system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] Why does it seem all space ships are piloted with a keyboard and not a joystick?

This has to be among the least optimal ways to pilot any vessel.  Especially in a combat setting you want as quick a response as you can get to move your ship into and out of position and danger and your typing skills shouldn't be the main factor of life and death in a space battle.  But man every time they need to move any ship in Star Trek all of a sudden there is a small symphony of beeps and boops from the control panel being used to pilot the ship as the helmsman lays in a course that sounds like they are typing an angry reddit rant, but how is that system at all better than just a basic joystick or steering wheel like literally every single vehicle has?

Who the hell came up with that piloting system the descendant of the guy who invented the QWERTY keyboard layout?
gpt
Because the ships are dealing with potentially hundreds of Gs of acceleration, faster-than-light maneuvers etc. The ship isn't a fightercraft in world war 1 making lazy strafes with fixed machine-guns, the pilot is half-piloting and half-programming the ship to go through various maneuvers coordinating with the shields and weapons, which are all constantly being adjusted, re-tuned, re-calibrated and having frequencies shifted and power routed around.

They're not necessarily directly controlling every action of the ship, so much as they are herding/directing various AIs and algorithms that optimize the ship's performance faster and better than any human or humanoid could.