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Cheap keyboards designed for QWERTY might struggle with the use of Arensito's letter keys as modifiers. Gaming keyboards with n-key rollover don't have this problem. And any keyboard with proper thumb keys (Kinesis, Ergodox, Maltron) works properly. There is an older version of the layout that keeps QWERTY's home row that you can use on cheap keyboards, but it's not quite as nice. See More
Your strongest fingers are your thumbs. In this layout (unless you have a keyboard with thumb keys) you shift your hands up one row, and you use your thumbs on the bottom row. (Put your index fingers on QWERTY's T and I keys, and rest your thumbs on VB and NM) The Ctrl and Shift modifier keys now use your strong thumbs instead of your weak pinkies. (Ctrl shortcuts are especially important for programmers.) The modifiers may contribute more to RSI than letters. See More
Even rich on keyboard layouts variety Linux distros like Deepin, offering most of existing layouts, doesn't have this one. The situation on Android is not better, moreover if somebody get used to Swift-like keyboards, that do not have this layout, that person will be forced to have a second (e.g. qwerty) layout in mind. See More
The layout is great only if somebody uses it daily and a lot, like journalists, bloggers, writers do. In this case inconvenience to install the layout is worth use it. If you primarily use your phone/tablet to write some comments in Internet and other tiny writing tasks having such an unpopular layout on just your PC/laptop could be not justified. See More
Someone mentioned a CON because it was designed for Matrix style keyboards, but it was designed on a standard keyboard. However, matrix style keyboards adds additional benefits on top of this key layout. For those who don't know matrix keyboards are those where the key rows are not offset, but are directly above one another. See More
Like Dvorak, this layout privileges English letter frequency, and lacks accented letters. Since the topic is about programming, the argument is weak as most code is written in English, yet you don't want to learn a layout to type code, and another to type in your native language... But the problem isn't specific to Colemak, it is tied to all "ergonomic" layouts, and might have no solution. See More
Not only are the most common English letters on home row under your fingers, but many common two-letter combinations are placed next to each other as well allowing for a fluid "inward roll" motion of letter combos (a-r, r-s, s-t, n-e, e-i, and i-o combos). The inward roll motion is debatably speedier than optimizing finger alternation like Dvorak offers. See More
Although it‘s optimized for English, the support for a wide range of special characters enables occasional use of other languages. Still, the Carpalx research shows that a significant improvement is also present in Dutch compared to Qwerty. http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?de_correspondent See More
If you want to game, the WASD keys are completely unusable. You either need to switch to QWERTY (and then switch to Dvorak every time you want to use in game chat) or spend time remaping every key, because games don't come with Dvorak keymaps. Sufficiently popular games might have Dvorak mods. See More
Having the original QWERTY labels is useful for other people using your computer or if you ever need QWERTY. Not having keycaps labeled in Dvorak forces you to learn to touch type. All QWERTY keyboards can be remapped to Dvorak in your operating system settings, so you don't need a physical Dvorak keyboards. See More
Most people passively learn and use QWERTY-based layouts before switching to Dvorak. The switch gives them an opportunity to completely relearn 10-finger typing, which is where a significant portion of the speedup comes from. Coupled with more ergonomic key placement, this makes for a more enjoyable typing experience. See More
F is not an especially common letter, but it's used much more than the rare letters JQZ. Why is it on one of the most difficult spots on the keyboard? It's also used in OF, one of the more common bigrams, ranked at #13. Maybe some other languages use Z more than English, but why is F harder to reach than Q? See More
Maybe it's more ergonomic, but that's debatable. You'll certainly get more benefit from an ergonomic keyboard than a change in layout. Dvorak's reputation for speed is due to a typo in the initial press report, and a biased (and since discredited) study run by Dvorak himself. Dvorak is all hype and no substance. See More
Programmers have to use punctuation a lot, but (except for the ;: key, like Colemak) punctuation hasn't been moved from their positions on QWERTY. In fact, the non-letter characters , . - " _ ' ) ( ; 0 1 = 2 : are used more than the least-frequent letter z in a reasonable English corpus. Not optimizing punctuation at all, especially for programmers, is nonsense. See More
But you get used to it... :-) Characters very common in programming languages, like [] {} ~#|`@ are reachable only via the infamous AltGr key on Windows computers (and perhaps Linux ones; not sure for Macs). With practice, you type them without thinking, but it is still a rather impractical gymnastics. See More
Some of the most used keys in programming such as ; . / " | ' < > * are very easily accessible because they either have their own keys or are "shift options". People who grew up using alternative layouts, such as Belgian AZERTY, know from experience this shouldn't be taken for granted. See More