"Unless you get everyone to switch to it, you will be disabled whenever you switch to someone else's computer, a kiosk, etc. Why bother?"
I take it you have not tried any alternate layouts. Why do you as someone who has not tried it feel inclined to lecture about the consequences to those who have? Which of us do you think has the clearer picture about the consequences?
Theorize about the potential downsides all you like. In practice, I find it has been a net gain for me personally, and no amount of mere conjecture on your part will change that one bit.
Agreed. I've been using dvorak for 11 years and when I read "Unless you get everyone to switch to it, you will be disabled whenever you switch to someone else's computer, a kiosk, etc." I knew that this person wasn't speaking from personal experience but from imagining what it would be like if he/she switched.
I've typed Dvorak for a couple years, and have been quite happy with it. I'm curious about Colemak, though. Dvorak is pretty established as the alternative English-language keyboard layout - It's not hard to set up on Windows, Unix, or (I'm guessing) OS X. Is Colemak? While I'm convinced that Dvorak is significantly better than Qwerty, if you're the stubborn sort that would use a different keyboard layout for English (spoiler alert: I am), I suspect there's diminishing returns after that. Still, I'm really curious about Colemak (what was the rationale?) - I just don't know anybody who uses it.
My strategy of "heavily customized Emacs / Dvorak on my computers, standard Qwerty / vi otherwise" has been a good compromise over the years, incidentally.
Also, I work with Swedish hackers who remind me that Qwerty is only "standard" so far across the ocean. These things only make sense in a local context.
I use Colemak. It's supposed to be easier to learn than Dvorak, and it leaves some keyboard shortcuts intact (e.g. ctrl+zxcv). There is a colemak.vim file that completely customizes vim for colemak. Warning: it changes nearly every single key binding.
The only downside to colemak is that d is next to t. This sometimes makes it difficult to type Dutch, because some words end with "dt". A typo "td" is easy to make.
I take it you have not tried any alternate layouts. Why do you as someone who has not tried it feel inclined to lecture about the consequences to those who have? Which of us do you think has the clearer picture about the consequences?
Theorize about the potential downsides all you like. In practice, I find it has been a net gain for me personally, and no amount of mere conjecture on your part will change that one bit.