> Or music notation vs piano keys - mapping keys to notes is needlessly complex, requiring both a flip and a rotation. (By far the best notation would be vertical, with frequency still increasing to the right in both forms - which takes into account right-hand dominance prevalence and musical taste that wants repetitive bass.) How many kids were and are turned off by this notational horror, and don't get into music at all simply because their (quite correct) aesthetics are immediately violated by arcane music notation?

While I am not a experienced musician, there seems to be a clear trade-off here. The mapping to any single instrument's interface isn't immediately obvious, but it allows me to read music written for piano and play some of it on my cello without having to know how piano keys are arranged. Compatibility between music notation across instruments is IMO a really cool feature.

Edit: >Don't get me started with German grammar, especially the way prepositions conjugate with the (arbitrary) gender of the noun, and the various types of prepositions reuse the same conjugations. It's clearly a language designed to detect foreign speakers and berate them.

Even as a native German speaker, I agree that German grammar is ridiculous. At least Germany reformed their spelling though and made it more consistent. It was quite controversial, but allowed me to get decent spelling grades back in school. Till the reform, I always lost points in exams that weren't even about spelling because I made so many mistakes.