>Where are the pianists for nonstandard keyboards? > If we dropped the "white keys are for C Ionian and black keys are for 'accidentals'" layout for a chromatic one, a pianist would only need to learn every scale and chord once, and playing in a different key would involve nothing more than moving their hands.

You're asking for a different instrument, which would reduce hand spans to half their size when compared to an orthodox keyboard. This would change completely the tonality of the instrument such that it would be barely recognisable.

If you really want this, you're free to do it on any digital by reassigning their key value, and only using white keys. Or you could play a guitar. But I imagine you'll then be frustrated that each open string increases key by an arbitrary amount, which is done to address the tonality issue I mention.

> The same goes for notation and theory verbiage. It's like we're stuck in a codebase that was started centuries ago, and everyone is too afraid to commit a bugfix, let alone a major refactor.

You need NO theory or notation to become highly proficient. This is no excuse.