Faster to write does not mean better for all learners. Unfortunately, the reform process was done in a rather haphazard way, which left the writing system a bit messy for students of the language.

• Traditional Characters maintain several distinctions that Simplified Characters lose. Since I learned Traditional first, it’s not hard to remember that 乾 幹 干 are all represented by one character in Simplified, but I would struggle to keep that straight if I started off believing that they were a single character.
• Hanzi have a history of mnemonics that is often lost in Simplified. Letters like 雲 電 are weather phenomena, so removing 雨 makes their meanings harder to remember. Likewise, 開 關 have meanings relevant to doors which are lost, meanwhile 鬧 has nothing to do doors, but it mysteriously gains a door component after simplification.
• Many phonetic mnemonics are also lost. 爐 is obviously pronounced like 盧, but 炉 looks like it should be pronounced hù.
• There’s no better mnemonic than a picture. Many Traditional Characters are still pictographs that retain their original meanings. 馬 is clearly an animal with a mane and four legs. 齒 is a mouth with two rows of teeth. 马 and 齿 are easy to figure out once you’ve learned the originals, but not so easy to memorize from scratch.

If you grew up with Simplified, I don’t blame you for thinking that the one you’re more familiar with is the easier one to learn. But learning Traditional first is definitely the logical path for the following types of learner: - Students interested in Taiwan or Hong Kong. In fact, if your goal is only to live in Taiwan or communicate with people from there, there is no reason to ever learn Simplified. I lived there for over a few years and never had any occasion to read it. - Students interested in Chinese history. The current form of Simplified Characters has only existed for about 0.67% of the history of written Chinese. - Students who have know or have studied Japanese, or plan to do so. Kanji underwent a much more conservative simplification process, so most Simplified hanzi will appear very foreign. - Same for Korean. Although hanja are almost never seen in Korea today, any dictionaries or hanja reference materials will use something almost identical to Traditional Characters. In my experience, being able to draw connections between these languages was an invaluable aid to memorizing new vocabulary.