I'd argue it's a different kind of learning though. QWERTY is more 'what you see is what you get' - you push a key and you get that letter. Sure the layout is

I'd argue it's a different kind of learning though. QWERTY is more 'what you see is what you get' - you push a key and you get that letter. Sure the layout is weird and learning to type takes some effort, but there's very little additional cognitive load. It's like a WYSIWYG editor. Steno is like Vim, you have to have all of the phrases in your head tracking a lookup table cognitively. Over time sure that becomes muscle memory and lowers the load but I think it's less gradual. You have to frontload a lot of the commands first. IME most people will never do that so it'll always remain niche.