alt Hacker NewsThis is actually covered in the video. It's the "we should use a chromatic scale" argument and is surprisingly old.
The answer to why people don't use a chromatic scale is also in there. Very roughy, it's harder to sight read intervals between notes.
Standard music notation is a like a London Underground map, it's symbolic rather than literal.
Being more symbolic gives standard notation many advantages once you learn it.
The video does a much better job of explaining that than I've given. It really is very good.
I'll watch the video later but is it more difficult for singers or musicians of particular instruments?
For example, if you number the tones and have a piano style instrument with alternating white and black keys, then you can have a 6 line stave where spaces are always white keys and black keys are always lines.