was still a massive time consuming pain I'd never put on anyone.
If they'd have released a simple, single download, then maybe I'd have been less burned... but having to install custom uninstaller per machine, with an email address, and that software itself left another security hole... I'm out.
I love vintage computers, have a vintage computer collection, and have enjoyed visiting computer museums, but does this computer museum website really need to send me desktop notifications?
One of my favorite parts of the 2024 series on Youtube was when Prof B explained her excitement just before introducing UCB algorithms (Lecture 11): "So now we're going to see one of my favorite ideas in the course, which is optimism under uncertainty... I think it's a lovely principle because it shows why it's provably optimal to be optimistic about things. Which is kind of beautiful."
Those moments are the best part of classroom education. When a super knowledgeable person spends a few weeks helping you get to the point where you can finally understand something cool. And you can sense their excitement to tell you about it. I still remember learning Gauss-Bonnet, Stokes Theorem, and the Central Limit Theorem. I think optimism under uncertainty falls in that group.
That’s what it feels like yes. It has a lot of overlap with a ton of stuff that Google already does, and it seems like it’s one of those “rather than improving an existing product, let’s create a new one because that gets us a promotion” situations which Google is well known for.
On a US keyboard:
QWERTYUIOP[] is the white keys starting at middle C. (The row above is the black keys; the 2 key plays C#.)
ZXCVBNM,./ is the white keys starting an octave lower. (S plays a low C#.)
The two ranges overlap; e.g. Q and , both play C in the same octave.
Grew up composing music on a computer this way when my (musical) keyboard didn't have MIDI and I couldn't afford a better one :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
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